Power of Play
Power of Play
Exploring the Mantra 'You Only Have 18 Summers': A Conversation with Jim and Jamie Sheils
Have you ever stopped to think about the fleeting nature of time, especially in relation to the years we have with our children? Join us on a heartfelt journey with Jim and Jamie Sheils, authors of 'The Family Board Meeting', as we explore their profound mantra - 'you only have 18 summers'. This poignant reminder of the finite nature of time serves as the foundation of our discussion, as we delve into the thrill of their book reaching number one on the Wall Street Journal, and the importance of cherishing every moment with our children, irrespective of the season.
Navigating parenting in a blended family can be a tricky ride, but the Sheils recount their journey with exceptional honesty and vulnerability, sharing their struggles, triumphs, and even the unexpected encounters with imposter syndrome. Through their narrative, they underline the significance of making intentional decisions and leaning on each other for support, vital ingredients to their success story as a blended family. This segment promises to be inspiring, enlightening, and above all, offers hope and practical solutions.
Kelly's conversation then steers towards their latest book '18 Summers', the successful podcast 'Family Board Meetings', and the survival guide to keeping a marriage strong while raising children. Alongside, the Shields also open up about their pro vita lifestyle and how it has positively influenced their family life. So buckle up for a conversation that is honest, insightful, and packed with invaluable parenting and family life lessons from the Shields' lived experiences.
Hello and welcome to the Power of Play podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Clements, and today I am joined by Jim and Jamie Shields, authors of the Family Board meetings, and they host retreats geared towards families as well. I'm super excited to have them joining me. Jim and Jamie, thank you so much for joining me today. It's good to have you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us Kelly.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Kelly, good to be here, it's always good to see you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, likewise, and so today we are talking about your re-release of the book the Family Board meetings, which was first released in 2015, and you have republished, re-released it. Tell me what prompted that.
Speaker 2:Oh, great question. Yeah, so we actually were. A publisher reached out to us and wanted us to write a book on passive income, the passive income lifestyle that we live really, in, which we're able to facilitate adventures with our children and more travel and more time together, intentionally and that project was supposed to be released this spring, while things kept delaying and delaying and it got moved to the end of 2023. And somehow, through this process, our publisher said wait, was your first book never with a publisher Like you guys self-published this. Like, yeah, no big deal.
Speaker 2:I was nursing, I like figured it out, I Googled how to publish on Amazon, and he said, no, well, can I have a chance to publish this? Like, I think we could do something great with this. We do some updates, give a little more context, since you guys have now lived this and we have two children on that other side of the 18 summers. And so we said, sure, we've always wanted to do a summer release. Do you happen to have any dates at the beginning of summer? And he literally had, like the beginning date of summer Memorial date weekend.
Speaker 2:It just felt so divine and serendipitous, like yes, we are supposed to do this. And in our true Forrest Gump fashion, it went to number one on the Wall Street Journal. We were, you know, the book launched, we did our thing and we had friends in town in Costa Rica and we're riding four-wheelers meandering through shops and he comes in. He's like hey, our publisher is like on Zoom right now on the phone, like he wants to tell us something. And we made a big scene in the shop because we really were not paying attention, we weren't thinking.
Speaker 2:You know that this is going to happen, it just we really wanted to impact more families, we wanted the ability for it to reach a farther breadth of folks, and we just thought summer was the best time to implement something new. And it must have resonated and we couldn't be more thrilled.
Speaker 1:You know, the whole concept of family board meetings is based on the promise of you only have 18 summers with your kids and I remember there were two major like keystone paradigms that informed my parenting. It was always say yes to their reasonable requests and you only have 18 summers, make them count. And I first heard that from Jim and that it was like one of those sentences that just went like straight into my soul and it just made it made like what felt like an infinite timeline, finite, where every moment had to count and like every Santa Claus thing had to be a great experience or got to be a great experience. It just really emphasized the everyday moments of nothingness and there's still some of my favorite memories with my kids and it gave me like an undercurrent of low key grief through my kids younger years because I could just feel like those hour, like the sands going through the hourglass of time.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned. You have two kids on the other side of that, 18 summers and as my kids are getting older minor 14 and 16 now I'm like it just keeps getting better and better and better and juicier. So you have two on the other side of that spectrum and you have two great. Three younger ones Tell me, can we talk a little bit about life after the 18, like when they get up to those, those later years, and how that shifted?
