Confession Tuesday Child Asking About Absent Dad 10 29 13

Local life coach Rebecca Silence is in studio. Confession Tuesday Live. And we're sitting here and we're going over like, like the little minute details for tonight at, @mvcc. I posted on Facebook last night, I said, and this just kind of came off the top of my head. I said if in life if you don't take chances, you'll never learn, never grow and never experience all that life has to offer. And that, and I kind of equate that to us doing this because this is a, you know, as where, you know, you've done seminars before and I've done live events before. Doing this is something brand new for both of us and it's, it's a new challenge and I'm really excited about it.

Well, and people can either stay comfortable and keep the same results in their lives and that's not good or bad or right or wrong. But if we are going to grow, that requires getting uncomfortable.

Absolutely.

And that's where the magic happens.

And if you're going to get uncomfortable, you might as well get a comfortable with, with some people you don't know, you know. But, but seriously, tonight, Confession Tuesday Live. It's this in a whole other forum. It's this in a whole other way, a brand new way. It's a lot more interactive and it has with everything one person submits per segment on this. But a lot of people get a lot out of it.

Right.

We're gonna be handling a ton of different topics. We're gonna be handling in a way that we're not able to hear on the radio and whether you interact or not with and you can interact anonymously or you know, hi, I'd like to ask a question. Either way, you're gonna get something out of this.

Sure, sure.

So tonight, 7 o', clock, it's $5 and it's at the theater at MVCC confession Tuesday live. And thank you so much. Goodnight. I don't know.

Yeah. And thank you to MVCC for the cultural series sponsoring this.

Absolutely.

This is gonna be great. And Erica Kroc has been wonderful. So thank you, Erica.

Yes, thank you Erica. Thank you, Bill. And now it is time with our segments here. All right, so the email, the email is bigpapnykiss.com b I g p o p p a nykiss.com and Rebecca, local life coach, inspired results coach.com all right, this email goes like this. Dear Big Papa and Rebecca, I'm in my early 20s. I made some mistakes when I was younger and I now have a three year old and and the father is no longer in the picture. I'm a single mother. My three year old's been asking about his dad a lot lately. Like, saying he loves him and asks him if I'm mad at him talking about the dad. How do I handle it? What do I say?

Thank you for your email. So you made mistakes. Mm. Welcome to the club, right? Every one of us. Every one of us. You can pinch yourself and ouch, it's gonna hurt because guess what? You're human, right? You bleed. We are not perfect. There's no way to be perfect. So number one, please just give yourself a little break. If you haven't been perfect, you're no different than anybody else. And that's okay, I think. And you don't have to agree with me, but I think every single thing that happens to us, every little mistake, is a blessing and an opportunity. Sure, that's one way to look at it, right? You could also look at it like, oh, this sucks. Why me? How come this is happening?

Boo hoo.

But I believe there really is a gift in all things. There's an opportunity to grow. So with that being said, your little boy has been dealt a set of cards. And that is not something that you, as a mother, have control over. It's just not. We want for our children to be able to give them the sun, the moon, and the stars, and safety and security, but we're not in charge of the deck that has been dealt to these kids.

And so you have to make the best of the cards that have been dealt.

Well, so here's my thought, and I do a lot of work with families and parents and kids. That's actually one of my favorite parts of my coaching practice, is working with the families. Here's what I know works really, really well. And it's called honesty. The second you try to sugarcoat, oh, that's easy, right?

That's all right.

Harder than it may seem.

No, but that's what's great about this, is because people, they overthink things and they take it like five steps too much. And all you have to do is just break it down to the basics.

Here's what I have. I see it over and over and over. The truth eventually comes out.

Absolutely.

So do you want it to be from you, or do you want it to be, you know, by default, third party? Why didn't you tell me 15 years ago what the truth was?

Right.

It's gonna come out. So being honest. And I don't want kids to be exposed to things that really aren't their business that have nothing to do with them. Right. So maybe your son doesn't need to know all of the meat around the drama story and the backstory, but here's the truth. Wherever your dad is, he loves you. Now, some of you might wonder why I would say that. Here's what I know. Every parent loves their kids. Every single parent. Now, they might not have a set of tools that allows them to be the best parent on the planet, but if they're not showing up as a parent, I can almost guarantee you it's because their parent didn't show up for them. And I can almost guarantee you that it's because they think their kid is better off without them. You can almost guarantee it. Now, we don't know what that story might be, what really is going on with the parent, but we know they're not there. And I'm gonna say, tell your kid, wherever they are, they love you. And I'm sorry that they're not around. Validate the pain because it is scary. It is painful, and it is confusing. It's really confusing for a kid to wonder, well, why isn't my parent around? And you can't make up a story or make it okay, right? There's, there's not anything you can do about it. You can be honest and you can be authentic with your child and you can be a model of what you want to represent as a person in the world. And that's all you can do. Anytime a parent trashes the parent, it is extremely detrimental and dangerous. Especially if you are trashing a father to a little boy. And here's why. Because that little boy is basing his self worth on dad. So he's already got a couple cards stacked against him. Dad's not around. And so if you're trashing father to a son, you're basically trashing your kid, okay? Unconsciously, that's what the little boy is gonna be taking on and taking in. So part of why that's also dangerous is because children don't have a way to verbalize all the emotion that's going on.

And they're, and they're absolute sponges at that age. They soak up everything.

So even if there isn't an absentee parent, you want to be really careful about bad mouthing the opposite parent. It's the same thing. If father is trashing a mother to his daughters, whether you're together or not together or the mom disappeared, that daughter is going to be looking at her self worth based on what you're saying about her mother.

So the, so the bottom line is be honest.

Right.

You don't necessarily have to get into the super duper details.

Don't take out, invent your frustration to your kid. They're not your sounding board.

Sure.

In this situation and it's sad that.

You have to say that.

I was just gonna clarify that. You know, I'm not accusing people of doing this, but I see it enough.

Oh, yeah.

To where I think it's important to say it out loud.

Absolutely.

You know, we really want to also. You don't want to go to the other extreme and pretend like, oh, this is a great person if they're not showing up. You know, I had one of my coaches tell me how old my daughter was, probably five. And one of my coaches had said to me, why do you make her father the sun, the moon and the stars? He's not there. He's not showing up. So I actually can relate personally, listener to this email.

That's what mom did for me.

Uh huh.

You know, she put him up on the pedestal for me. And then later on in life the truth came out. Yeah, the truth came out and it will. Yep.

So I'm just saying we can't BS our way into a better place here. We can just talk about the truth and, you know, you don't need to just have a new filler parent just to have a new filler parent. If you find somebody that you love and adore and this is going to be part of your family because that's what you want from an empowered place, that's awesome. But you two can be a great team. And I'm going to suggest honesty here is the best policy and here's the final thought. Your children are going to respond to your energy. So if you're solid, they will be okay. It's when we're a mess as parents that we don't seem confident and that kids get a little bit derailed and shaky. So whatever you're deciding, just make sure it's what you're proud of. And then your kids are going to be critiquing you regardless of your choices. There are things they're going to approve of, there are things they're going to disapprove of. So as long as you can be proud of the choices that you made, that's all that counts.

Local life coach Rebecca silence inspired results. Coach.com Absolutely awesome again this week.

Thanks. I can't wait to see people tonight.

Tonight, seven o' clock at the theater at mvcc. It is Confession Tuesday live. There's nothing more I can say other than you need.

We'll see you there.

Seriously? That's all I got. We're going to break them back. Big pop of the morning. Kiss fm.