The Lazy Genius Podcast - #6: Raising Boys with Chad Smith

Episode Date: June 7, 2016

Do you love The Nester? Not as much as this guy. Chad Smith is husband to The Nester and has been a teacher, youth pastor, coach, and dad to three teenage boys. He knows a lot about parenting and grace and people, and you'll learn a lot from his insights. Where to find Chad: Chad's Instagram: @chadsmithis Site for Mantime Instagram for Mantime: @mantimeus Where to find Kendra: Instagram: @thelazygenius Want to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't? Check out The Lazy Genius Collective online. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Every Day with Amazon. Hey, lazy geniuses. I'm Kendra Adachi, and you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. Here, we help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. This is Season 1, Episode 6, and my guest today is Cheneas. Chad Smith. You might not know Chad, but I bet you know his wife, the Nestor. She is my house,

muse, and possibly yours too. But her husband, Chad, is such a delight of a man. Today we talk about raising kids, especially raising boys. And Chad shares his years of wisdom as a parent, as a youth pastor, as a coach. He's done it all and been around teenagers for longer than like Most teenagers have been alive. There's some awesome advice here, and I'm so excited for you to hear it. It's too bad. You could stay outside. Maybe I could hear a rooster or something.

Oh, yeah. Cows and all of it. Did you get your goats yet? No. I think we're going to have to wait on that. As much as I would love to have them. Just, you know, I don't know why. Maybe just for, um,

Right. I've never heard of anyone wanting goats for ambiance. That's awesome. Just the whole idea of like, well, yeah, that's one of the things when you try to describe to people where you live. And, you know, it's like, well, we have 12 acres. Well, 12 acres of what? You know, it's property. But like, well, it's it's kind of a farm. Oh, what do you do? We don't farm anything. We don't have a garden and we don't have animals that would be considered farm animals outside, the fact that we have six chickens. But that's about as close as we get.

So I kind of feel like I need to, that feeling or that idea of farms, you know, I need to stuff it with a little bit of substance. Right. So the idea of maybe having some goats is, you know, that makes my description of where I live a little bit more validated. Right. Because you can just, what do you do on your front? We have goats. Boom. Conversation over.

It gets fixed. Yeah. So do you have animals? Yes. We have a dog and two cats. And that's like, well, I have that in my apartment in the middle of Manhattan. You know, so I have to say things like, well, we have chickens. and, you know, and we have goats.

Oh, and now you're in a different league. Oh, yeah, you are on a farm. Right. So, but no, I kind of feel like, too, they can be grass cutters, the old natural way. Totally. Because I would put them in the pasture and I wouldn't have to concern myself with bush hogging that. Which is another thing, too. I don't have a tractor.

I mean, we're going on living out here three years. and I can't get my wife to, you know, swing a tractor because we keep putting our money and other things like, you know, decorating the house and all that stuff. I don't know what good that does, you know, other than pay some mortgage on that. But, I mean, why does that matter? So.

That was so good. The Nestor can't quite come around to, you know, her, you know, she needs to understand, you know, where we live and the property and all that. Right. I'm poking. I'm poking fun. I know you're totally poking fun.

It's too funny. It's too funny. Do you happen to watch Shark Tank? Yes. We love Shark Tank and we love the Prophet. Yeah. Oh, Kodz loves the Prophet too. Marcus.

So we love watching that. The boys, the boys like watching it. And they like watching Shark Tank too. But they love the idea of you know, like one of the things that we notice is just how really dumb people are with their decisions. Right. Especially it's shocking to me to know that there's business owners in this country that have no clue how to balance books and know what P&L statements are and the fact that you're bleeding money, but you won't change what you're doing. And so, you know, just things like that.

That's more on The Prophet Show where he has to kind of shake some reality into him. But on the Shark Tank, we'd like it just because it's a little bit more inspirational that invention is, is that right? No, necessity is the mother of invention. And so the idea that most of these people have come from a place of they just got frustrated with something that wasn't working or they tried and tried and figured out, But there's nothing out there that can solve this problem. So I will be the one to solve this. And so that's very inspirational to watch the Shark Tank until, you know, a couple of them shoot them down and say that's, you know, the most dumbest thing on the planet.

But it's still fun. It's still fun to watch. So, yeah, we're big fans of both of those. You said you watch that with your kids, right? With your boys. Is that something because I've gotten a lot of questions. And granted, okay, so I've gotten a lot of questions from some readers about what to talk to your older kids about. And I think, I'm sure a lot of it depends on just kind of the nature of your

family dynamic, you know, like if you've got kids who are talkers or not, but I've got, my boys are four and six. And then, you know, we're due with a little girl in like five minutes. And so I wonder that sometimes because, you know, right now they want to talk to me about school. you know, they want to talk to me. Like, I'm cool. Do you find, what's that transition been like for you and your family and your sons? So tell me how old the boys are. Well, they're not really boys so much anymore, but like, tell me how old they are. And like do things like that, like watching the profit, like watching Shark Tank, talking about people and their decision making. Like, is that something that you are able to sort of, does that stimulate conversation or is that just sort of