Speaker 3:I think that, again, you always say if you do the first 18, right, hopefully they'll come back for more. And the one thing that Jamie are happiest about besides my bad jokes our kids really like hanging out with us.
Speaker 2:So we're going to be talking about that.
Speaker 3:Well, that was, it was a truthful statement, it wasn't really a joke, but I think, kelly, they still want to hang out with us and even when Alden, our oldest, will say to the littler ones yeah, I really like when dad is able to take time, he still takes time just to hang out with me. That's coming from you know, male fishermen, you know you know young man, and so it's good to hear that and I think that that's been our biggest Aha, like wow, they still actually want to hang out with us and that is. That is very encouraging, and I don't think, if we hadn't been so intentional with the quality time in the last decade plus, that that would probably be such the case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think, kelly, you use the word gift and opportunity, because it's not that we have to spend this time, it's that there's an opportunity to spend whatever time you can, to make that the intentional time. And two, and also, it's not about the summers. You hear a lot like 18 summers. It's really, it's a math equation, it's a reminder, it's something that, like you said, it's these sands of time. It reminds you there is something going on and it is moving forward. It's not about the summers, as you said. It's about the holidays, in which, if you're a working parent and maybe you don't have a half a day, a quarter to spend, but you get a long weekend at the holidays like man, holidays can be super special.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:Sunday pancakes or whatever it may be, but it's really about taking whatever moment that summer is for you and doing it with intentionality and purpose and really a great playfulness, as you tell us to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. So the whole premise of Family Board meetings is one-on-one time. One-on-one high quality time with each member of your family spouses, children to really get that connection, no cell phones, and you have such a great framework in the book that talks about how to execute. But the thing I love the most, and I think the thing that's the most important, is you talked about how that idea was born, that you were in a recovery meeting surrounded by addicts and there was a common theme that they didn't have the quality time with their parents.
Speaker 1:And in many of my entrepreneurial circles we talk about workaholism as the noble addiction. We have a noble addiction to workaholism or pouring into our families. If you're a spouse that's not in business, we might have the noble addiction of just helping others to our own detriment, and I think it's really important to call attention to that because so often workaholics will justify it as well. I'm doing this for you, I'm doing this for you, but you noticed in the beginning that that was actually very counterproductive. Can you talk a little bit about how you started to sew those seeds together, like watching the addicts and their children, and how you made sure that it went?
Speaker 3:on. I think it was just so mind-bending and such a slowdown in reality. There's something in this. I don't want this to come out as an unfair statement, kelly, but I've heard and you've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs as well, and addiction is. It's a painful thing to watch. It really is.
Speaker 3:And some parents will say who are workaholics yeah, but this gave me the ability to be able to pay for the best rehab and rehabilitation center and I have to always ask which comes first, the chicken or the egg? And that's something where it's a very sensitive subject, especially in the room I was in that day. I didn't dare bring it up, but man, was it just screaming into my intuitions going? There is a correlation here. I do believe from what I've seen, there's some clear things that we've seen.
Speaker 3:The lack of fatherhood in the home can be absolutely detrimental, of both parents, of course, but it seemed like fathers were the less responsible in general of society and that I mean. The stats are there to show that. The second thing it was a mentor of ours that Jamie found Kim John Payne from Simplicity Parenting, where he actually wrote in there about certain hours, and if you work a certain amount of hours away from your family. You know the work out. The odds of damage are extreme, and so we have to look at that and when we use words like damage.
