The Whinypaluza Podcast with Rebecca Greene Episode 024 Shalom in the Home: Book Club Edition.

No need to whine, it's Whiny Palooza! Have some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza podcast with Rebecca Green. Welcome to the Whiny Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Green. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family. Hello, this is Rebecca Green for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I'm so excited today. I have my book club with me. And my book club was my first podcast 7 months ago. So here we are 7 months later, and we read Shalom in the Home, which was a fantastic pick by Jamie. So I'm going to introduce them, and we are going to jump into talking about the book. So first up is Jamie. Jamie is a wife and mother of 4 plus 8 fur babies. She manages a very busy home on top of fitting in 2 part-time jobs at Bella Kids and Park Camp. She's super insightful and I can't wait to hear what she has to say. Hi, Jamie! Thank you for joining me. Moving on to Kristen. She's a wife and mother of 2, hairstylist, avid reader, and organizational master. I'm sure she's organized her amazing thoughts on the book for us today. Hi, Kristen! Hi!

I'm so excited.

I'm such a dork. Last but not least, Tayton is a wife, mother of 2, and a fabulous project manager at Market Domination. She just happens to manage and produce my podcast. So this is a treat having her in front of the camera with me today. Thank you, Tayton.

I know.

Hello.

And I can always edit out anything I don't like, right?

She's in charge so she can do what she wants with this podcast. And I got her in front of the camera today instead of behind the— Can it happen for me? So thank you, everyone here. I'm so excited. And I took so many notes that I don't even know how I'm going to answer my own questions, but I'm going to do my best.

We'll help you.

Yeah, I'm like, I don't even know what to say because there's so much to say. But let's jump into what did we learn? I'm just going to ask the general question. Anyone can start. What did you learn?

I could start. I think the overall message in the book is it's a delicate balance between being a couple, a married couple, and having your family. It's easy to be a married couple when it's just you and there's no kids. Once you throw kids in the mix, it just throws everything off balance, and that's where the problems happen. And he had a lot of really insightful ways to help these people kind of rediscover what they had before. I mean, for some of the cases, obviously some of them they, they ended up splitting up, but, um, I just, I think he really put a spotlight on trying to maintain your marriage while maintaining being a parent and having happy kids.

So he did such a good job talking about marriage, and we, we all get lost in our daily lives and our busy lives, and I think that the first thing we forget about is our marriage. At least I do. You know, I had an encounter today with Lily. I picked her up at theater and she was crying, and I'm like, oh God, I'm like, I don't have time for drama, I have so much to do.

And, and I'm like, why are you crying?

And she's like, because a girl said something to me that made me really sad. And she said— I had— she had an old phone with her, you know, one of Seth's old phones, and the girl said to her I can't believe you have a phone. I can't get a phone till I'm 12. Are your parents divorced?

Oh geez.

And it upset her so much. And I said, but Lily, your parents are happily married. We're in love with each other. And she said, but you fight. And I said, yes, we fight. I said, yes, we fight, but do we kiss a lot? And she's like, yes. I'm like, do we hug a lot? And she said, yes. And I said, can you focus on that? And she said, okay, but can you fight less? And I'm like, do we really fight that much? I'm gonna have to pay attention. But, um, I think it's so important to show our kids that we're happily married. I mean, she's got such a distorted image that, you know, we were both cranky this morning, so maybe that's where she got that from. But I was like, wow, does my kid not know how happily married I am? I better work on that.

I actually think the comment from her friend on divorce scared her, um, because she said she couldn't have a phone until she was 12, and she thought that she had a phone because her parents were divorced, and that would be the only reason why she could get a phone at this age. So that was just really the context of the statement. Um, I have role-played with Julia a lot over the years, my daughter, and, um, you know, kids don't know how to necessarily take things or how to react right off the bat. So that is—

sometimes you have to talk them through it because our assumptions as adults, our perspective is totally different. So like, from her point of view, she sees— I mean, I don't know how many of her friends have parents who are divorced, but my guess is it's probably more than what you and I had when we were growing up. Um, so she doesn't know what the signs are. If a marriage is happy or not, or what's the divorce like, what should I be looking for. So yeah, poor Lily.

And you know, go ahead, Jamie.

Oh, I was gonna touch on something that Lily said based on the book. Rabbi Shmuley actually talked about, you know, there are two different kinds of parents. Some, you know, parents fight and they have the passion and the, you know, anger and passion and, you know, a lot of talk and disagreement, but they're at least talking and they're very, very passionate versus the people who just go to their separate corners and they decide to not address the problem or not continue the fight. They've become dispassionate. And I think, you know, that's two different, very different platforms of how marriages work.

Very true. Yeah. And it can be healthy. I personally think it can be healthy for your kids to see you having some kind of discourse about something, not like raging, screaming fights, but you should show them a healthy example of having a disagreement and a discussion with someone and then showing that just because you disagree on something doesn't mean you can't get along and it's not the end of your relationship, whether it's a friend or a coworker or a spouse.

