The Dr. John Delony Show - I Feel Stuck Between My Husband and My Adult Children

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A wife who feels stuck in the middle between her husband and her adult kids - How bosses can affect your mental health - A father unsure of how to help his struggling teenager Lyrics of the Day: "Take This Job And Shove It" - Johnny Paycheck Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. My husband and my children have never really gotten along. We can't do holidays together or anything else for that matter. I try not to bring up anything to do with my kids. The only arguments we ever have have to do with my kids, to be honest. That's a huge deal, though. It's like saying, the only thing that's hard for me is breathing what up this is john with the dr john deloney show so glad that you are with us we're talking about marriage and parenting and mental health and relationships whatever whatever you got going on

we'll sit there with you sit here with with you, I guess. Not over there, but here. It's the best show on earth ever that has ever existed. And here's what's so great. I'm traveling the country. I'm back on the road and just meeting you and seeing you behind closed doors and being able to make eye contact and listening to your stories about how you're talking to your kids a little different. You are meeting with your spouse a little bit different. You are dating a little bit different. You're leaving your job because your boss is an idiot and you deserve better. Like all these people, you're making changes in your life. And I'm so grateful.

The show is cool, but seeing what you do with the show and how you look in the mirror and say, I'm going to make my life different after this, that is so incredible. So thank you so much for being with us. If you want to be on this show, give me a buzz at 1-844- 693-3291. 1-844- 693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com

slash ask ASK. Fill out the form and it will go to Kelly and she'll decide your fate and then send it on to Jenna. Alright, let's get to Christy in Old Milwaukee. Kelly's favorite beer. All right.

What's up, Christy? Hi, Dr. Jen. How are you doing today? I'm so good. How are you? Good. What's happening? So my question for you, I'm going to read it so that I'm a little more coherent.

I'm a little nervous. Okay. Don't be nervous. But coherence is so good. Yes. How can I stop lying to save my marriage? So I've been married to my husband for almost four years. This is a second marriage for both of us, and we both have grown children who live on our own. We're empty nesters now. But my husband and my children have never really gotten along. And I always kind of feel stuck in the middle. We can't do holidays together or anything else for that matter. I try not to bring up anything to do with my kids. If I have a day off and I plan to spend

it with my daughters, I try to avoid the topic. He tells me he never wants to discourage me from spending time with them. But for some reason, I always feel guilty if I even bring up anything that has to do with them. Um, so if you ask what I'm, I feel like, um, with my, my ex-husband was very controlling and very emotionally abusive. And I know my husband now is not like that at all, but I still feel like it's a, I don't know if I'd say it's a defense mechanism. But why can't your kids and him be in the same room? Why can't y'all do holidays together? I feel like they've done things in the past that kind of sabotage certain things. Who's they? Your kids? My kids. Yes. So like, for instance, they showed up really late to our wedding. That was one thing my husband will bring up.

Um, and it was a very small wedding. It was just a handful of us and we couldn't do anything because they hadn't shown up. Um, how long ago was that? that was almost four years ago and how old are these kids they're in their twenties I mean they're all adults they all live on their own two of them are married but what I'm getting at is so your 20

year old kids they had a little temper tantrum power play on your wedding. That was dumb and immature, like 20-year-olds are. Right. Your grown-up husband

can't sit back and be like, hey, the family that they thought they were going to have has exploded. And I'm new. And I'm going to take some getting used to.

And I'm going to have to be the mature one here for a season. He can't do that. He has to act like a child too. Seems that way. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

And so I end up like trying not to bring up anything that has to do with my kids, which really shouldn't be an issue, but seems like we absolutely the only argument the only arguments we ever have have to do with my kids to be honest that's a huge deal though that's like saying the only thing that's hard for me is breathing right that's that's that's your life those are your kids i know is he is your husband um does he i hear this often when folks get remarried and they marry somebody who wants to pretend that their new spouse's previous life didn't happen didn't exist so that they can have them all to themselves and i hear it's often women who have men with children and they want to pretend that that ex

that that man was not with somebody else and had kids with somebody else and had intense intimate moments with somebody else and the kids are annoying it's rare that I see it flipped but but here we are is it possible that your husband just wants to pretend that your previous world didn't exist and he's got you all to himself? I don't feel like that's the case. I feel like more, I think from his perspective, I tend to baby my kids. And so he's just like, let them be adults. Like they're on their own now.

Let them fend for themselves kind of thing. Whereas I always feel like I'm still around and I'm still their mom. And so like, yes, I still want to be there to support my kids. What does support mean? No, just emotional support. I'm not financially supporting them in any way or like that, but just- So he doesn't want you talking to them? No, he'll say I can. I mean, and he says, he doesn't want you talking to them? No, he'll say I can. I mean, and he says he doesn't want to interfere with my relationship with them. Yeah, I know, but he is. But he is.