Speaker 2:we actually just got off of an interview in which we talked a lot about the prefrontal cortex. That was a woman that discussed that. You know, at age somewhere between seven and 12, that prefrontal cortex begins to form, and then it's not completely formed until between 25 and 30, depending on male, female and how important in those beginning stages, as a parent, our lack, of you know, showing empathy or guiding, empathy or care, or the things in which we do or attention just focused attention.
Speaker 2:That it can really delay that prefrontal cortex as even start to development.
Speaker 3:So overall, kelly, what I learned that day, that is, there really is no substitute for quality time. I think it's the best offense and defense in your family and there's ways to facilitate it. And I'm not saying okay, never to work, that's not realistic for us entrepreneurs but how do we make the most of the time that we do have with them? And I do think there's ways to set that intention also into framework, which we do in the book.
Speaker 1:You do it so powerfully in the book and I'm actually gonna encourage everyone to go out and get a copy now because there's so much richness. I wanna make sure that we dial down on the backstory. That helps you guys get here, because the book is genius at lane that out so you can get that at familyboardmediescom, barnes, noble, amazon. But you guys are a blended family and when I was a guest on your podcast, you guys asked me about imposter syndrome and I've been thinking about that question a lot because I'm like it's weird that I don't have imposter syndrome, because when I started my business, I was a single mom coaching married entrepreneurs and I realized it's because I coached out of my mistakes, everything that didn't work, so like yeah, no.
Speaker 1:I really messed it up that badly and I own it fully, so I never had imposter syndrome. You guys coach from a platform of ingenuity of what really works at an extreme yet basic level and you did it in a blended family and I know how hard co-parenting can be with not only a former partner, but now when their partner's getting involved and your partner's getting involved and now you have four adults with their own ideas. I have to imagine it got messy and how you guys navigated, having such a great idea of parenthood in a panoramic view that maybe not all the adults agreed on or maybe the kids weren't used to how you guys did that.
Speaker 2:I think too, just as you, kelly, teaching from our pain points, because it all began. All of these ideas came up so that we could become a blended family and then I guess we kind of reverse engineered it. We're like, wow, this works, hey, maybe it could help somebody else. And so really, our pain point and I had full custody of our boys and so raising our boys there wasn't a co-parent for very long. There was for a short period of time, and then logistics and courts and through the boys' ultimate choosing there's no other parent that we had to navigate with, but that in itself brings its own challenges in raising young people who had ultimately a really shaky start and so overcoming the challenges that the start to life brought. But then becoming a blended family and carrying that into it, cause we all carry our own things, even if we experienced nothing, we still bring in our own stories and our own lineage.
Speaker 2:But really these boys and I came in to our blended family carrying a lot of fear and distrust and layers that we needed to overcome, and so it's such a redemption and such a Cinderella story that I guess it's exciting to shout about like, oh my gosh, this works. Let me tell you why and how, and it's something that's really hard to share, and I think that imposter syndrome comes in because I think, but who am I Like we got to this place because first, myself and two beautiful little boys were damaged and like choices I made caused this, you know, and it's just things like that do play into it and it does, you know, that imposter syndrome or that thought of like. But why me? You know, why was I chosen to bring this message? Or why were these boys? I just think it's so important to bring those lessons in which you learn and those pain points to others so that hopefully they can either overcome in the same way that we have Kelly or me, hopefully even avoid things that we've had to experience.
Speaker 3:And I think that it's. It is not a clean situation in a blended family. So, like you said, there's some or you know, there is that extra co parenting. We were, by law and by experience, past that point and what we decided was and even in Jamie's early years, which we don't talk about much, she was trying to keep that open. And now, feeding back from our two young men, who you know and are now young adults, they said why did you do that? Because the pain point was there, and for me it was at first Kelly, the imposter syndrome. Am I being wrong here? Am I overstepping bounds?