One of my questions to you, and I totally agree with you, what did you disagree with? And what I disagreed with, the only line that I disagreed with in the book Like, I'm sure there's more, but like Tayton just touched on it. He said, don't fight in front of your kids. And I was like, red flag, red flag. I was like, I don't agree with that at all. And I don't— we should scream in front of our kids, but I think we should show them how to, like Tayton said, have a healthy disagreement and how to resolve it. Right? I know she's laughing.

I know.

Do you think you should fight in front of your kids though?

Well, it depends on the kind of fight. I mean, I think that you should, you know, that he said always be respectful, you know, don't disrespect your wife in front of your kids. That was one of the major components of his advice for parents. I think they need to see that people can have different views, people can talk out their views, the kind of argument that you— not argument, like bullet-pointed arguments that you might use to support your views, and how there's a resolution. Because if you hide every adult thing, I mean, it would, I guess it really truly depends on the topic, but if you hide every adult thing that you're discussing and take it behind closed doors, you know, I think there's more fear in what you don't see behind closed doors. Kids need to learn how to be not combative. They need to learn how to be engaged in a respectful argument or disagreement, or they need to know the rules of engagement. Like, oh, we don't go there. We don't We don't use that language, or we don't call names, or we— there's certain things you just don't do.

We don't punch walls.

Yeah, right. There's certain things you just don't do, and they have to learn those rules of engagement. As we've known, kids model parents' behavior. They need to have a healthy role model of how you behave, even if it's in discord or in a disagreement, you know, situation.

Yeah, I think fighting in front of children is actually somewhat not controllable in the heat of the moment, and they're gonna— words are gonna fly, uh, pots and pans might fly.

Um, just kidding, the Italian in you.

But I do think that kids are definitely gonna see parents fight and, um, You know, he touched on one of the book on how you react to things. And I, going back to what we learned from the book, I'm learning to try to not pounce so much and try and listen more and definitely say like, oh, I'm sorry, more sincerely instead of sorry and walk away.

I love it.

As you roll your eyes. Marriage is, I think it's a testament of, you know, your loyalty and faith to one another. But I also think that, you know, not every day is perfect. And, you know, we don't even know how stressed out our spouses are. We don't know what kind of day they had. A lot of comments basically come from just different scenarios. They have nothing to do with you. So, it's just hard to determine, are you mad at me or are you mad at something else? You know?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and I think the other big part of it is the communication style. So, just continuing to communicate, even if it's not something that we want to talk about, you have to be able to communicate. And especially if it's a topic or with a family member that you haven't, that you have a rift with, You just have to be able to look at that and find a way to have a resolution because it's affecting you deeper down than you think. Like the example with the couple that had the two children and he had a problem with his father and deep down he just didn't resolve issues that he had with his father. And his wife wasn't going to broach the subject. He was a child who had been adopted and he just felt there was a lot of disconnect between his father for the last 20 years. And people need those types of resolutions, and not everyone wants to come to the table. I think it's very— it says something about your adult behavior and your maturity to be able to say, okay, well, this person's intervening for a reason, and they're asking for you and you to come together to find a resolution or to even have a healthy engagement. And a lot of people don't want to do that. We don't even have enough mediators in our regular society. To be able to work with one another, even in a workplace or in the government or in our own neighborhoods. People need to learn how to conduct themselves within the rules of engagement, whether it's in a family or workplace, professionally, you know, in any kind of setting. And that's how it's like a trickle-down effect. So if things aren't happening well from grandma and grandpa, you know, they're going to go down to the children and then the children's children. And that's like learned behavior. And we need to somehow find a way to break the pattern and break the cycle of abuse or disconnect or people who retreat within themselves so they aren't able to make those connections in their homes.

He did such a good job finding the generational patterns and where it stemmed from and why someone was acting how they were acting. I love— he was such a good detective.

Yeah.

He really figured things out with each family that he worked with. So I really liked that. And I want to tell you guys that one of the things that I took away from the book that is so important to me is a reminder to me is how I'm talking to Seth, he said, is how my kids are going to talk to everyone in their life. Romantic, not romantic. That's— they're learning how to communicate by how Seth and I are communicating to each other. And, you know, one of us said in one of our conversations this week, one of us said, that our children and our spouse deserve us to talk to them just like we would talk to an employee. And that resonated with me because we're so courteous to our professional peers and to our friends. And then we come into the house and where does that person go? It's like, we can't just let our hair down. It's funny.

They talk to each other like employees because I have felt over the years that he does continue to talk like I'm the employee when he's done working.

No, no, no, not like that. You know what I'm saying. It's too nice. I'm not Seth's employee. No, I'm kidding.

