Breaking the Silence: The One Conversation Every Family Must Have

Welcome to becoming Wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome. For more information or products by Dr. Rome, please visit personalityinsights.com use coupon code podcast10 to receive 10% off eligible products and personality assessments. Thank you for joining us today. And now, Dr. Robert A. Rome.

Have you ever considered what is the absolute number one most important conversation you ever need to have in your family? And and yet no one ever has it. Why is it that you never have the most important conversation that you should have in your family? Well, the answer is because you don't know what it is. And today I'm going to reveal it to you clearly and succinctly so you can use it for the rest of your life.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories and involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rome and today's podcast is going to be monumental. Today's podcast is all about the most important conversation you ever need to have in your family and yet you've never had it. And it's not because you're a bad person. It's because you're not aware of how to go about this conversation. I hope you'll gather everyone in your family around, especially parents and children, children of any age. This will straighten out, it will help and it will be a proactive learning that means you can learn it before you run into a problem. It will be a proactive learning so you can recognize what's going to happen sooner or later in your family and what to do about it. I wish someone had explained this to me before I ever had children. I wish someone had explained this to me when I was growing up. You see, whoever's listening to this podcast today, you're somewhere along life's journey. You're either in a family growing up or you're an adult who has a family and you grew up in one yourself at one time. Or maybe you have children of different ages. Listen carefully, Follow along. It took me probably 50 years to learn what I'm going to share with you today. Feel free to take notes, feel free to follow along. This is a life altering, life changing for the better informational podcast about how to avoid, straighten out and be proactive about a situation that sooner or later is going to come into your family. So let's get started and let me jump right in. When a child is born, that means either you who are listening as an adult or A child who's listening from about birth to about age 12, 13 or 14, we call this their childhood years. There's not a clear demarcation of when it ends, but around 12, 13, 14, 15 years of age, something happens to a child. All of a sudden, they don't want to be a child anymore. They don't want to be treated like a little baby. They don't want to be treated like a little child. They want to begin to have some independence of their own, which is perfectly normal. I mean, think about this. If you're an adult, do you want to go home and live with your parents? I know you might say, well, they're not living like my parents are not living. But hypothetically, as an adult, you don't want to go home and live with your parents. You want to have your own house, your own family. You don't want to go back and have mom and daddy telling you what to do every day. However, from birth to about 12, 13, 14, 15, you're a child, and that's okay. You're not responsible for the house note, the car note, the insurance, filling out all the tax forms, making sure the utilities are paid, being sure the credit cards are paid off, and being sure the checkbooks balance. That's a lot of work. That's what happens in the adult world. But in the child world, you go to school, you play sports, you're not really responsible for making sure that the rent or the house notes paid each month. You're not really responsible for the car insurance, but or the budget. You just basically eat and hang out with your family and your friends and do what you want to do. That's because you're a child. Nothing wrong with being a child unless you stay a child. You see, there comes a time, and this is where I'm going with this, that around 12, 13, 14, 15, something happens inside of you. Here's what it sounds like. I do not want my mother or father telling me what to do anymore. I. I want to do what I want to do. I don't want them nagging my life. Did you get your homework? You need to go to bed. You brush your teeth, you wash your clothes? Did you clean up your room? I don't want to have to do that anymore. Well, guess what? That's because they're in a different world, your parents, in a world called the adult world. Now follow along after around 12, 13, 14, 15, you enter, and I'm speaking primarily to everyone who's been at that age or is at that age now you start to enter what's called the blackout period. The blackout period can be known as different things. Sometimes it's in between period. It's a transition time. You're no longer a little child anymore. You're starting to become an adult, but you're not there yet. This last for about four to six years, from about 13 or 14 to about 20 or 21. During that period of time, you're a young adult, but you're not a fully functional adult. You're a young adult. You want to stand on your own two feet. You want to have your own friends. You want to do things the way you want to do them. You're becoming of age. That's perfectly normal. However, during this blackout period, during this period of time, that's the in between time or the transition period, you're lost. You don't want to be treated like a child, but you are still a child. Yet you cannot be treated like an adult. But you are a young adult. I mean, think about it. You're between 14, 15 and 20 years old. Do you want to be responsible for the house note? Do you want to pay all the taxes? Do you want to handle the insurance? Do you want to make sure the budget's hand? Do you want to pay the credit cards off? Do you want to make sure that everything in life is handled the way it ought to be handled so you don't end up in a mess or with penalties or delinquent charges on something you say, I don't even know what that is. That's because you're growing up. Growing up is wonderful, but nobody ever has this conversation