So you've heard me say this on this show a million times. Behavior is a language. He can say whatever he wants. I don't give a crap what he says. I care what he does. And almost as important as what he does, it's how he makes you feel whenever you're doing whatever it is you're doing and if you're on the phone with your daughter or you're on the phone with your son who happens to be an immature 20 something year old they're gonna have to get in

a long line on that one and do you suddenly feel like i have to shut this thing down or i'm gonna have hell to pay in this house and it might not be physical hell to pay or it might not be verbal hell to pay but it's that disgusting look at oh my gosh I got married an idiot or married some soft old lady like and you have to lie and shut it down um behavior is a language dude Yeah. I feel like, like I can talk with my kids without a problem, but I feel like if I, I work off shifts and so I feel almost guilty on my, the days that he has to go to work where I can just spend a day with the kids or spend the day with my grandkids. And that's on you. That's on you. Those are your feelings. Now, let me push on that a bit. You feel guilty. You feel all these things. And you said some of that is lingering

from your past marriage, where maybe if you did spend a day with the kids, you had hell to pay when you got home. Are you unfairly taking a picture of your old ex-husband and cutting it out and pasting it on the face of your current husband? Has he ever said when he gets home from work, like, oh my gosh, you're not here. You're with your stupid kids. Has he ever said that? No, he's never said that. Has he ever even hinted at that? No, he hasn't.

Why are you doing that to yourself? That's a really good question because I do feel like I, I do have a tendency to put him in that place of like, and he'll tell me I'm not your ex. I'm not this person that used to belittle you and say things like that. So here's the deal. People lie on the whole for one of three reasons. Number one, they have a pathology, right? They're psychotic. They think that they're smarter than everybody around them. The second reason people lie is to keep themselves safe.

Like, I have to lie or somebody's going to be like, are your kids in that house? No, they're not there. I'm going to lie to keep myself safe. I have to lie or somebody's going to be like, are your kids in that house? No, they're not there. I'm going to lie to keep myself not harmed. The third one is to preserve relationship. It's social status. It is in the nerd literature. I'm going to try to keep this

fantasy going that everything's okay. Which one of those three reasons are the reasons that you don't tell your husband the truth, that you're running around behind his back? Do you feel unsafe? Are you trying to pretend that everything's okay? I feel like it probably is to be safe, but it's more to avoid an argument. No, but you're not telling me about any argument you have. Why would you argue?

We end up arguing over, I guess every once in a while, we'll be spending time with the kids or how come you're with, I know I'm talking in circles. Here's what it sounds like. Can I be super honest with you? Yes. It sounds like he's an abusive jerk that you're trying to protect, but also quietly, covertly ask questions

on how you can live in that world. Or you have created a fantasy narrative that he is going to be bad too. And so you curb your actions and behaviors when it comes to the most important people in your life, which are your kids. And then you blame him for your behavioral choices that he has nothing to do with. And then in the blame, y'all get in a fight and you end up arguing about things. It's one of those two things. Which one is it? I feel like it's probably the second one. You don't go visit your kids when you want to, or they say, hey, mom, come over and see us.

And you're like, well, I got to be home because husband gets home soon. And then he gets home 20 minutes late and you are enraged. Not because he's 20 minutes late or not because he came home and not because you're not happy to see him, but because he kept you from seeing your kids and really he didn't. And then you act short or you act a little bit mean. And then he responds to that. And now we're in a fight and you're saying the fight's about the kids and it's really not is that fair it can be yeah yeah i would say that's fair i am concerned that he isn't sitting down saying hey we have to heal this we all have to be able to be in a room together or is it you keeping everybody from being in the same room together no i have I have brought that up.

I'm like, I think we should sit down and just talk about this because this is getting ridiculous. Yes, correct. But at the same time, he's like, they're not going to want to hear what I have to say, and it's just going to blow up. And that's how he feels. Is he going to try to parent them? No. What is he, what is he going to try to parent them? No, no. I think he would just tell them to basically just grow up and stop acting like children. Ironically, because that's kind of how he's acting. It's a hundred percent. He's like, I'm taking my ball and going home.

What an immature guy. Like what are they, what are they doing? That's I'm fascinated by this. What are they doing? That is so immature. They're they got jobs, they're financially on their own, and they call their mom once a week or twice a week to check in? Like, what is so immature about how they live? Well, I'd say they call me pretty much every day for something or other. They'll ask me for advice for different things, or they'll, especially my especially my girls were real close.