Speaker 3:And then there just was a few incidents, or I said we have to do what's best for the children and when, you know, there comes a point of of addiction and abuse, that's where my, my line is in the sand and that's what happened with us and, honestly, it was probably the biggest blessing because we could start to reverse the gears, because when I stepped in the two boys that you know now, they had a solid core because of the beautiful girl sitting next to me, but there was a lot of trust. You know that has to be just trust, the trust that had to be built. So that and that was where this whole story came out from I was saying, okay, I don't want to fail these young boys. You know they're all and Jamie didn't, jamie didn't believe it as much, and now she's.
Speaker 3:We just talked about the other night where I said you got to say you know that young boys vive foradad. They just, you know, my dad lifted a building and put it on the other side of the street. You know what I mean. Like you were talking about, you know, with the total and, and, and I could see that here and and. So that was a lot, of, a lot of positive, of positive pressure that I didn't want to mess up and I knew with my EDD entrepreneur self, kelly, I was going to run over that and fail if I didn't get really intentional and I had Jamie's every support. So that was that was really important.
Speaker 2:But at least, like every few months, we both are like what the hell are we doing? Who are we to teach anybody? We can't even. We can't even pack a card and hit a road trip without telling each other our biggest flaws in life. So, yes, absolutely, we fit, we have, we have it all the time. We're very normal, but we are.
Speaker 3:I'd say we're the kings and queens of failing forward.
Speaker 1:Believe it as you build it is the new mantra, instead of fake it. So you make it right. I love that, yes, okay. So you talk about when, like workaholism and like I'm doing this for my family and a lot of the entrepreneurs that I work with, it's like Kelly, I want to, but it's so hard for me to turn my brain off, like I'm always connected to my wheels are always turning, and that's what I love about this framework that you talk about. There's no cell phone, so there's not the temptation to get distracted. There's a dedicated framework. It's at least four hours and it's play. You know there's out, you're doing something.
Speaker 1:And the reason I love that you guys emphasize play is because play can mimic flow, the flow state that entrepreneurs get into in our, in our work life. Play mimics that when we're active and we're engaged in an activity with another person, but it kicks in that extra boost of oxytocin. So there's that love hormone that bonds people. What are some of the like best play activities you guys have done on your family board meetings, with your one-on-one dates with your kids? What are some of the ones that have just really like, helped you stay present and engaged? You talk about the lighthouse in the book. What are some of the other ones that stand out as one of the ones that just really were break through experiences.
Speaker 3:I mean the lighthouse. One stands out because, now that we've done the updated addition, you know, there was little Leland at six or seven and then today he has his own business where you know not to be the spoiler, but the story is about, for anyone who doesn't know about it him overcoming his fear of height by climbing our giant lighthouse in our town. Well, that was a big deal for him, and now he's on, he has a roof cleaning business, so he's on roofs every day. So just seeing that overcoming of that, you know it was really exciting. And then for Alden, it would be any of the ones around fishing because, as you know, like your son Will, he's got a love and a passion for fishing. He's very good at it. We, he had young mentors. Well, what did we do? On a lot of these, these family board meetings? He chose to go fishing in this way or that way.
Speaker 2:And every time you're like, oh my, you didn't say it to him, but you'd be like I guess we're going fishing again, I'm a surfer and that's what it is. It's not about what you want. It's what it is, and I remember it would go all in, Like I the pictures of him smiling.
Speaker 3:It's the saying of you know, fill in the blank, whatever it is for Alden is fishing. Someone says, do you love fishing that much? I say no, but I love my son that much. You know we're always saying, as entrepreneurs or you know, you, just as a where parents, I want to be more. You know, we're more supportive of their gifts and their talents. Well, like you said, if we don't give them the chance to get into flow, how will they ever really uncover those? And so I never pushed them towards fishing. I mean, I liked fishing but I wasn't a fisherman. I wasn't.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm a surfer and it's just not my mechanics. I enjoy it, but not a lot. But to watch him go deep into it and then to really uncover this talent he has for it and then put it to use, so he's hopefully not working a day in his life, if you know what I mean, I'm just enjoying it. All those blended together, all the ones where I can see him pulling a little fish off the dock to a huge marlin in Costa Rica, but you know, bears walking past us in Alaska, like that for me, because it was a connection point, it was on his terms, we supported his gifts and talents and now he's using it and he's got more direction at 19 than most kids, than I had at 39, probably.