because you have to experience it and think about it to understand it. So let's just say from about 20, 21, 22, you graduate from college, or you get a job, or you get a vocation, or you go into the military, whatever it is, you start to stand on your own two feet. You have become a full fledged adult. You make things happen. You go to work, you pay your bills, you pay your own way. And you understand that. And if you're an adult listening to this today, you think, man, oh man, do I understand that. And sometime adults, I will hear them say, wow, I miss being a child. I didn't know how easy I had it. You see, when you're a child, somebody basically takes care of your whole life. They pay your way, they buy your food, your food. They put food on the table, they buy your clothes, they put a roof over your head. Let me give you a couple of examples of how the problem begins to reveal itself. So you're 18, you graduate from high school, you go off to college, and you have a lot of independence. You want to do what you want to do. You go to bed when you want to. You study, you have class. You're basically pretty free. And then you go home for Christmas. Guess what? Your parents still have a schedule. Your parents, it's their home. They decide what time we get up, what time we go to bed, what time we cut off the lights. And you stay there. And all of a sudden, tension begins to build. Why does it build it? It. Well, you want the freedom as a young adult to come in when you want to and go to bed when you want to eat. What, you want to go in the refrigerator, raid the refrigerator in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden you find out, oh, my gosh, I just ate what mom bought that she was going to cook tomorrow for lunch. So now the worlds begin to collide. And the reason they collide is the adult world has plans, purposes, budgets, activities that are thought out, because that's the adult world. You make plans, you follow them out. You have income. You know what your paycheck is. You know how much money you have. You know how to buy an airline ticket. You know how to do things. And if you don't, there are penalties or consequences that kick in. Yet in the world of children, you don't even know about those things. Somebody takes care of you. So let's go back to the blackout period. Why do I call it the blackout period? I learned from Dr. James Dobson, psychologist. He uses this illustration, and maybe you've seen Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks. When the spacecraft is coming back into the atmosphere, there's a period of time you can Google this and look out, say, what is the blackout period? How does that work with space travel? There's a period of time, and it may be four minutes, it may be 14 minutes, where the spacecraft is basically lost. The astronauts cannot communicate with Cape Canaveral or with Houston. They can't communicate with anybody. They're going too fast. And even though I'm not a rocket scientist, there's a danger in if they don't hit the atmosphere just right, they can actually miss coming back into the Earth's gravitational pull and be lost in space. So it's a very dangerous time. Pilots are experts at knowing I'm coming from outer space, coming back into the atmosphere where there's gravitational pull. And I can only. Here's the punchline. I can only go by my Instruments. I don't have time to talk to anybody. I don't have time to listen to anybody. I can only look at my instruments or my life may be lost. This is very dangerous. Dobson calls it the blackout period. If you see Apollo 13, you'll see they lost the astronauts. One of the boys who's in military school didn't know if his dad was alive or had perished. And we know, unfortunately, in two other occasions, the spacecraft have actually blown up and everybody, all of our astronauts were killed. This is very, very serious, but may I say this with, with a heart of a father. I think it's almost equally dangerous in your family to not be aware of the blackout period. You see, children have grown up, and now they cannot hear what their parents are saying. Yang, yang, yang, yang, and yang, yang, yang, yang is all it sounds like. And parents are wondering, what happened? Why. Why did you abandon me? You were such a great kid a few hours ago, and now it's like, why are you being this way? Why are you acting like this? Well, there's something inside the child that says, I don't want to be treated like a child anymore. I want to be treated like an adult. Yet it's that in between time, as I call it, it's that transition time. Your parents cannot turn everything over to you. And you don't want them to look at your mom and dad and say, yeah, I'll be responsible for the house note, the car note, the insurance, the taxes, all the utilities. You don't want that on you at that young age because you don't know how to do it. You have to grow into it. So the parents are doing everything they can. But listen carefully. The parents also know, I want to help you, but I don't want to do everything for you. I mean, when you were little, I brushed your teeth, I combed your hair. Now you brush your own teeth, you comb your own hair, you stand on your own two feet. Yet during this period of time, it's when I call. Listen carefully. If you're between about ages 12, 13, 14 in 20, 21 and 22, it's the transition period. It's the blackout period. You can't hear hardly anything anybody is saying to you, but you need to. Well, how do the astronauts. What do they do to save their lives? Here's the answer. They use their instruments. They use their instruments. They've been taught how to use to keep themselves alive. Well, what are your instruments during this blackout period? Who are my friends? What have my parents taught me? How have I Learned that life works correctly. How do I know who to hang around with? How do I know who I should not hang around with? What should I watch? My father used to say to me, there's only three things you need to pay attention to. What you're looking at, who you're listening to, and who your friends are. Think about it. Your friends influence you and they say things to you and you hear them and you see things with your eyes. I can tell you, be careful what you