So we do talk quite often. So one thing that's super common about, um, if you lived under the rule of, of an abusive spouse for a period of time, and the result is a divorce, but that abuse and that hunkering down happens years before the papers are finalized. Kids and a protective spouse will circle the wagons and have a very deep connected, sometimes a mesh, sometimes unhealthy, but often very tight knit relationship because they had to, to survive.

And I think that was us. We had a very, very close relationship. And so you have to be careful as they're adults to not use them now to prop you up. And you have to teach them how to fly and say things like, here's a good example. I called, this is several years ago now, I had a student who had passed away and I had to make an announcement to a bunch of his friends. And I called my mentor, the guy that first taught me

how to make these kinds of phone calls. And I said, hey, here's what I'm about to do. And he said, John, listen, what you just said is is right and you don't need to call me anymore You you know what you're doing and I trust you they trust you and they're lucky to have you And so you see what i'm saying like he heard me He affirmed what I was doing and then he also ended with and you don't need to call me every time And so it feels good when your kids call you every day and ask you for questions and ask you for hey should i do this should do this that feels so good and so empowering and at some point you're using them to make you feel important and that's that's a heavy burden for your kids to carry so if they

call you to ask you about car insurance you can say yeah i would use this this is the insurance we use and i like it and by the way you don't need to call me every time for car insurance i trust you you're a good kid. See what I'm saying? There's those little nuggets to say, there you go. To more empower them and not have them depend on me. Fair. But all of that is going to take some healing time.

And it sounds like, honestly, everybody needs to grow up. You, him, kids, everybody needs to grow up. You, him, kids, everybody needs to grow up. And he doesn't have any position right now to be lecturing your grown children. What he does have is, hey, I'm watching my wife wither and die here because I'm forcing her to not be whole. Or you, Christy, are choosing to not be whole. Because you're not going all in on this marriage, right? Mm-hmm. I feel like I have to live in two different lives.

Like my lives don't mesh. I don't know if that makes sense. It does. But when you hear this call come out, I want you to hear how many times you said the words, I feel, I feel, I feel. And I want you to write down what you feel, and then I want you to demand evidence from those feelings. Because I have a sense that those feelings are very, very real, but they are not telling you the truth. That could be. And maybe you take husband out for a lunch on a Saturday or for breakfast on a Saturday, and you have spent two weeks writing down your quote unquote feelings. And you can ask him, hey, I'm going to run these feelings by you. These are mine. These are all

mine. These are stories I'm telling myself, as Breernie brown says and that's how me and my wife do it The stories i'm telling myself are I have to live two lives because you can't be around my kids And if you are around my kids, you feel like you got to lecture them the story i'm telling myself is Our marriage isn't going to ultimately work out because I'm not going to choose my kids, you over my kids. The story I'm telling myself is I'm a terrible mom because you say I talk to my children too much and they're adults. And I want you to go down all those stories and let him respond to those things. And at some point, you're going to have to decide, I'm going to let my needs be heard. And my needs are, I need everybody that I love and care about in the same room, my grown kids and my husband. And I got to quit living two lives.

And your grown kids can opt out. They can say, we don't like this too. We want to be gone. And they get to do that. They get to do that. And I guess at the end of the day, your husband gets to choose that too. He's a grownup and you get to decide whether you want to be married to a man who won't be in the same room with your kids. That's on you. But at the end of the day, your husband gets to choose that too. He's a grownup and you get to decide whether you want to be married to a man who won't be in the same room with your kids. That's on you. But at the end of the day, y'all have to make some hard choices. But those hard choices start with you being honest about feelings and reality. You got to choose reality and you got to be willing to have your needs be met. Just say them out loud and say, here's what I need. I need everybody under the same roof. I need everybody acting like adults and I'm willing to go first. I think this is a solvable problem, Christy. I

really do. I think you might be getting in your own way. Maybe for the first time in your life, you can allow yourself to finally be loved when you're just gonna have to practice what that feels like. It's going to take a season. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever.

Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where

you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist

and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Diloni to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Diloni. All right, we are back and it's time

for everybody's favorite facts are your friends. Let's do it managers impact employee mental health more than therapist or their spouse that's the title of this new article here whoa that's all i'm saying whoa if this is true this is this is shapeshifter for most of us because all of the data suggests that the most important decision a person makes is who they marry. A great partnership with your spouse ends up in a much larger net worth. It ends up in longer life. It ends up in better health, better happiness. All these metrics go this way. And a bad spouse, somebody who you're always at war with, leads to negative metrics.