Well, you have a kind of a filter when you're speaking with people on a professional level where when you're with your family, you don't have that filter because you just assume that you're not going to hurt their feelings or you know, you can be totally 100% honest and open about whatever, which in a way you can, but you still have to think about what you're saying and how it's going to be taken.

So, I've learned through the years that you can't assume that people understand what you're actually saying, even the ones you live with, that you think that, yeah, well, why don't you understand what I'm saying? And I've said that recently like 3 or 4 times because I think that they understand how I talk or what I'm saying. I literally have learned that I have to say every little detail so that they understand what I'm getting at.

It's true. And wait, he said that— what was the percentage? I don't know if I can—

90/10.

It was like 90% are 90% our perspective on something, and our perspectives are all— the 4 of us would have 4 different perspectives.

Mm-hmm.

So it's, yeah, it's so powerful how we look at things.

And 10% is how you react.

That's the one other lesson that I took from the book as well in regards to, um, the difference between what makes humans separate from animals is that we have the luxury of choosing how we respond. We have that X amount of time of response time to be able to say that in my mind, this is how I'm going to deal with it. I'm not going to go to the neighbor's house and scream at her. For something, I'm going to take a minute and see what I can figure out from this amount of information I have and then go forward. Versus an animal who, like, you know, when you surprise an animal, the animal might turn around and bite you, the animal might be scared and run off. Like, they have more instinctual, immediate responses to things, and they don't have the thought process of a human. And we have the ability to discern you know, we have 5 choices in front of us, what are we going to do? And we can make split decisions like that, but we have the thought process to be able to choose the right thing. It's, you know, whether or not we have the fortitude to do so.

Yeah, we don't always utilize that, but—

right, right, very true.

Well, even kids, you think about it, your kids don't do that either. They have to learn that to not just be reactionary, because they are reactionary at first, and then it's your job to teach them to like analyze the situation and know what the right response is and what a wrong response is and try to find something that is appropriate. It's definitely a learned behavior.

Yes.

I forgot to bring it upstairs, but I bought Lily— no, I bought all of us rocks in a bowl on the island and all the rocks say something. So like courage, strength, peace, love, whatever. It's a bunch of rocks. So I'm trying to teach her coping skills. And not to just react. So I— so we started talking about the warning signs that you're going to react. You know, you're, you're angry, your sister said something that you don't like, you want to smack her. And instead of— she does, that's what she wants to do.

So I'm like, now you have given her rocks. Just, just listen.

I throw them.

No, don't even give her that idea. She better not listen to this, but So I was talking to her about her choices of how she can pause and make a choice. And I said, so I want you to grab a rock. And I want— and I was showing her how I rub a rock and calm myself down and count to 10 and take deep breaths. So now I see her grabbing these rocks and sometimes she'll say, I need a rock. Oh my God. She's gonna have to take a rock everywhere she goes. She might, but at least, at least I'm trying to give her tools because she just reacts and flips out and she needs to learn to pause and calm herself down before she screams at us. So I'm teaching her.

I react.

I use, I use the rocks. I use the rocks too. I have one in my pocket. I mean, not right now.

I was going to say the rocks could end up in the laundry.

Oh, good point. Good point. I'm going to have to watch for that. So I wanted to touch on something that he said that I'm in semi-agreement with. He said no one's allowed in your marital bed. He's very— I guess, I guess for me, like, you know me, I'm too easy, like, I'm too easygoing. I'm too, like, I don't like rigidity, and I'm— and I don't like how rigid his rules are. Like, no one is allowed in the marital bed, which Seth has been trying to tell me for 16 years. So, you know, when I had babies, I wanted my babies, if they were sad, I wanted them in bed with me. So I don't know that I, I mean, like now I'm like, come on, you're 8 years old, go back to bed. You're fine. But like when they were babies, I did not agree with him at all. I don't know.

I never had babies in my bed.

You never had babies?

Only when they were sick or like back when you're, they're newborns and you're nursing and they're eating like every hour. Then in the bed is fine. Yes. I would also say that.

Yes. Nursing, yes.

It's a very, very slippery slope because not everybody has the luxury of a twin bed in the baby's room with the crib, or let's go lay on the couch because the couch is downstairs. You know, the bed is just generally where the mother is and the child is somewhere nearby. And especially with the nursing, you know, men and women just have to kind of put, maybe use their own Common Sense for Boundaries. You know, we used to have a 3-year-old who would run down the hall in the middle of the night because she was scared and sleep in our bed. And I would literally wake up and be like, there's a kid between us. Like, I had no idea. And I had 2 of those types of children who did that repeatedly, historically, for many years.

I was one of those children as a child.

Yes.