Speaker 2:Total blow off one with Leland. We went to a Justin.
Speaker 3:Bieber concert. Justin Bieber concert.
Speaker 2:And literally like talk about play. It was like it had nothing to do with our purpose in life. It had nothing to do with me, but like we had the time of our life, everything from I let him pick out my outfit to where we went to eat. He taught me how to do duck lips, which was a total fail. We just laughed our butts off. I learned that he has this awkward yawn when he's nervous and I never knew that the crowds made him nervous until this experience.
Speaker 2:And so there were little things that I'm like and he's 17. And these are moments that I'm just learning. But what's amazing is I know that that was a huge highlight for him, but even for me. On D's that I feel really poopy. I'll go on Spotify and I'll play Justin Bieber playlist and I feel like it's so uplifting because I remember seriously what an obnoxiously fun teenage time that we got to have just blowing off with each other.
Speaker 3:I'll add the princess parties with Maggie to that. She's had a few princess parties Me and her are the princess parties so wouldn't have been my first choice but to see how excited she would be that I was fully present. No one was interrupting us and dad was at my princess party with me. And good one, Great memories.
Speaker 1:And that's it. When your kids know that you're willing to get into their world and learn them, it's the easiest on ramp to everything else, because they're so often they're just sucked in the gravitational pull of our frameworks of life. That we're doing and we can get down in their level and see their world through their eyes. That's where that trust you talk about establishing trust Like it's like, yes, you're getting into my world and that's good intimacy, that's good knowingness of like being in the same hobbies and interests. So I obviously put a huge emphasis on your relationship with your kids. How do you guys keep your marriage bulletproof with so much emphasis on the kids? It's one of the biggest threats to a marriage is putting the kids above your spouse. How do you guys keep your marriage bulletproof in that situation?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I think that something that we do is our children know that our relationship comes first. So, even though they get a lot of our time, a lot of our attention, a lot of our intention, they know that our relationship is primary. They know before grandparents, they know before friends, they know before them like dad and I have to be online for everything else to go well. And so if dad and I are deep in a conversation you know interrupting us means like we then it takes away from other things in which we're trying to do. If dad and I miss a date night, then it takes away from our cup being full.
Speaker 2:If dad and I you know, and our children are just super understanding we do a weekly date night and on our date night we do date night with a question, because date nights used to not go so well. So we used to not be as an intentional in our relationship as we were with our children. Admittedly, you know we would skip date night or we would not properly plan for it and you know the baby didn't like it. She, like for 14 months, wouldn't go to anybody else who we're like. Oh, that's fine, she won't be a little forever Like.
Speaker 2:We just kept making excuses and honestly I think our relationship I don't use the word suffered, but it did. It took a hit because we no longer were seeing each other for why we were there together. We weren't playing together, kelly, as you say. We weren't. There wasn't much purpose in our relationship other than functionality and I think that once we realized that it was deteriorating, that original connection, we started to go on intentional date nights. We started bringing a question along, a deep, meaningful question, and then after we nailed it for a number of weeks and then months and then a year.
Speaker 2:We're like wait, we should share this with other people. And so we started doing date night with a question workshops. We've got a deck of cards. That is the 52 quat first 52 questions we asked each other. We probably need to do another box or two for the last few years, but it really works the intentionality. So we essentially do a board meeting like we outlined in the book with children, but we do it every week and our rhythms for two thing our main rhythms are date night, weekly date night with a question.
Speaker 3:You're not allowed to go and say how was the weather? What are the kids have at school tomorrow? You know, we try to go below the surface and keep dating, which we really enjoy, always feel better afterwards. And then we do an overnight once a quarter. So that's you know. People say how are you, how are you five kids, how do you do that? And say we exactly. That's why we have to do it, because you know there's a lot of capacity and demand and we need this time to just us. So that's been really important and our kids are supportive and kids will be kids and this is this is something you know where they're going to test the fences.