And so I've always told young people, always, the most important decision is not where you go to college, not what you major in. It's who you decide to spend the rest of your life with. And so when an article comes out that says managers impact employees' mental health more than their spouse or partner or more than their therapist, we got to stop that bus and back that thing up.

All right, so here's what it says. The Workforce Institute at UKG surveyed 3,400 people across 10 countries to find out the role managers play in influencing their staffer's state of mind. In fact, managers impact workers' mental health more than both doctors and therapists, according to the study. Now, really quick, I'm going to give you a 0.02 second lesson on reading articles. This, in big big bold letters, here's what the title of this article is. Managers impact employees' mental health more than therapists and as much as a spouse or partner. If you read it really quick, it jumbles it all together. So it says it's about

as much as a spouse or partner. Okay. Now, so make sure that the title matches what you're actually reading down here. Those are often disconnected because they want you to click on the title and then you read it and it's like, well, maybe not. But that's not here. It's not surprising that 60% of those surveys said that their job is the biggest factor influencing their mental health. Now, I want to push back on that for a second. Real quick, we've created a planet, a universe, a state of being where all of us owe people money. We're all in debt,

whether it's student loans, whether it's car loans, whether it's housing, whether it's our rent, whatever, we all owe people money. And we're the loneliest generation in human history. We have nobody. We got nobody. We have old high school friends that we have long text threads full of memes with. That's it. We have a couple of college buddies who are in your sorority or fraternity or whatever group you paid to be friends with or on old sports teams or whatever. Maybe you got a couple people from your high school youth group. We're lonely.

And we've pulled the string. We've pulled the tether on stories that unite cultures, otherwise known as religions. We're all like, eh, we're too smart for that stuff now. That's not real. And what we have are exhausted, lonely, untethered people who have one common place left, the workplace.

And so now the workplace is having to teach us about issues of diversity, about sex ed, because we didn't get that at home. We didn't get that at school. They're having to teach us. They have to provide us health purpose. They have to provide us paycheck. You see how the workplace now is the baseline for all humanity. It's the last great line of defense. And so when people say my job is the source of my mental health issue, I don't think so I think it's we've created a world where the only connecting feature left is work It's the only thing we got left that defines us as a as a community as a group of people

It's the only place I see humans anymore And if you work remotely god help you man All you see is toddlers and your spouse and geez. So I'll just move on. A whopping 64% of respondents said that work negatively impacts their wellbeing. It's wild. Work should be the thing that gives you purpose and meaning and feels so right. And then you go home and then you go connect with your friends and then you go connect with your faith community or you go do your acts of service, et cetera. Coincidentally, there's a direct correlation between feeling unable to balance

work and home priorities with poor mental health. So now you see what's happening here. We've created unstable, wildly out of balance lives, and we blame work for it. Over 80% of employees worldwide and 70% of workers in the US would take a pay cut for piece of paper, what is mental wellness for me? What would that actually mean? Time with friends, fun. If it's video game time and doing nothing time and laying around time, I'm going to tell you that's not mental health. That's numbing behavior. That's opposite of mental health. If it's time to go on adventures and time to go hiking and time to go hunting and time to do painting or whatever, play music, that now we're getting into building a life worth living. The overwhelming majority of HRs, to continue in the article, and C-suite leaders think their workplace has a positive impact on work or mental health, but half of the employees agree. And I'll tell you this, I've seen this almost every single place I've ever worked, ever, ever consulted. And we've seen this in the data over the last 25 to 50 years, the disconnect

between mid managers and lower entry-level workers up through middle management. And that could be a six-figure job as a middle manager, and the execs, those that can afford all of the yoga classes and the special stuff and the massages, and they're not worried about, I can't afford eggs, right? There's a gap between, here's the world we're creating.

I once was at a place where the boss was like, we don't have politics here where we're at this, at this workplace. And I laughed and said, Oh yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. And they're like, no, we don't, we don't do politics here. I was like, Oh, for sure you do for sure. We don't have a dress code here. You for sure have a dress code here. Right? So there's a disconnect between the world that senior execs think they've created and the world being experienced by others. And the easy thing, execs, I'm talking to you, is to say, I don't care. They got to get in line. Cool. And what they're telling you is they're falling apart. They're falling apart. So I'm talking to both

the employees and the leaders here. The article goes on to say how managers can influence their workers' mental health for the better. And I actually agree with all of the leaders here. The article goes on to say how managers can influence their workers' mental health for the better. And I actually agree with all of the points here. I think they're great. First one is leaders need to avoid burying their heads in the sand and instead make mental health a global topic of discussion within their teams.

