The Dr. John Delony Show - I Had a Baby With My Brother-in-Law

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A couple hoping to rebuild their marriage after they both were unfaithful - A special education teacher uncomfortable at work after reporting two coworkers to DCS - A homeschool mom of four whose 9-year-old has explosive outbursts Lyrics of the Day: "Dirty Little Secret" - All American Rejects 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. How do you move on from lots of horrible past things? There's been abuse in the past, like physical or emotional abuse in the past, or one or both of you have cheated on each other and y'all want to move on. Which one is it? Some of all of that. Oh, geez. Well, he's on a stick.

What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney show. So glad that you've joined us. Happy new year. Hope you're doing well. Hope it is not freezing wherever you are. Our, uh, I look for the low for tomorrow or two days from now. Three. Three. Unacceptable.

Unacceptable. For a Texas kid, that makes me reconsider whether hell is hot. I think hell will be very, very cold. But alas, hope your winter is is going well

Hope you're having a happy new year and we are glad you you joined us on the greatest mental health podcast of all time ever If you want to be on the show go to johndeloney.com slash ask and thank you. Thank you. Thank you For your five-star reviews for hitting the subscribe button. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe button. It's a gift to Your neighbors it just spins the show up in the algorithms and it has been spinning up for hitting the subscribe button. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe button. It's a gift to your neighbors. It just spins the show up in the algorithms and it has been spinning up quite a lot. So thank you so, so much.

Don't forget to share these episodes. All right, let's go to Rose in Lansing, Michigan. What's up, Rose? Hi, good morning. What's up? You never hear that, do you? I'm sorry Wherever you are

Alright, sorry I got that out of my system Alright, so tell me what's up Oh boy, okay I'm sorry My singing tends to do that to people. It's not great. I think it's just fine.

It's not. I wanted to be a metal singer growing up. That's all I wanted to be in the world. I wanted to be this really tough, cool metal singer, and now I'm a YouTuber. So clearly my singing is not great, but alas. All right, so this call is about you, not my failed attempts to be cool.

So what's up? Well, I guess I'll just get to it. My question is how do you move on from past, lots of horrible past things and um just change your life and get your marriage back to or i guess re redo your marriage this is probably the top two or three vaguest conversations I've ever had. It's incredible. How do you, you know, that stuff that they, yeah. So. Sorry. All right. It's one of two things. And I'm only, this is just, I've had this conversation so many times.

Either there's been abuse in the past past like physical or emotional abuse in the past and y'all are still you you or your spouse is as forgiven the other person and you want to move on or one or both of you have cheated on each other and y'all want to move on which one is it or tell me i'm wrong um some of all of that oh geez louise on a stick okay so how long have y'all been married yeah uh we've been married seven years okay and tell me first about the physical and emotional abuse um well thankfully not physical. Okay. But emotional, um, on both sides, we've just, in the beginning of our marriage, just very immature and thankfully we're coming out of that. Okay. And, um, when did the infidelity start?

Um, on his side. When did the infidelity start? On his side, probably, I don't know, maybe a year or two in. And then my side, I'd say, let's see, it'd be three years ago that that had started. Okay. With, with, did you fall for somebody or, or was it multiple partners? Um, you just started dating around behind his back. Um, one was an online thing and then a, uh, physical one, which was about a year ago, two years. Okay. Does he know about it? He does. Yes.

And do you know about his? Yes. Yeah. We shared it all. Okay. How did y'all come to, how did y'all land there? Like that's X marks the spot. How did y'all both decide we're just going to put all this on the table?

What brought you there um we asked the big question if we truly wanted to make this work and the only way to move forward is to share it all was our decision okay and what was what was the result of that hard conversation? Did you know he'd been cheating on you and he knew you'd been cheating on him? Or was it a shock to both of you? We both knew. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

How long ago was that conversation? Hmm. Let's say two years ago. So what's changed in the last two years? Or do you find yourself right back in the same spot? Thankfully not in the same spot. We're just, I don't know. I feel like I'm constantly tortured by my past.