Speaker 3:That's their job. But I think one thing Jamie and I have been pretty good at of course we have our disagreements and arguments, but when it comes to her and they could try to like, do a little, you know, let's see between us, or fighting, conquer, and it's not going to work. You know, I remember one of my first, even cover, events. One of his main trainers told this story and it was. It just always stuff.
Speaker 3:And I've told the older boys that the the younger is, I wouldn't say because it's a little more serious and he was. He said his dad was, was a quiet man, special forces, good man in his whole life, but him and his three siblings, and he was being a teen and trying to divide in between him and his mom, and you know, give his mom a hard time and get his dad on his side. And he said, oh, never forget his dad. You know, just calmly sat down to look I love you and I'll do anything for you in this world. There was a mad government that came into this house and I could save your mother or you. I would miss you greatly. And he said his dad wasn't trying to be mean or malicious and they talked later about it, but he just said I have to stand with your mother first and foremost, and I'm going to do that and that's the way it has to be for the best family.
Speaker 3:And so that story always stuck with me. And it's about, even if you're not still together in the marriage or that if you stand together for the best of the child and don't where I see, and I'm sure you see this in the coaching Kelly, it is a dangerous slope where you try to all of a sudden give the teen a favoritism level, oh, we'll give you this If you do this against them or you use it as a pawn. The standing together is so important and I think that's really helped Jamie and I, all the flaws and mistakes we've made, we really have stood together on big decisions, big issues, and if a teen tries to be a teen, say hey, don't try to come between us, because we will stand together.
Speaker 2:I mean, wouldn't you say that yeah, and I'm not, I mean, and I don't think either of us are afraid either to say I don't really agree with that. So I think we're open and we're quick to apologize and quick to compliment. So I think we, the same way that we wholeheartedly have our children's back, you know, like your kid's best, like your greatest cheerleader I'm definitely like Jim and I, are each other's greatest cheerleader and I think I think that's really important, you know, and they see the children see us support one another and they see us apologize a lot. We're busy and we're fast and we're, you know, and so I think there's a lot of. If there's a rub, one of us is really quick to be like I totally didn't mean to blah, blah, I'm really sorry, you know, and I think that an apology goes a long way in holding a relationship together, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Years ago, Leland's gotten trouble at school and we sat down to talk to him and we laugh about it now and it was me, Jamie and Alden.
Speaker 2:Cause we nobody gets a.
Speaker 1:Freak.
Speaker 2:No, it's like a town hall meeting.
Speaker 3:It was like a discussion.
Speaker 2:If something happens in this health, it all happens in the light. You did something wrong. We're all going to sit around and talk about it.
Speaker 3:And Leland, it's probably like me and he was. He's naturally stubborn and and Alden says this thing, it was the funniest backhand to compliments ever but he says, you know, like you know, if you mess up. Leland just apologized. I mean like, look at dad, he messes up all the time, but then he apologizes, and I was like, oh thanks, I think.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's such a great example. All right, last question we have a huge emphasis on travel at the power of play. Where is your favorite vacation destination?
Speaker 2:Hmm, vacation. We live part time in Costa Rica, which is amazing and wonderful and beautiful, but it's home. We work there, life is more playful there, so I think that's why we choose that. I don't know, I think, just living. You know, it's kind of like retirement when people say, well, what are you going to do in your retirement? Like, I'm going to do this when I retire, I'm going to do this until I die, because this is fun and purposeful and whatever. So maybe I wouldn't say Costa Rica, because that's where I like to play, but we live.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the pro vita life is magnetic. I had a feeling you guys were going to say that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, pro vita.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. I look forward to connecting with you soon.
Speaker 3:Always Thanks, kelly, good seeing you.
Speaker 1:And can you tell us there's one more time where?
Speaker 2:they can get your book 18summerscom. You can kind of find everything from where to find the book to our own podcast, to social media and all that jazz.
Speaker 3:And all major bookstores too, yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much.