Yes. Start having conversations. Let people know that if they're not okay or they're not well, here's where resources are. Here's what my expectations are for how you need to take care of yourself. Here's where you can go and leaders make no mistake having a Somebody who's struggling with depression struggling with anxiety show up every day is going to decrease performance Individually and with your whole team

You're much better off taking care of people now They also have to get their work done. That's real. You may have to split people's jobs up to why people are getting healthier, getting whole. All that stuff's true, but you got to stop burying your heads about it. You got to start talking about it. This can be, let's see here. It could be increased awareness or access to available resources. There can be surveys that are anonymous just to get a pulse on what's going on in the company. I think those are super helpful. Sometimes people use those to lob grenades.

They do. They do. But if you get enough grenades, at some point you realize you're under attack and you didn't know it. Also suggest that managers should be open about their own personal struggles with mental health and relationships to de-stigmatize the topic. When any leader across the country asks me, how can I best support my staff, my team? Because they're struggling with anxiety, they're struggling with depression, they're struggling with all these things.

The first thing I always tell the leaders is you call a meeting and let them know that you're going to a counselor, that you are taking a little bit of time to go get well, that you and your spouse are going to see a marriage counselor. Go do that. Lead by example. You go first. And the whole organization will collectively exhale. And yes, your shareholders can use that against you.

They can. They can weaponize it. Your bosses, the board members of whatever organization can be like, oh, so-and-so is struggling. Yes, they can do that. And now you know how your employees feel. Now you know. One last thing here. Managers should be encouraging workers to take more time off work. Use your vacation. This happens in two ways. Managers, turn your phones off. One of the things I love about working at Ramsey Solutions is, you know, Dave Ramsey will just pile, send emails off, but they don't come until 6 a.m. They've, all the

execs here have fixed their email account. So when they send emails after a certain time, it doesn't end up in our email boxes until the morning. Because they found out they were sending an email just off the top of their head like, hey, I want to see some numbers on this thing at 10 o'clock. And then suddenly an employee was reading it at 10 and they were up till 4 a.m. trying to find these numbers and unable to sleep and stressing. And that was not intention of the email at all, not even close. And so there's little things like that. And then there's bigger things like an incentive if you use all your vacation I'll give you two more days because the data says people who use their vacation make your company more money They make your company more money and I used to be really guilty leaders when I had a whole bunch of direct reports

I would tell them you need to take some time off you take some time off But they had these big projects and so I was actually stressing them out more because now I was giving them time off was becoming a job requirement, a responsibility. So I might have to find people to help with those projects and say, hey, you got to get out of here. You got to delegate this project to two other people. I know they can get it done. Or we have to create a world where we can delegate each other's projects because you got to get it. You got to take a break. All this to say, when it comes to work and mental health, we've created worlds,

very unhealthy worlds that our bodies can exist in. And we're blaming work for that. And I think that's ridiculous. And leaders, we have to understand that there's such a gap between us and entry-level employees. We have to remember what that was like. And we think we remember, but we're wrong. We have to get in the busy, messy lives of the people who are taking these entry-level jobs, these mid-management jobs that

are working their butts off, that have dreams and owe six figures in student loan debt. And they're trying to make it all work. And we have to remember what that was like. And we all think, I remember what that was like. We don't. The pressures are different now. They're just different. They're not better or worse. They're just different.

And we got to listen. We got to listen. And leaders, we got to go first. That's why I'm always on this show telling people, I see a counselor. I see a marriage counselor. I got a coach. I'm not perfect either.

And I do this for a living. Managers, leaders, we got to go first. Mental health at work. By the way, if your job is causing your mental health to collapse, you are worth something better than that. Create a life worth living. Find other work. I can't find the job. There is no better time in human history than to find a new job than right now. Go do it. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Let's go to Dave right down the street here in Nashville. What's up, Dave? Hi. Thank you for this. I just really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about this. You got it, man. Thank you for giving me a buzz, man. What's up? So I have a 17-year-old son who's been making some bad decisions lately. My question is how to best help him in general. And specifically, I'm wrestling with whether or

not to support him going away to college this fall with everything that's been going on. And I don't mean that as a punishment. I mean as just trying to do what's best for him and try to help. Okay. Tell me more. Okay. So he has a strong, close family history of addiction. He's very well aware of this. About five months ago or so, he got caught using pot,

and he was caught again just a few weeks ago, and this time we see that he has really, really bad grades as well. He has a good scholarship to a good small private school and has a spot on one of the sports teams there. It seems like a really good situation for most 17 year olds going out into the world. Um, and I've asked him what he wants to do from here, like where he wants to go and with, with where he's found himself. Um,

and he says it is, if there was anything he could do, if there was no restrictions, if you could do anything's anything he could do, if there's no restrictions, if he could do anything that he wanted to do, he wants to go to this school and go play on this sports team. And we've had a lot of discussions about how these things that he's been doing, these decisions he's made are not in line with that. Kids don't go on to college

if they're failing high school or classes in high school. So, you know, I'm, I'm scared to send him. I'm scared of sending him up for failure, but I'm also scared to not send them and, and, and scared of what would fill that void. Um, what he would do if he wasn't going. Um, so, uh, let me, let me know. Sorry. It's good, man. avoid what he would do if he wasn't going. So let me, let me know. I know. Sorry.