Your past or his past? I guess both. Random thoughts will come up of remembering what he's done and then remembering what I've done and then hating myself for it. I want to, for the sake of the listener and for the sake of clarity in this conversation, and there's a point to me doing this, okay? I want to drill down into what you just said, just thoughts of. Do you have images in your head that pop in of him being sexually involved with another woman do you have do you have moments when you're taking a shower you're sitting by yourself in the car scrolling instagram and you think of physically being with this other guy and it makes you smile it makes your heartbeat faster and then you feel sick about it uh yes yeah okay is that is that the stuff that you thought would be gone by now?

Yeah. I'm trying to get from there to you have these thoughts, you're working on it, you're putting your marriage back together, you're building something new, and yet these thoughts keep popping into your head and you thought they would be gone by now. Is that what we're getting at? Yes. So there is another complication to the story here there always is go for it well i guess i'd say two

get to them as quickly as you can because we're talking like we're taking a long time to circle the plane around the uh the landing strip true sorry no it's No, it's all good, it's all good. So who I cheated on, my husband was physically, was my brother-in-law. And I had a child with him. Hear, hear. Yeah. So it's more complicated.

That may be the understatement of the day. Yeah, it definitely is. It's been the vaguest, most understated. Uh, so that was your sister's husband? Uh, no, uh, that'd be my husband's sister's husband which they're now divorced yeah i would i would just guess so i would guess yeah um man that makes thanksgiving awkward huh uh yeah though i mean nobody talks about it but yeah do they not see the little kid running around um they do but I mean

he looks enough like me I don't know oh my gosh okay the dysfunction here is multi-level how can I help you said there was one more what's the one more is there another one after that oh just the chaos it's caused his side of the one more is there another one after that oh just the the chaos it's caused his side of the family my side of the family just that cool yeah okay so how can i how

can i help um well i mean just moving on forward i just i just i feel lost at what to do. Like, should this be out in the open, and then we'd probably never go over to his family or see any of them? I don't know. They don't know? No. I mean, I'm sure they have speculations but your sister-in-law doesn't know that it was you or she just doesn't tell anybody she just doesn't tell anyone yeah i i don't believe that for less than half a second oh yeah i'm i'm sure she's told multiples

yes i'm confident that everybody knows and for the sake of your husband everybody is and this little baby everybody's trying to keep the peace and i'm guessing that this isn't the only sideways meth and banjos things going on in this family lineage and so i i don't i don't i that doesn't strike me they're probably like oh oh, geez, you know what I mean? So at this point – here's the deal. At this point, your husband has made some – your husband chose to violate your marriage covenant, the thing y'all agreed on. You said I do forever. He violated that.

You violated that. As a consequence of that violation, now you have another child. Another marriage is destroyed. Okay. And I'm not going to put that on you and put that on him. All of that sounds so complicated and it feels like the smoke is so thick, it's really not. And one of my favorite things to do is to sit down in a situation like this with somebody when everything feels like it's on fire and to actually unwind it because it's not. Really what you have before you is a repeated series of small steps that's going to be the next six months, the next one year, the next five years, the next 25 years of your life. And that is choosing to do the next right thing. That is intentionally having once a week or for right now, maybe twice or three times a week,

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 30-minute check-ins with your husband. How are you? How are you feeling? A commitment to him and him to you that there will be no more secrets. That means you might have to, for a season, be like, man, I thought about you and so-and-so today, and I immediately tossed it out of my mind.

Or I had a hard week just remembering things that I've done. I had a hard week remembering things that you've done. It was just tough. Or I looked up so-and-so on social media today and I just had like a moment of weakness and I screwed up and I'm feeling bad about it. And he can't fix you. All he can say is thank you for sharing that. And you can't fix him. And all you can say is thank you for sharing that. But we're practicing not having secrets anymore, which just means we're practicing telling the truth, which means we're practicing vulnerability, which means now we're practicing how to be married.