And might I say to you, we have 4 kids. So those 2 children running down the hall did not prevent us from figuring a way to make 4 kids in the situation. But it is very, very slippery slope. And it, you know, you could create a bad pattern, but, you know, as they get older, obviously the dependency lessens. So I think sometimes it's the dependency of the children. They don't always have the ability to self-soothe and people need to actively work at it. I mean, marriage is not something you put on autopilot. And without the communication, you know, if the man doesn't speak up or the woman doesn't speak up, we just do what is easiest or what's best for— usually best for the situation at the time. But children shouldn't be sleeping as a rule. They should not be sleeping in the parents' bed every night. That's ridiculous.

Yeah, not daily. Not daily.

And we were always very adamant about it just being, you know, special occasions. Like I said, if they are sick or if they had a really bad dream, but they never stayed in the bed the whole night. Like it was just for a little while till they calmed down and then they went back to their room.

Or mom never stayed in bed the whole night.

My son got used to that and knew, but I remember for a couple of years he would come into our room in the middle of the night while we were sleeping. Like I would wake up and he'd be asleep on the floor on the pillows. He didn't get up in our bed, but he just didn't want to be by himself. So, aww.

Well, I'll make the other one. The other thing I noticed with many of these examples of the children sleeping in the bed is that it was really— these examples that were used were of singular children. So I'm thinking, really, you can't control your 3-year-old? I mean, I don't know that that was the most, you know, the biggest example or the best example, the most shiny example of what to put in the book. But I think controlling a 3-year-old to put them in their own bed, I think that's very easy compared to all the other problems that families have in multi-children households.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's about training because they're very easily trained. You have to figure out how to self-soothe.

The best phone call of the whole book was Jamie calling me and saying, "Come on, you have one kid, you can't control your one kid?" You only know what you know, right?

Is that the guy that was videotaping every moment?

Yes, yes, yes.

And they couldn't get him to go to sleep and they didn't have time together and he spent 100 hours, uh, editing the—

crazy.

I think anyone could see that was an obvious— we can point to the reasons why there was a problem with the kid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm trying to remember how that worked out with them. He was videoing the kid too much and he started—

he wasn't engaging with the kid. Everything was through the lens of a camera, which is a huge red flag. Like, you're gonna have problems if your kid's acting up because you're not actually giving them attention. Yes, you're filming them 24/7, but it's more of a vanity project for the parent than it has anything to do with the kid.

So, and I think he, I think he fixed it in quotes and had him do it less, right? I think he started filming less, more one-on-one time with no camera, fewer things.

And there, I think the kid had expressed certain things about not wanting to be on video all the time, so Yeah, you gotta like ask your kids, like, do you like this? Is it okay?

I mean, well, that's a, that's a very perfect example of exploiting your child.

Like, who would do that?

Are you trying to land a movie role? Are you trying to get cast in something? To me, that's— he had— and that is a primary example of he had his own issues in his own mind of his fears of like his kid would reject him one day, or the moment would end. He had to document and categorize every single moment in all these meetups too. And he was probably getting his needs met, didn't he?

Have a ton of followers. He probably felt—

yeah, I think it was a social media thing.

Yeah, it was like attention-seeking and validated, and he wasn't getting his needs met at home, so he was getting his needs met in a different way.

It was just very destructive, that whole scenario. And anyone could have seen the direct route of where the problem started and how to fix it.

But well, the one fix that they did for that couple was to show them that they put them on a date together and their rule was not to talk about the kid.

Yeah, so that's a tough one.

That was hard when you go on a date and I'm like, okay, we're gonna go on a date and we're not allowed to— you're not allowed to talk about work and I'm not allowed to talk about the kids. And then the two of us are like, wait, what?

Joel's response will be, okay, so what do you want to do later?

Right, exactly. Which brings me to my next question. We were talking about this a little bit, Tayton, earlier, just for a couple minutes. He talked about not letting your teenagers date. Do you remember that part?

Yes, yes.

And I was, and I was joking with Lily yesterday, and I was like, you are never gonna be allowed to date. I'm never gonna let you date. Um, so what are your feelings about teenagers dating? What do you think about what he said?

I think you need to know your child. This is one of those things where different kids might have different rules. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the way it is. If you know your child is level-headed and not likely to, you know, fall to pressure on, you know, having sex or whatever, which you can't really predict because there are plenty of circumstances where a girl who otherwise you thought would make the right decisions didn't. I mean, kind of all goes out the door when your heart is involved when you're that age. But it's a matter of knowing your kid and not letting them just have freedom to spend any amount of time with this person alone. There are rules that you can put into place and allow some kind of dating, or you might have a kid that you just really don't think that they would be able to do it. But I think when you make a rule where they can't do something, it's— they're just going to find a way around it. Oh, it's going to be better to be in charge of the situation than just an all-out ban and know that they're just going to try to circumvent it. All the time.