It's good, man. I've had this conversation probably 5,000 times in my career and I would hug you if you were sitting with me right now. Okay. I know that the weight of this, it feels so heavy. And it feels like some of these moments are either, or we get this one right or there's a whole catastrophic ending to the left and we get this wrong. Right. So it feels like there's a heaviness here. So let's pull back a little bit.

You said he's got a long history of family addiction. Have you struggled with addiction? No, no. It's nobody in his immediate family. His uncle, grandfather, grandfather's brothers, and it's pretty profound stuff. Okay. Brothers, uncles, grandparents on your side or on wife's side? On mom's side.

Okay. What do you and mom do for a living? Uh, we've both in healthcare. Okay. Both, um, uh, like master's level, uh, healthcare providers. Okay. Um, great income. Good at what you do. Uh, yes, yes. Very solid. And, and yeah, you're both pretty good at what we do. I'd say. Okay.

Um, so the next couple of things I'm going to say, I'm, I'm fishing a little bit, just admittedly. Okay. And normally if you were, and I were sitting down for like a coaching session,

we would talk for a couple hours, but I'm going to get cut right to the chase and I need you to promise me. You're not going to take some of the things I say as indictments of ways you have failed. Is that cool? Right. Yeah, totally. Um,

when somebody tells me they have a long generational history of addiction, the first thing that comes into my mind is a long history of performance based disconnection, a long history of performance-based disconnection. A long history of performance-based disconnection. The suckiest part about being a parent of a 17-year-old who smokes weed is that weed works really well, especially on a young mind. It takes away that gnawing anxiety.

You and I both know also that it kills drive. It kills sexual dysfunction. It's terrible for developing brain, all those things. We know that. But for a 17-year-old, it works. And so my question is always with a 17-year-old, why are your grades suddenly falling off? Why are you suddenly smoking weed?

You got in trouble and then all of a sudden you're doing it again? And you've been doing it again? That's never my question. My question is always, why are you hurting? What about your world? How are you in so much pain that this is the only way you can soothe that pain? See how there's a difference there? Yeah, I do.

And let me tell you this. So I work with really high performing families all over the country, have for years. And it was a revelation to me when I found out that addiction can be really hard drugs. It can be heroin. It can be cocaine. It can be all kinds of things.

Then I learned it could be pornography and sex. Then I learned it could be 90-hour work weeks. And it could be we have to make this much money. We have to have this grade. We have to have clothes that look like this. You got to have cars that are clean like this. And the addiction becomes the outer shell, the performance. And these things get carried on generationally,

not always through, if there's always cocaine and heroin, at some point that generation ends. But somebody picks up that baton and says, oh, I'll fix this. And their life becomes one of perfection and performance. And the addiction is the same. It's just that our culture gives you $150,000 a year for it. I don't think, I don't believe that.

If what you're saying is like we're putting pressure on him to perform, I definitely don't think that's in line with what we've done. I'd say it's probably more the opposite is that we have really let the kids do whatever they want to do. You want to play this sport, they play this sport. You don't want to, that's okay. You want to work here, fine. We're not helicopter parents. We honestly, the only reason we looked at his grades is because we found him smoking weed again. The amount of pressure that we give to the kids is that with this one specifically, he does no homework at home. He's an awesome kid, but he's not super studious.

And so the one thing we said is like, hey, if you're not going to be doing homework at home, it means your grades are good enough for that. So like 85 minimum, if you're, if you're over 85, great. Just you do you, uh, if you're under 85, you're grounded Monday through Friday because you should be doing more homework. And so that's the extent of our pressure as far as to perform. Everything else is just him. I mean, he wasn't going to play any sports in school, and then he decided he wanted to go to this one specific school

and do this one specific sport. So we're happy to support him in that. Um, but of course he knows that part of that for us, it's like really just two, three things we've asked for is to be, you know, respectful and pleasant to be around in the house. Uh, your rates need to be good enough and to not do drugs. That's really it. And he's violated at least two out of the three things, probably more toward three out of the three things just here lately. This has been a couple of weeks now since we caught him the second time, and he is trying.