See that? Right, yeah. And you got to have a daily choice to A, not be naive because you've cheated on him once and you might do it again and vice versa and i have to choose every time that thought lightning bolts into my mind i have to choose to have another thought ready to go and not dwell on it both the the ones that make you want to throw up thinking of him another woman, and the ones that make your heartbeat a little bit faster and make you smile a little bit, you with another guy.

Is that fair? That is fair. You have to choose not to entertain those. And if you don't make that choice, you're just going to be choosing to bring fog into your marriage on a daily basis. And for everyone listening, this goes for everybody who has romantic partners from the past, who had almost affairs with that person at work,

but you didn't at the last minute, right? Those, when we have other people that make us feel alive, and this is every single marriage, everybody I've ever met in my life. I don't know anybody. I'm not excluded from this. Old memories pop into your mind. Feelings pop into your heart. Like this person laughed at my jokes. This person made me feel comfortable. This person made me feel warm. And my person I'm married to, my girlfriend,

my boyfriend, whoever, doesn't make me feel that today. And so your body goes looking for it and it remembers it. And you have to have enough discipline to say, I'm not going to get my fix from somebody from my past. I'm not going to get my fix from somebody who's not my spouse. I'm going to intentionally not do this. And that's hard, man. It's hard, right? Yeah, definitely is.

And then you are going to have to balance this violation you made, right? You violated your core values and your covenant, and you got this amazing, wonderful child. Fair? Fair. So you're going to have to, there's just going to be a tension there, and trying to feel like that tension doesn't exist or pretend that tension doesn't exist is a waste of your time and energy.

Cause it's always going to be the best worst thing that ever happened to you. Right. Right. Yeah. Have you said it out loud? You slept with your sister-in-law's husband. That happened. You did that with a period.

You shouldn't have done that. Can we agree on that? Yes, definitely. And you have an amazing young kid. How old is this baby? He's one. Okay. Is he incredible? Is he hilarious, funny, silly, quiet? Tell me about him. He is a complete goofball. Good, good. Sounds like he's following after his mom, right? Yes.

And he runs around with his brother and his sisters. Absolutely crazy. Good. We're going to honor this little kid, and at the same time, we're not going to shroud this thing in shame. Going to family events and pretending like things didn't happen is, that's the curse of generations. It's the fog that hangs over every get together. It's the black smoke that covers up, I mean, that is in the air of every interaction between family members. And at some point, your husband, it's his family. He's got to step up and say, hey, this happened, this is, and this is what we're doing about it. We're raising

this kid. It's going to be great. Do you have any contact with the other guy? No, he just ran off. Okay. So you have 100% full custody? Yes. Yep. Has your husband adopted this kid? Under the law here, he just automatically became the full guardian. Okay. I would get with somebody and make sure that's written down. Make sure that's in some sort of paperwork so that this other dude didn't pop back up in the future. Here's what I want you guys to sit down and ask. And this is the new year and this is a great time to start this. How can you encourage life in your husband? Here's what I mean by that. What makes him feel alive? When you hold his hand, watching a TV show, going dancing, when he's out farming or hunting, I don't know what he does or fixing stuff. I don't know who this dude is, but what makes him feel alive

and how can you contribute to that, to breathing life into his life and vice versa? How can he give you life? How can he breathe life into your life? That might be as simple as helping around the house with dishes and babies and diapers and stuff like that. That could be taking you out once a week. That could be planning for a big vacation once a year. That could be working four jobs to pay off any money your family owes to other people because

you can't breathe. It could be meeting Monday, Wednesday, Friday to make sure you're being intentional and make sure your marriage is staying on this very wobbly track that it's on right now. But how do you breathe life into his life, into his world? And how does he breathe life into your world? That's the question y'all are asking. And this is gonna take both of you taking the knee because y'all have both been really, really selfish

and you've both been really, really immature. And now you got kids and now it's time to grow up. Is that fair? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Are you in? I'm in. How can I help that journey? Do you have my books and all the gear? I don't. Okay. So I want you to hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of both Redefining Anxiety and Own Your Past, Change Your Future, which are my two bestselling books. And I'm going to send you both decks of questions for humans for couples. And this is just going to be a way for you and your husband to have conversations together. I've already done the work for you. I've already asked the question. You just have to pull these cards out when y'all are having some private time together, not with kids running around everywhere.