And on the structures and foundations of your household, because in his household he's an observant Orthodox Jewish, uh, father. And obviously he says he treats his daughters as the apples of his eyes. They're all daddy's girls. They know what their expectations are. They know what they're probably looking forward to in their adult life. Kids be kids as long as they can, because we do rob them of their childhood when we put adult pressures on them. And, you know, those expectations are really like they under— they have an understanding. I don't think his daughters yearn for things outside maybe of their own culture, unless there is like, I mean, I am sure that there are people, and there have been people who have left their extremist type of culture for a different type of life. But you have to be able to instill those things in your kids and have those discussions early on. And the parents, even more importantly, the parents have to be on the same page with expectations, and one cannot undermine the other. Um, like the right hand always has to know what the left hand is doing.

Yeah. Yeah.

And in that one example with those two parents, because they were divorced, father had absolutely no idea and no control.

Yeah.

So, um, the daughter didn't even realize she was being disrespected and the mother failed to even have any power to do anything about it or change it or prevent it. Um, except to let the father back into their lives.

Yeah.

Well, and in that example, the father wasn't giving her any attention, so she was finding her validation and her attention from a boyfriend. Mm-hmm.

So, and it didn't work out in her favor. No, not in this situation. But I will say, out of the 4 of us, I have the oldest daughter who has been in a relationship for 3 years. Um, at first, the teenage years, like the young, like girls, I always say girls like to complicate things and boys can't say one thing right. So, um, So true. Um, I was just knowing what Max has gone through at 14.

So tell us more. I'm sorry.

No, it's okay. Like, um, so in the beginning they go on group dates because girls are too nervous to be alone with boys. So it is a lot of group dating. Not anymore with the pandemic, but, um, in general they tend to go on group dates, um, and hang out and kind of steer towards Okay, I can hold his hand in this group, or, you know, I can kind of give him a hug or snuggle into him in this group. It just kind of keeps getting, you know, like a little bit closer and closer, like baby steps. And then they finally find the courage to be alone together. Parents in this situation can totally control the situation by having them at their own house. You get to sit in this living room, use as your TV. What would you like for a snack? You know, Yeah, so I mean, you're not going in your rooms, you're not closing doors. Exactly. Um, until you feel comfortable with this boy dating your daughter and taking her out in a car and driving and going wherever the road leads, you have to be— know this boy that they date.

Yeah.

Um, in her first relationship, correct?

No, it's her second, but, um, now they've been together 3 years, so she claims he's the dad.

So when did she start dating in high school?

What age was she?

Um, was she 16? I think she was 16, 16, 17, 18.

Yeah. See, my daughter's 16 and not interested in any boys that I can tell right now.

She doesn't really talk about it.

But the pandemic too is kind of a damper on social life at the moment.

Yes, yes.

I don't know, 16 seems so scary to me to— I mean, I was dating at 16, but I feel like looking back it was too young.

Well, and in today's society it's even more advanced because kids obviously know more at a younger age, they do more at a younger age, parents are giving them those freedoms to do more at a younger age. We all have basements that have nice comfortable couches And they just have more freedoms to go and have the autonomy to be outside the home more often. Personally, I, I feel that the whole dating situation, a 16-year-old, if you take a group, some are going to be more mature than others, able to manage those feelings and emotions and being able to be an upstander to the pressure, to know what's a good idea, bad idea. So you have to sort of gauge in your own child what— if that's an appropriate choice.

Exactly. Agreed. The maturity level of them. Like, there are kids who are 16 who act like middle schoolers, and there are kids who are 16 who act like they're 23. Obviously, the one who acts more like a 23-year-old and is probably leaning toward getting sexually active, that's, that's the one you might not want having dating or going out without being supervised.

You can date when you're 30, and I'm— and I always laugh.

I'm like, that's a little old.

We're not going to say 30.

It's hard when it's your babies. Oh my gosh, so different when it's us and we're like, we can go here and there. And you know, when we were growing up, we didn't have all this texting, and you knew— find your phone, you knew exactly where your child was without even texting them because you know their location. Yeah, now like That's today. Now, like, when we were growing up, they didn't have that, and thank God.

The one, the one very poignant thing that, um, Rabbi Shmuley did say about this particular example is that he sometimes he stepped in for the daughter when the father wasn't present, but he needed the father to step in with the boyfriend and to have that conversation with the boyfriend man to man, because men know things that other men understand. And that's not to be sexist at all. This is not a conversation that— I mean, if it has to happen between the mother of the girl and the boyfriend, then it has to happen that way. But in all reality, a man-to-man conversation about someone's daughter is all that needs to be done to get the boy to understand what his parameters are, what his expectations are, and what the limitations are. And I think that conversation probably needed to happen well before all this activity happened for his daughter because it's a righteous shame that she was— fell into a terrible situation. This boy wasn't even a respectful kind of kid. And so, you know, she wasn't even with the right boy to begin with. But all that could have been prevented if the father had been more present and had set limits.