watch, be careful what you listen to, and be careful who you hang around with. Those are your instruments. If you're the smartest person in your group, you need to get a new group. I'm surrounded by good, honest, healthy, upbeat, positive, motivational people. Why? Because that's the way I want to be. I don't hang around criminals. I don't hang around drug dealers. I don't hang around prostitutes. Why? I don't want those things to happen to me. I want to hang out with people who are good, healthy, wholesome people. In the world of people like Zig Ziglar and Charlie Jones, Brian Tracy, Les Brown, these guys who talk about have a better life, do what you can to have a successful life. That's who I want to listen to. I think during this blackout period, it is unfortunate, but I've seen it. I've seen it my own children, I've seen it, my own grandchildren, some of them are able to have a better life than others simply because they have good instruments that they follow. If they follow being a good person, listening to things that are wholesome, listening to things that are healthy, being in a place where you have someone who encourages you, being around good, uplifting, positive kinds of people. Going to church and hearing that God loves you and he's got a plan for your life, those are seeds that you hear that get you through this blackout period. Then on the other side, you'll be able to stand on your own two feet, hopefully without too much damage done. But let me show you how much damage can be done. My oldest daughter graduated from Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia. I will never forget. I was at a football game one night and I saw a daughter and her mom having a knockdown, drag out, fight. I mean, it was nasty. And yes, I probably shouldn't have been eavesdropping and over. But I was. I just couldn't believe it. And the mother kept saying things like this. What has happened to you? We used to do everything together. Now you don't even want me at this ball game with you and the daughter would say, well, mom, I still love you, but I want to hang out with my friends and I want to be with them. And the mother was like, well, why can't I be with you? Here's what went through my mind even years ago. Wow. They just entered the blackout period and they don't understand what's going on. The mother should back off and let her daughter begin to make some of her own decisions. The daughter should say to her mother, I still love you. I still respect you. You're my mom. We've done a lot of things together, but now I'm going into a period of time where I don't want to be a child. I don't want to hang out with my mom and dad at a football game anymore. I want to hang out with my friends. It's perfectly normal. Hopefully, you'll have good friends that you hang out with that are wholesome and healthy. And listen, here's how bad it was. One day, one of those girls went home in the afternoon, and the mom had sold the house, had all of the furniture moved, and had moved away and not told her daughter where she was. The mom was so hurt that she sold the house and moved to get away from her daughter. Now, do I think that was a good decision? I think it was a horrible decision. Now what's the daughter going to do? Well, the mother's attitude was she didn't want to be close to anymore. Then just let her stand on her own two feet and see what it's like. You see what happened? She skipped the transition period. She skipped the blackout period. She skipped that in between time. The mother didn't know what to do. The daughter didn't know what to do. So you know what you had on your hands? A disaster. So again, I've given you the basics in this talk. You start out with the child period of time for about 12, 14 years, and you'll eventually get to the adult period of time. Here's what I want to encourage everyone who's listening to this to do. Talk to each other. Share your feelings. Share your thoughts. Teenagers, it's okay to say, mom, dad, I love you, but I don't want you hanging out with me all the time anymore. I want to learn how to do this for myself. However, I would always encourage you to get good wisdom, get good advice. Your parents may not be better than you, but they may not be smarter than you. But they're older than you and they've got experience. Learn to listen to them. Parents, learn to Let your children grow up. Let go of them. They're going to make some mistakes. That's how you grow up. You grow up by making mistakes. But hopefully you've had years to give them good instruments by good training. I used to teach my two older grandsons, David, Michael and Sam. Say, yes, sir and yes, ma'. Am. I told them that for 14, 15 years to this day, when I am with them, they'll say, yes, sir, yes, ma' am to people. It gives you a little bit of an edge on respect. Adults who feel respected treat you better. You might think, well, that's not fair. May I tell you something's? Nothing's fair. You want to have a good life? Learn how to live life in spite of it's not fair. Learn to say, yes, sir, yes, ma' am to people, look them in the eye, shake their hand, say, thank you. I appreciate that. Those are little things that you can learn. Those become your instruments. Those become the things that you rely on. I hope this has been helpful. I hope that you'll recognize your in between time is going to happen. Think back. Every adult, listen to this. Think back when it happened to you, and now you're grown, your children are going to go through it. Learn to let them go. Let them make their own mistakes. Be available, influence them, don't control them, and you're all going to end up better off. I am very, very grateful that I understand this, but I understand it because I have failed my way through it. I have stumbled forward with my own children and grandchildren by learning how this works. So what I'm sharing, you'll never read in the book. You won't see a TV program. Only come from someone who's had the experience, who can share it with you, how you can have a better family and a better life. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope this podcast has been valuable and helpful and look forward to our next time together. God bless you. I love you. Have a great day. Bye bye.