Whether it's y'all on the front porch, whether it's y'all in the bedroom, whether it's y'all out on a date, bring these cards, and this is just going to be a way to introduce humanity. For God's sake, don't cheat, period. And especially don't cheat with family members.

No more. No more. Thank you for being brave and for your call. 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 going to 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 therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Deloney. All right, we're back. Let's go to Lauren in Gainesville, Florida. What's up, Lauren?

Hey. How we doing? I'm doing well. How are you? Excellent. Excellent. So what's up? So I kind of wrote down just the gist of it. So I am a special education teacher and have been at my current school for about three years now. I love my classroom, my students. I love working with the other adults in my classroom.

However, about a month ago, I had to report two of my coworkers to my administration as well as DCF for things that I saw and heard them do towards a child who's nonverbal and autistic. What'd they do? I don't know how much I can really say, but it was just something out at the playground, and it dealt with a potential video of a student showing some private parts. I didn't know if there was a video, and so that's why I kind of had to report it. But also, I heard some things about some retaliation of why that student was so upset in the first place, um, by a different teacher. Um, and then my principal was actually the one to tell me to report it to DCF. Um, there, there wasn't an investigation with DCF,

but, um, the school did an investigation and then they basically just returned back to school about three or four days after the incident. So was the finding that you thought something really bad had happened? Turns out something really bad didn't happen. No harm, no foul. Or did the school find things and sweep it under the rug? I don't know. I never knew anything about what the investigation resulted in. Or did the school find things and sweep it under the rug? I don't know. I never knew anything about what the investigation resulted in.

Sometimes, depending on, and again, I don't know your state, and I don't know whether you're in a union and all that kind of stuff. But often, the complainant has a written response that comes to them. Okay. Does that makes sense so if you if you um and i know this especially in assault um investigations if you complained about something um you made a complaint i say complaining like you're whining not like that but you you made a complaint that somebody um uh sexually assaulted you or was had inappropriate contact with you, you would get, after a certain amount of time, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, you would get a written report of the findings. Even from like the school district?

Yes. Okay. I don't know if that applies in Florida. I don't know if that applies in your particular district, especially to a report like this. Why didn't the school district, I mean, why didn't, uh, what it's CPS from, from Texas. What's it called there? DCF. DCF. Why did they not do any sort of investigation? Um, they just kind of send an email after saying that there wasn't enough to go about it.

Okay. To look further into it. Okay. Based on what I was telling them. Okay, cool. So I'm guessing you're a pariah now. Yes. Yes.

And that's basically my question. Because like, I know I did the right thing. Everyone has told me that, um, I did what my administration told me to do. Um, but not just from the two people, um, but my whole kind of special education preschool team, um, pretty much will either tell me that I did the wrong thing, or when I say hi to them in the hallways, they just stare at me and ignore me. Um, my actual like para paraprofessionals in my classroom, they are on my side, if you will. Um, and so we're just kind of in our own little

classroom and the other couple of classrooms, they do their holiday party without us. They, um, kind of just stay on their side um so it's kind of getting a little lonely um absolutely and a bit awkward yeah because you're the snitch now lauren yes jeez louise okay so here's a perfect world a perfect world is you see something like that and in your mind some a couple of teachers are taking advantage sexually explicit videos of a student with special needs any student and they're laughing about it they're making jokes about it and you immediately flip your lid as you should as any adult with a pulse should and you report that your principal tells you to report it they come back and turns out it was the

whole thing was a misunderstanding in no way was what was what you thought was happening actually happening then those adults come to you and they're like hey what happened why did you report us and you say man because of this and this and they're like, hey, why did you report us? And you say, man, because of this and this. And they're like, oh, geez. I totally get it. A, thank God you care this much about students, young people, children. And that's not what happened at all. In the future, just holler at us, dude, and we'll be the first to tell you.