The boy also has to be willing to listen.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, true. But no one's gonna be able to gauge that better than a male role model, because I don't care what anybody says, a teenage boy only has one thing in mind. And if the teenage girl in question who's involved with that teenage boy doesn't realize that, she is in for a very rude surprise.

Mothers, teach your sons, no means no. You are a gentleman at all times.

Mm-hmm.

You open doors, you close doors, you make sure that they're not gonna get hit by a car when you're walking down the street.

Yeah.

Et cetera, et cetera. No means no.

Eldit, Max, when they got out of my car at school, he just took off. There was no like, open the door for your sister, wait for her, walk with her to the building, open the door for her. She has a backpack that weighs more than her. You don't even think to help her? Why do I have to teach you this? Yes, I agree.

We have this problem at home with my daughter, just with when I'm holding the door open for her, it's so she can grab it and then go in. It's not for me to stand there and let her in like, oh, let me hold doors for you everywhere I go. She does not hold doors. That drives me crazy.

It's not— it's every time you do have to teach the door for somebody. Well, and you said, Kristin, that even teaching them please and thank you goes so far.

Yes.

You know, when they're going to house, I always say, remember to say please and thank you. I can't believe how many kids don't say please and thank you. It's just so—

thank you for having me over. Thank you for— like, we go out to dinner, my kids are saying thank you to Joe for taking us out to dinner. Um, I've always said thank you for dinner. They say thank you for dinner every time, even if we just order out and bring it home. They say thank you for dinner. Um, it's like I grew up with my parents using manners all the time, and it just stemmed. But please and thank you go goes a long way. And it goes into the point of the— about the chore charts and the things you want your kids to do. Could you please take the garbage out? Instead of, you're going to take the garbage out, it's overflowing. You know, it goes a long way. And I text my kids, your washer, the wash in the washer you put in there stopped. Don't forget to switch your laundry. Before you leave. Or, I mean, I'm saying it nicely and they say, okay. Or, you know, I'll text Joey, go please take the garbage out. And when you're out there, grab the mail in the mailbox. I'm always saying please in my text messages so it doesn't come off as I'm nagging.

Right.

It does.

Nagging thing, which works if they know what the expectations are.

If, like with my kids, they might not have the expectation of doing those things because I'm bad and I don't have them do them regularly. And then they'll take it as the opportunity to say no, I don't want to do that.

I give them time to accomplish the goal. Like, you have to be kind of lenient. They're not gonna just come up because you texted and said, you know, oh, I gotta do it right away, you know. Um, you gotta give them, you know, a leeway.

Well, and Jamie was going to talk about nagging because I think we get caught up in nagging, and he said inspire your kids. Don't nag your kids, inspire your kids. So Jamie, what were you going to say about nagging?

I was just going to touch on the point that— and I don't remember what example that came up in, in the book— but we don't always want to have our experiences with our kids limited to just nagging them or telling them what to do or giving them responsibilities. We have to vary our experiences with them so they're not afraid to come to us with a problem or situation because they think they're worried about how you're going to react or they're fearful of how you might react. So we can't be the parent that's always riding their backsides for all the things that need to be done. But it's also, you know, in support of, or, you know, you're the best kid in the world, but, you know, best kids, you're the best, strongest kid who needs to go take out the trash.

I do say that. You're so strong. Can you bring this in for me?

Yes. And like, your legs are so much faster than mine. Can you bring mommy a water?

I love that.

So you really kind of have to build them up before you start nagging them about all the little tiny chores they have to do.

Well, and he was like, if you say you did such a great job putting your sock in the hamper, then they're going to want to put more socks in the hamper. Right.

Yes.

But that only works for younger children. Like when you're dealing with middle schoolers, especially boys, I don't know, maybe girls too. They just, it's just an eye roll and you have to be very selective of how you phrase things because it's either you're being mean and nagging or, oh my God, you're being so cringy. Why are you talking to me like this? It's like to compliment me, like, oh, I put away a sock, you know, a little bit different.

Well, and I will say something, I will say something like, I loved that you brought your hamper down for me. It makes my life so much easier. Yeah, I would appreciate if you would keep doing that when you want your laundry done because Max will be like, I have no pajama pants. And I'm like, well, first of all, you need to learn how to use the washing machine. That's coming. And you're stronger than me. Bring the hamper down.

See, and that's where that's more like an age-appropriate compliment where you're not just being like making a big deal out of something that's really small. Where like, oh, you're so strong, you picked up a sock. Like, kind of—

that would work with Lily, trust me.

It makes things so much easier when you do X. Like, that's great, thank you.

I tend to be sarcastic with an adult when they do something. Yeah, I tend to be sarcastic and answer questions with the questions, where are my pants? Where do you think you find your pants? In the laundry room or in your own room?

It's so funny.

Where do you think you find your pants?