I mean, he is doing a bunch of catch-up work, trying to get his grades better. They are starting to turn in the right direction. Um, he was so like disappointed in himself, but also just mad at us because he didn't agree with kind of the things we were doing. You know, we were limiting his phone use and that didn't make sense because he didn't do anything wrong with his phone. He just was angry, so angry. I was trying so hard to connect more with him because, you know, he's 17. He's got P's. He's just gone all the time.

And now he's home and grounded for the most part. Trying to do things with him. I want you to hear you found yourself on a track, okay? Sorry. No, you're good. You're good, man. You're a dad that loves his son. You found yourself on what I call a 21st century parenting trap. It's a loop.

And I fall into it, man. So same team here, okay? I got two young kids too. They're not 17 yet, but they're on their way. We want to be supportive. So earlier I said I was fishing. I'm happy to hear that, man. That makes my heart feel good. And here's what sucks about being a parent. We can go too far the other way to where we create a world that feels like there's no boundaries until wham there are and so you've got a kid like my first question to you after that is how in the world do you have a 17 year old and you don't know what their grades

are and so i can absolutely see you and your wife sitting down and saying hey we are not going to be those parents that are lunatics that are overbearing or whatever. And then your 17 year old who's clearly got smart parents, probably has smart brothers and sisters. And I'm just talking about me personally, who I had an older sister who was on the academic decathlon team. And my younger brother missed like two questions on the ACT. And then there was the dumb jock in the middle of me. I had great expectations,

but I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to study.. I didn't know how to study. I just was told, hey, if you're not doing your work, you get your crap, you better be here. I didn't know how to bridge that gap. And then what you've done is you've taken away the one thing that keeps a 17-year-old brain stable, which is relationship. And so you see this toggle between a lonely brain screaming for a reconnection and the three things that work for a young brain to duct tape over disconnection, alcohol, marijuana, sex. And look around at all of our kids, especially when they go to college, because we unplug them from their world

and we drop them in a box and we say, make great choices together. And these are little brains saying, I just need my tribe, I need my gang. And not getting these grades is, you see what I'm saying? And so it becomes this loop and then he's going to work really hard

and he's really smart. He's going to get his grades up. You know that, I know that. He's going to get them up and he's going to white knuckle his way to not smoking weed so that he can finally get some freedom back. And then his poor brain is going to be screaming at that little 17 year old boy with all it's got saying, you got to reconnect, you got to reconnect, you got to reconnect. And we're just going to get on a loop here. My recommendation,

the way to break the loop is a couple fold. The first one is, is less conversations. Y'all start doing stuff on the regular together, just you and him. And you can say like, I already do that. Like this is above and beyond. This is like, you have to go to breakfast with me once a week or twice a week. And you got to go on walks with me in the evening you just have to and that anger is real and the anger is justified i get the anger and also it will dissipate because it's a body saying this isn't how it's supposed to be we're supposed to be in relationship and it's right now it's me versus my parents and you need to show take that step because you're the adult no man i'm with you i'm with you i'm with'm with you. That's the first one. The second one is if there's a way to teach him some study skills or as a household, from the hours of this to this, the music's off and we all study. That's just the way this works.

My wife and I set that up at our house. We're a family full of nerds, right? So this isn't for everybody, but we just have reading time after school. People just plop down and read. And so it's kind of awkward to not do that. Or my son will heads off into the woods and runs around, find himself outside just to get his wiggles out, we call him, and then he comes back in and we all just do homework for a season. And when I'm home, I join in. I do the same thing, but it's just a rhythm and a routine. It's not, hey, you got to figure this stuff out. Because some 17-year-olds haven't figured that out. And I'm one of those kids.

And I guess I want you to see down the road. I didn't smoke weed in high school, okay? But I've made stupid choices, a lot of them. Me too. There's a lot of... Okay, so you're a perfect example. Like, I guess I wouldn't give up on this kid. And I know you're not, but you know him better than me.

I'm always looking at trend lines. Is the trend line heading down? Are we heading to some scary territory? Or do we have a 17-year-old who is struggling, who needed some boundaries, maybe different boundaries than his brothers and sisters, and we have to shake the snow globe

a little bit. His grades are going to be fine. And maybe we're going to have a conversation with coach. Maybe we're going to have a conversation with the school counseling center and say, hey, we've struggled, had some struggles in the past.