And there would be some sort of uh we talked about on the show probably about a year ago there was a dad who was walking out of like a tj maxx or something and his little child was throwing a temper tantrum right and then the guy walking in stopped and the dad said thank god somebody stopped even though my kids don't have temper tantrum i'm just getting out of the store i'm glad that somebody cared enough to stop. That's what I hope. That's the way I hope adults act. You know what I mean? And if I didn't do anything wrong, I shouldn't care about an investigation. I want to care about that. I didn't do anything. So that's how it, I would hope it works in a perfect world. We don't live in that world. We live in a world where it's, I told my son the other day, who's in seventh grade, he's like, I can't wait till middle

school's over. And I was like, I got got I got to break some bad news to you brother This is the rest of your life when people will be like, oh my gosh, what are you wearing? Why are you wearing this? How you cut your hair? Oh my gosh That's gonna be the rest of your life. And so You've heard me say not by your hand but in your lap You were minding your business at work and all of a sudden you saw something that was the core epitome of evil you reported it you did the right thing you didn't do anything about i mean you didn't cause any of this but it landed in your lap you responded to it and now you have to own

the consequences of having done the right thing which often are miserable yes Yes. Right? And so, it sounds like the choices you have before you are to go to another school or to make peace with I did the right thing and at the end of the day

my integrity wins out and over a long enough period of time people will make their way back to somebody who is of character.

Yeah. So that's basically my question. You tell me, I can't tell you to quit your job. I know. But you said the L word, you said you're lonely. And I hate that word.

And part of me doesn't want to see somebody like a group of immature bullies win by you leaving the other side of it is um i don't i don't want you to have an already more miserable life than you got right now for doing the right thing for trying to love and care for kids yeah you know what i mean and so there's the old saying you know jay-z like just brush your shoulders off dude or you know what I mean? And so there's the old saying, you know jay-z's like just brush your shoulders off dude Or you know jesus like dust your sandals off like i'm out. There's a part of me that's just like i'm out Like if this is how it's going to be man for me doing the right thing then God bless y'all have fun

And i'm just not going to think a second thing of it Um, what's magic about this place that you don't want to leave? Or is it just the principle of um No, it's mostly just um the people in my classroom What's magic about this place that you don't want to leave? Or is it just the principal? No, it's mostly just the people in my classroom. So I have like four adults who help me and they all have basically told me that they want to stay in my classroom for next year, that they don't want to go to these other classrooms. But they probably have little to no influence over that. Um, well, that's where our principal is actually pretty cool. Like we do, um, put forth what we kind of want and she usually tries to keep it how,

um, we kind of request it to her. Um, we kind of do have some say over what students we have in our classrooms and, um, what adults. have you gone to talk to your teacher i mean your principal and asked to say hey man things are really awful is there i don't know if they've got any ideas or they can bring people together or go for a retreat or some some way to heal some of this um but it may just be adults acting like adults and it's just hard i mean adults acting like children it's just hard yeah I mean, adults acting like children, it's just hard. Yeah. They had, um, I brought it up kind of within the first couple of days because it was a lot worse. Um, people were a lot more obvious and some names were being called. Um, and so they had brought

in and kind of talked about it. Um, since then it's more of a professional ignoring, um, if you will. They put it on you, like you'd be the grown-up and just going about your day. Yeah, kind of. I mean. Hey, listen, there's something to be said for that. There's something to be said for it. Dude, I'm going to come here and love these students, take care. I got a core group of professionals that work with me that we're a great team.