Well, and he also said something I think that I forget sometimes, something so basic that we want to enjoy them and have fun with them and want them to want to be around us. And if we're cranky and nagging and annoying— Lily's like, you're so annoying. And I'm like, why do you even think you can say that to me? But we want to be fun and we want them to enjoy us so that when they grow up and they're not even here, they want to come home and see us. And I thought that was a really good point that he made.

I'm always singing little songs and Julia's like, how long you gonna sing for?

I, my whole family just makes fun of me because apparently I hum all the time now. So now they just make fun of me. Mom, you're always— Yeah, I can't help it.

That's so nice though, that that means they have a happy mother who is sick. Singing and humming and I'll be dancing in the kitchen. Jamie's like, you're all nuts.

No, you should. I am the queen of silly songs. I started making a list recently of all the silly songs that we sing and that I've purely made up that are nonsensical with words that aren't even English. I love it. I have them all. I will and can sing them all to you at some point. I would love to hear it. You know how cats use their claws to get out their energy, like on the cat tower, like the scratch on scratching posts? That is sort of how I, you know, it's just a release. It's just a release for me. I'm a creative person. I don't have as many creative things as I'd like, but it's a release for me as opposed to some of the other destructive behaviors. Singing is totally appropriate.

So, well, I thought you meant you were scratching at the cat post with the cats.

Well, I would ruin my gorgeous nails if I did that.

Oh, go ahead, Tate.

I think the humming is just a way to use up that activity in my brain. So if I'm not humming, I'm thinking about things or maybe talking a lot. And so humming just like is a brain activity for me that takes place of that, and it helps to like relax me a bit, I guess. But there's, there's a reason, I'm sure.

There is.

I'm going to have to research it.

I always have something in my head.

Well, you use music, Kristin, and Tayton, you talk about how you get overstimulated. So I wonder if that helps you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm sure that's something to do with it.

I was a cheerleader and I still have cheers that go off in my head. It's hysterical. I will just start randomly doing a cheer in the kitchen and the kids literally put their hands in their head, like, is she cheering? Yes, I am cheering. Why don't you join? Oh my gosh. Well, is there anything else that you feel is super important for us to discuss from the book?

My little sticky notes. Hey, music. Let's talk about music while we're on the subject. I opened right to it. It's the language of the soul, and song is the melody of the heart. We should not only be listening to music on the radio but singing at constant celebrations with family and friends. So yes, that's a nice one.

Yeah, and he did mention, um, making things joyous for your children, you know, throughout their lives. Um, not every single day, but like making occasions joyous, making celebrations joyous. Um, you know, finding ways to implement joy into their days. And so whether it's a sing-along or concerts or a way to connect, you know, I think those are all really valid, you know, family activities.

I think it's especially challenging right now too because we can't go out and do those things that we might make a joyful occasion like we would before.

Right.

And maybe even it's harder to find reason to be joyous when we're like in each other's presence constantly, maybe just a little more irritable than usual.

So, well, and, and Jamie and I were talking about that. Sometimes we feel like we're always with them, but we're not really spending quality time with them. So I'm trying to be like, okay, let's actually do something together. We're just all doing something different in the house. We're not spending time together. But I found the I found the thing, Kristen, 10% what happens to us, 90% how we react. Yeah, yeah, that was the, that was the quote that I liked.

I'm sorry, I have that one labeled too.

Someone's saying something, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Uh, no, that's fine. I do remember that quote. I've heard that a lot actually. Um, 10%, yeah, I'm not gonna repeat it now, but I've heard it about it. It's great reaction and it gives us control.

It just gives us control that we're in control of how we react to things.

One of the things you were talking about with the spending time with them, creating joy, and then just spending time with them, the difference between the two. I don't remember what the couple's name was, but one of them, the, the woman watched TV like for hours and hours and hours. She'd go in her room. I'm like, hi, I do that at night too. That's like, once dinner's done and I've cleaned up, I usually just go in my room and that's, that's it. I'm in there for the night and everyone goes and does their own thing. Now my kids are older and they are naturally going to want to do that. They want to go do their own thing. They don't want to hang out with mom and dad. But I think that made me realize that maybe I need to force that a little bit more, maybe have a few more game nights or movie nights that we haven't really done that much since we've all been home. My husband goes off to work now. My kid, my daughter is at school 5 days a week, so we're not where we were back in spring where we literally were all home all the time. So I think we need to ease back into that. Like, we're not finding those special moments and spending family time together doing fun things where we're not nagging each other or, you know, annoying people. So that was one of the things that, um, that I looked at and thought I could do better, which is not always retreating because it's, it's kind of become the survival tactic where you just retreat to be by yourself for a little while, um, and then that time just kind of expands and expands and expands, um, and it's not always a good thing. So That was the one of the chapters that I reflected on a little more than the others.