We want him to see you guys once a week. Hey, coach, I want you to keep an eye on him. And we're going to watch really closely with his grades. I don't necessarily think that's an either or deal. I personally have seen kids get out of some of those situations and really blossom. And I've seen some extraordinary kids get their butts kicked out of college. So it's kind of both.

I definitely feel like no matter what I decide with what to do with him, in the end it can go either way, just like you're saying. And that's the suckiest part of being a parent. That's all of us, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm scared that like, because I can identify with him so well. I made lots of bad decisions and turned out okay.

I really feel like I turned out okay. Yeah. But I didn't have the addiction family history stuff. Yeah, but listen, Dave, don't put that on him. Don't put that on him because it's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. Okay? It's something to be aware of, but it's not prophetic become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. Okay? It's something to be aware of, but it's not prophetic.

It's not guaranteed. It's not predetermined for him. I've definitely been trying. I do feel like he thinks that we don't like him. Yes. We've been trying to say, hey, that's not true. You can't say it, Dave. We've been doing all these things.

You can't say it. Family dinners. Those were for you. You were the only one that wasn't. You can't say it. It's like family dinners. It's like, those were for you. You were the only one that wasn't here when we said we have to be here for family dinners. It was so we could see you. So I guess my question is that, is it okay to force the connection time for a while? Because in general,

he wants to be out and doing things with his friends. He wants to be going to play this sport. He wants to go to work. He's never around. Yes. Okay. He's finding it somewhere else. Right. Right. He's finding it somewhere else. What you just touched on, I think is probably one of the most under understood issues with our kids. He doesn't feel like anybody likes him, but there's a group of people at school that does. And weed makes that feeling of my family doesn't like me. I don't like them.

It takes the edge off of that burger. It does. It just does. And so, yes, there is something to be said for, I'm your dad, you're 17, you live in my house, you have to have breakfast with me once a week we're going to see this concert together and I want you to come with me dude I sat through a Garth Brooks show

it ended up being a good time, that was not for me that was for my son the Turnstile show coming up this summer that one's for me but find some concerts in town you're in Nashville for God's sake dude there's one weekend, but you're going to spend some old man time. And here's the deal. At one of those breakfast, you can reach across the table and say something like this. I'm going to make this really weird for us for a second. Okay. Hold my hand, son,

and have him look at you and say, I love you and I like you. You're a great kid. I would prefer to spend time with you than some of my knuckleheaded friends. And I haven't been doing a good job of that. And so from this day forward, it's going to be weird because I'm going to show you that I like you and that I love you. And this house doesn't work without you. And that's a totally different proposition. You see what I'm saying?

I do. I get choked up just thinking about having that conversation. And then you can tell them everything you want. You can tell them, you can tell them, you can tell them. None of that matters. You got to show it. You got to show them. And if you tell them on your way to work and you

tell him on the way to a surgery, you got to be a part of. And if you tell him on the way to a dinner that he's not invited to, he's getting the message loud and clear that he's kind of just in the way. And he just needs to get these grades and not do this thing and everything's fine. And that's performance-based connection. Seeing that he's a priority on your calendar, seeing he's a priority in your checkbook, and you are taking the step towards him, not just sitting there waiting for him to come to you. Now he's seeing, oh, my dad likes me. He wants to spend time with me. He laughs at my jokes. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have dads like you in my neighborhood who love their sons like you do. And I need you to hear me say, this is a trap all of us fall into, which is just this

loop. We got to get paid. We got to, we have our lives. We want to do our lives. And kids, I just want you to make the grades and don't go to jail and don't do drugs. Why is it so hard? And some of our kids fall right in line. And others say, I need a little bit more. I experience the world different. Will you just show me that you like me? That's hard.

And that changes everything. Thanks for the call, my brother Dave. Call anytime, man. Come by and see me. We can hang out and have coffee my brother, Dave. Call anytime, man. Come by and see me. We can hang out and have coffee here in the lobby. Appreciate you, man. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up?

Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you

so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, we are back as we wrap up today's show. Everybody's favorite Johnny Paycheck lyrics. Shout out to my friend, Ken Coleman. Song's called Take This Job and Shove It. Originally by David Allen Coe, the great DAC. Take this job and shove it.

I ain't working here no more. My woman done left and took all the reasons I was working for. You better not try to stand in my way as I'm walking out the door. Take this job and shove it. I ain't working here no more. That's fantastic. I've been working in this factory for nigh on 15 years. All this time I was watching my woman drowning in a pool of tears.

And I've seen a lot of good folk die who had a lot of bills to pay. I'd give the shirt right off my back if I had the guts to say, take this job and shove it. Some of y'all need to have that conversation today. I'm looking at you, Kelly. Hey, love you guys. Stay in school. Bye.