I'm going to love these kids. I'm going to go home, man. Some of that is shifting your expectations on what the workplace is supposed to provide to you. I'm going to get my friendships and my community and my connections outside of here. I also know the reality for a special ed teacher. I taught in a co-taught classroom for a couple of years. There's multiple adults in that classroom. You have to rely on the

community outside you're there at 7 a.m you leave at 7 p.m you're there all day right um that's your world man and it's no good when you can't walk down the hall and say hi and people just go like we're on mean girls part two or something like that so um i i can't tell you because I don't live in your situation and I wouldn't tell you whether you quit or not. I don't see it as a failure. I don't see it as a moral, you're somehow less of character if you leave. That's you just saying, I want to have a better life. I did the right thing. Y'all can be immature. I want to have a better life. And good special ed teachers are so hard to come by. You will have another job before you can blink. I also don't have any problem with you trying to crest above it. I'm going to continue to be nice and smile and wave. And if y'all want

to continue to give me the silence treatment, silence treatment like we're in sixth grade, then you're welcome to burden yourselves with that. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to continue to love kids, be a great professional, be a great colleague. And if I see something else that I think is abusive, I'm going to reach out. I'm going to do it every single time.

So sorry you're in this pickle, man. It's no fun, but I'm really proud of you for doing the hard thing, following your gut, even though it may not ended up, there was nothing actionable here. What was, what you thought was happening, wasn't happening. I still applaud your bravery for seeing something and saying something. All of us could do that a little bit more. Thank you so much for the call. We'll be right back. It seems like everybody's talking about how crazy the housing market is right now

and how powerless homebuyers feel. Mix that with the stress of moving and life change and job change, and you've got a tornado of anxiety fueling one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make. This is not a good idea. So if you're a new home buyer right now, my advice to you is to focus on what you can control, like the people you choose to help you in the home buying process. You need folks like my friends at Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is a Ramsey trusted provider that's been helping people with their home mortgages for decades.

And their Home Buyer Edge program will help you skip a bunch of the stress. Here's how it works. Apply to become a Church Hill-certified home buyer and cap your interest rate for 90 days. Then you'll get a $5,000 seller guarantee to help your offer stand out. So go ahead, take a deep breath because churchill has your back check them out at churchillmortgage.com slash deloney and get the home buyer edge today all right we are back let's go to d is Is it D or die? That's incredible. Die from Washington, D.C.?

It was so much more fun. Die. Yes, that's me. Can I tell you something hilarious? Sure. In college, I had a roommate from a tiny town in Kansas. Guy was amazing. He's one of my best friends in the world still.

But he listened to like Tony, Tony, Tony. And he had like NSYNC Christmas record. I did not. I had lots of Pantera records. So Pantera was coming to town and I'd seen them a few times and I was like, we got to go to this show. And so he went to the mirror and he wrote die on his forehead. But it was in the mirror. So came out backwards oh no and then it was like impermanent marker and so he had die written on his head backwards for the whole show gosh and it was awesome and now anytime i hear the word die

it makes me think of that except that's your name incredible right, Di from Washington, what's up? Hey, so I am a homeschooling mom of four kids, and I'm actually calling about my number three today. He's nine years old, and he is probably the cutest little guy you'll ever meet. He's really funny. He's very lighthearted, just a kind, kind boy. But he's also super, super competitive, like takes it so much to heart. And I mean, in everything,

it's not just athletically, it's in board games, it's in pickup sports. He plays baseball. So if they lose a game, it's borderline devastating for him. But the other thing that he is really competitive and sensitive about is school. And since I'm his teacher, I get the brunt of it. And I actually get to see his reaction to feelings of failure or losing. And so what he does when he feels frustrated or like he's just not getting a concept is he will just turn into this tiny ball of rage. And what that ends up looking like is he has very negative self-talk. He'll go up to his room and he will scream. And at the top of his lungs, he'll yell, you know, I'm so stupid. I'll never be good at anything. Why doesn't anybody like me? I'm so lonely. You know, things like that just really devolved into everything that feels like it's wrong in his life. And depending on how upset he is, like what he's upset about. And this is the part that I'm actually really concerned about is he will get his nails into