It's okay to be sad, but you can't let the kids see you that sad all the time. It brings them down and makes them sad as well. Fun is the key. He was referring to the lady with the sweater after her husband died in that accident.

Yeah, the person.

It's hard, I'm sure, to— and I don't want to get too much into grief because that's a sad topic, but I'm sure it's, you know, devastating. And that was something I think that she was holding dear to her heart, yet you don't realize the significance of it and what it keeps bringing up. And to try and get yourself to turn that key and have fun is, you know, a big step.

Well, it's breaking that cycle of where she was traumatizing herself over and over again every single night. You You do certain things to survive at one point, and I think overall it, like, it relates to that story where she went through this, this trauma. But I think all of us as parents can remember, you know, in the early days we do certain things out of survival mode, whether, you know, it's a screaming baby that doesn't sleep. You learn to cope with it in certain ways, and it's a matter of adjusting as things change. Sometimes people don't make those adjustments, and that coping mechanism isn't really appropriate anymore. And so you need to be cognizant of when it's time to move on from that mechanism and re-engage again.

I did like how he— I think from a third-party perspective, he was able to see how, um, the mother was coping. And with all the pictures and with that sweater, um, that, that was like a really huge symbol of, of their— his last moment on earth. And I had even thought like I had this premonition of what he— what she should do with the sweater and planting it with a tree. I would have used it around the ball root of the tree and put it in the ground to have it create new life or to, you know, water it and let it grow or plant flowers in addition to the tree, something to make it more memorable, but to not have it be a focus of something— a box in your closet type of thing. Um, so it's very dark. And I think that she didn't realize it because she was living it. So, you know, those kinds of situations, I mean, we all know grief, but none of us— spousal grief is a huge one, especially when you have young children. Yeah. And she was just unable to see past all of that.

Which it's easy to make judgments on that situation when it hasn't happened to you. Can't imagine what that must be like. I can see how she would get to that point, um, but yeah, holding on to something that was so like almost gruesome and morbid because I don't know if she felt like this guilt or why she felt the need to hold on to something like that rather than good memories. Um, I think it's so— it was an interesting one. Yeah, it was a very interesting one, I thought.

Well, she may have felt like it was his sweater and it was giving her comfort in quotes when it was really causing more stress to her than she realized. Yeah, she understood. And he did a— he did such a good job with her. And if I remember this correctly, because it was chapter 1 a long time ago, he talked— he had the kids talk to her about how they want her to move on, they want her to have a relationship, they want her to be happy. And I was— yeah, I was impressed. He did such a good job with her. Really did.

Yeah. The other overall thing that I— that struck me about the book was really how he talked to people and how he dealt with people. And he made them see things that they wouldn't normally have seen. But because he was willing to go to the depths of, you know, this is not just a problem of there's too much TV. It's not just a problem of you don't put your kid to bed in his bed at the right time in the night. You know, with a, you know, like a, um, what do you call it, like a step-by-step kind of program. It wasn't that they were necessarily parenting badly. It was more about what's living deep inside of you, the parents, that's preventing you from letting go of something or from doing something a different way to see what kind of different response you get. It was, he really dove deep into their psyches or into their past or was willing to go beyond what the obvious, you answer might have been to the troubles these families were having. And I, especially when he like lived with them for a week, I thought that was a very hands-on approach, which obviously regular therapists just don't do.

And wouldn't it be nice to be in a situation where you had someone talking in your ear telling you, that's not right, let's try that again, why don't you say this instead? Yes, kind of nice.

I have that voice in my head. It's called the therapist brain, and I don't always listen to it, let me tell you.

Probably not easy to turn off either.

Well, and Seth uses the line on me. It's a joke between us. My fabulous supervisor was Maria, and I used to tell Seth about my conversations with her. So every so often, he's such a pain when he does this, he'll say, well, what would Maria say? Or, um, she would not, she would not approve of this. And I'm like, seriously, you're bringing Maria into this? Leave her out of it.

One day you'll just have to call her and be like, we'll see what Maria has to say.

Yeah, pick up the phone. You know, when I had— you probably remember I posted the roses that Seth sent me because it was a Friday and Thursday I had such a bad day with Lily. And so Friday, you know, these flowers were there just to like, you know, make me feel better and give me some more energy. And I literally had had, I was like, maybe I'm gonna call Maria for a therapy session. I literally had the conversation with her in my head without calling her and then told her that. I was like, I already did the therapy session. I already know what you're gonna tell me.

Oh my gosh.

Well, I think that hopefully we helped people with sharing some awesome points from the book. I think it was a fabulous book. I think that it had excellent reminders for me. I think we touched on most of the stuff, and I just appreciate all of you doing this with me today. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for inviting me.

Thank you for inviting us on to share our opinions and beliefs with you.

I appreciate it. So this is Rebecca Green reminding everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so