his arms or his legs until he's either got really deep, bruisey like marks or he's bleeding. But like I said, outside of school and sports, like things that involve competition or where he can get frustrated, he's just really a good boy. And I don't really know how to manage this because my husband and I, we're really intentional with the kids, like finding things to praise about them, shaming and guilting over sports, school performance. That's just, that's not part of who we are or what we do. So I'm really looking like to understand and then move forward in helping him deal with these issues in a more healthy way. That's a great question. I'm going to tell you out of the gate that I want to recommend that you take him to a local play therapist there in Washington.

Okay. Okay. And off the top of my head, here's what it sounds like. How old are your kids? I have a 15-year-old, 13-year-old, 9-year-old, and 6-year-old. Okay. So that's quite the gap. Um, I'm going to rattle off a few things that are just coming to mind. Okay. Um,

so we're talking about a kid who is somewhat dysregulated and excessively so for a nine-year-old, okay? Okay. Either, well, that could be a kid who is quietly being bullied or abused by an older sibling or an older sibling's friends. Okay. That is experienced a few things. Basically, he's got an engine inside of him that is too big for his little body to process. Okay. And normally that engine slowly opens up over time. It happens through hormones. It happens through puberty.

It happens through life experiences. We call that wisdom, right? And the dream of a parent is that we can walk alongside our kids in these milestone markers as this thing, this engine slowly grows and opens up. If there's sexual abuse at a young age, boom, you have an adult engine inside of a child body now. If there is bullying that goes on, that accelerates the opening, the growth of this engine inside of this little body. And the body, it's just like putting a Ferrari engine inside of a Prius.

The car can't handle what's under the hood, right? And so sometimes it is external behaviors that have happened to this kid. And that's where a, um, number one, I want you to, your immediate thought is that's not happening here. That should be your immediate thought as a good parent. Okay. Yeah. And the second thought should be something's happening and I'm going to go get it checked out. Okay. Do you think that, so due to the nature of my husband's employment,

we do move fairly frequently. And when I say move, we're moving from state to state. Do you think that could be a reason why this dysregulation is happening? I mean, it could be. Okay. It could be um i think so i could go to the store right now i have an old i have an old pickup truck i could go to the store and get six or seven different types of shocks on my truck i could get performance shocks that made i could go over rocks i could get um like cruiser shocks that made it real smooth to drive down the road. I could get jacked up, like, you know, make my car tall. But all those shocks have different levels of sensitivity to them. Our kids are very much the same. That's how you consider the kitchen table. And you tell one

joke and three of your kids start dying laughing. And one just goes into a frenzy and starts like, why are you making fun of me? Like, whoa. They naturally have a different level of sensitivity. All four of those shocks work great. They're just different. And so we often try to crank, like we have kids with different levels of sensitivity and you've got that and that's okay. In fact, that's beautiful.

And we want to honor that. It just looks different in different contexts and some things that may empower. I've got one kid that if we did, we moved a lot, it made him very resilient. My other kid, it would have been a much bigger challenge just because there was a sensitivity there. Could be that. Could be that. It could be that. It could just, like I mentioned, it could be a sensitivity. The other thing could be this. When you have four kids, there is somewhat of a hunger games for identity. Who am I? Right? Yeah. Do you see me? Hey, mom, do you see me? Do you see me? Do you see me? And this is the benefit and the curse of homeschooling is there is no other adult that can give your kid praise. You have to be the person. Yeah. And accidentally, not accidentally, it's very naturally,

our children gravitate. They find a path towards, here's how I'm seen. And sometimes when we catch our kids being good, which you said you and your husband do, which is awesome. We all, parents need to spend more time catching their kids doing great things instead of pointing out the things that they're failing at.

Yeah. But sometimes little younger kids will watch the praise that older siblings get for achievement and performance. Okay. And they will fall into a path of that's how I get mom and dad to love me. And then they're not as good as brother or sister.

They're not as fast or as smart as brother and sister. And in their little minds, the path towards connectivity with mom and dad has been blocked because I suck. Yeah. You see, that's exactly what, what I see. Yeah. I can totally see that. That resonates a lot with us because my oldest started college when she was 12 and is a performance pianist. My next oldest is a pianist or not a pianist, a performance guitarist. And so they have these

things that they've excelled incredibly at and he hasn't quite found his. And then here comes Daryl and Daryl loves trucks. That's right. Right? And here's the challenge as a parent. Daryl's still awesome. Yes. And if it wasn't for the Daryls in the world, princess piano players couldn't get themselves to and from practice.

That's right. Right? And so the challenge that you have as a parent is some very specific one-on-one time. This is a great opportunity for like the weekly breakfast in the morning that you do not have time for. I understand. Yeah. But that your kid desperately needs. Yes. And it may be that once a week week mom and little daryl go out for breakfast and the 15 year old has an opportunity to teach one of the morning lessons and we're going to be our dad stays at home on those mornings but what we're going to start

doing is being very intentional about relationship because we want to over time this is not going to happen overnight is it going to be like a two, five year journey you're on now. We want this. We want this kid to realize that there is no obstruction to any path I take towards love to mom. Yeah. Right. And yeah, so-and-so plays a piano. Great.

I'll give my dad and mom super props on this i was a big um super 5a high school football guy in in uh in texas right that's a religion right my dad wore my letter jacket around it was a whole thing there was like seven or eight thousand people that showed up every friday to my games it was a it was a mayhem my brother went to college on a cello scholarship. And he was a virtuoso. He was incredible. But I remember going to college as my brother was entering high school thinking, I don't know how my dad's going to toggle this.

And he did it masterfully because he never, my brother always, he went to all the concerts. He cheered for him. He talked to him about the performance. He made sure he was practicing. He went to my brother's like rock band shows. So it was a, my dad and my mom did a masterful job of never making anybody feel less than. Does that make sense?

And that just is your goal. And man, it's awesome when you can go to church and talk about well suzy's just won another national competition playing the piano and little billy is also good and daryl loves trucks right it's it doesn't sound it doesn't have quite ring to it that's your job as mom and dad yeah but all i have to say is i would um i would set up an appointment with a play therapist. Nine, I think that would be a really valuable exercise just to get an outside perspective and to rule out. Did some things happen behind closed doors that we didn't know about? Is there some bullying going on?

Is there some abusive tendencies going on? Is there some overly type A older brother and sister that this nine-year-old is internalizing as less than like whatever a great therapist can help ferret some of that out. And it may just be your nine-year-old sees the older ones and says, oh, that's how to get mom and dad to love me. And in a busy house with four little kids and you're running around and homeschooling, it's real easy to say, way to go. You did a great job on that exam. You did a great job on this thing. And suddenly the kids adopt achievement as the way to mom and dad's heart. And then as parents, it's our job to let them know on a regular basis, not just with words, but demonstrating it.

I'll always love you. Regardless of what you do, regardless of where you go, you've always got a place here, both in my home and in my heart. Because you're my kid. That's a tough mission for every parent, but that's what we signed up for.

Dad, I thank you so much for your call. Thank you for having easily the best name of anyone who's ever called into this show. And thank you for caring about all of your kids. All of them. 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, as we wrap up today's show, close this one down. I'll let you decide which song, which collar this song applies to. It's by the All-American Rejects. Song's called Dirty Little Secret. It goes like this. Let me know that I've done wrong

when I've known this all along. I go around a time or two just to waste my time with you. Tell me all that you've thrown away. Find out games you don't wanna play. You're the only one that needs to know. I'll keep you my dirty little secret. Don't tell anyone or you'll just be another regret. Hope you can keep it, my dirty little secret.

They couldn't. Don't keep secrets. It never works. I love you guys. See you soon.