part of how your family was. Yeah. So let's do the first thing first. Three boys. We have one that's heading out the door. He's 18. He's a senior in high school. And very, very bright boy. So every mom and dad like to brag about their kids, I will tell you I'm not kind of one of those people that like overindulges that because I have been around between student

ministry, teaching in the school system, you know, as two careers, and then coaching a lot. That's sort of the last 30 years of my life of, you know, being around students a lot. And I have encountered so many parents in all of those contexts that I have found that more of my frustrations and confrontations that I had in any of those fields, whether I was a teacher, whether I was a coach, or whether I was in student ministry as a pastor, almost overwhelmingly, the majority of time, my confrontation or frustration or conflict came from the parent, not the kid. Usually if there was something going on, I could talk to the kid and figure it out and everything,

but it was usually the parents that I wanted to strangle. You know, like, oh, my gosh, like, you're not getting this. And so I say that in the context of I want to be someone who things my boys and say truth about them, but I'm not going to be fluffy, fluffy, and be one of these parents that, you know, always the greatest kid, best-looking kid. He's like, you know, I don't get into that junk. What have you seen? What have you seen from your experience?

Like what is what's the result of that for a lot of kids just in general if their parents are approaching them that way? It's a cultural term. If you're in any type of child psychology or ministry or whatever to children or kids, the helicopter parents. The parent who is just hovering and is afraid to let them out the door to go. to go down and ride their bike down the street because in their mind, and they've watched too much TV and read too many, you know, books or magazines or news conferences that, you know, some guy and a white man is going to come up and take them,

and then their life is over. And so there's this hovering. And then there's the other side of the parent who vicariously, something in their life, whether it be sports or all, or dance or whatever that somehow they didn't cut the cheese, they didn't kind of make it or they didn't fulfill their dream. And so now there's this push to vicariously live through their kid and to put their kid on every track possible to kind of, well, I didn't make it to that level, but you are.

And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you make it to that level, even to the point that kind of what I'm talking about in extreme cases that they kind of, go loopy and they, you know, spend absurd amounts of money for them to have the best or to do this. And then there's this idea of I settle into, you know, viewing my kid as, well, he's the best or he deserves this. So you have one side where just in general parenting, you get it mostly from parents with younger kids, real children that there's this, you know, a little boy falls off the steps, parents with me, and you would think that we need to rushing to the hospital for emergency

surgery. And so I'm not thinking that a parent needs to be cold or crass or, you know, insensitive, but this, you know, sort of over-emotional reaction to, oh, dear, and then they got a holding for the next hour, you know, like that. Stuff like that, just like, okay, you are setting this. kid up, and I know I'm being very opinionated, but I have seen all these years. And so what happens is I dealt with a lot of high schoolers. I taught high schoolers when I was in the school system. I leaned more into my high school age when I was doing student ministry. I had

more volunteers that did the middle school. So I leaned more directly into interacting with high school, which I love. And so I would have students that I could get to know them and I could tell somewhere in the past, somewhere down the road in the past, I could see some of these interactions from the parent side that has sort of reared this kid that we have now that we're dealing with. Okay, so then let me ask you this, because I've got these little kids and you've got these big kids. Okay, so your oldest one is out the door. Your oldest one's 18. How old are the other two?

Yes. The middle one is 15, almost to be 16 in a couple of months. And then the next one down for that, they were Irish twins, 12 months apart, so then I have a 14-year-old. Nice. And one month later, after that, in three months, he will be 15. So I have an almost 15, almost 16, and I have an 18-year-old. Okay. So I need, so tell me.

because I don't feel like I am a loopy parent. I don't think I've gone there. I feel like, you know, I'm trying to just love my kids well. I want them to know that when they come home, it's a safe place and all of that stuff. But they're so little. And they don't really, you know, they're not really experiencing a lot of the things that kids will as they get older.

But like, for example, so here's what I want you to, here's what I want you to help me and other kind of like normal, parents who are in the middle who aren't loopy who aren't helicopter parents who are but are afraid of maybe becoming that you know like there's always this fear of like I don't want to I mean we're going to screw up our kids that's kind of I've sort of like I've kind of leaned into that a little bit like it's cool if my kids need therapy that's okay I use therapy and I love my parents like it's really fine um but I've sort of accepted um taking the pressure off myself like if every single, if I measure, well, not if I measure every word, but if I analyze every single word

that I say to my kid and, you know, like move into every interaction, like, okay, I have to do this exactly right. I feel like I'm not with them, you know, I'm not present with them. I'm not showing them that people can screw up and that people can apologize and people can become closer when gross things happen. And, you know, like, just trying to be a person with your kids is a is a lot trickier than I thought it would be. So like, okay, so for example, my, my oldest son is in kindergarten. He is precious and social. He loves to, he will talk to a tree.

He just loves people. And, um, and so he can't quite, he's just now starting to kind of grasp, um, that not everyone likes him. Um, he's not like, you know, everybody thinks I'm the coolest. He just likes everybody. So the concept of someone not like, everybody or not liking him is so foreign to his sweet little brain. And so there is like there's a girl in his school and, and she's not terribly nice to him. She clearly doesn't really like him.

She says he talks too much, which he kind of does. Like he talks a lot. It's fine. But, you know, he has said a couple of times, you know, like, I don't understand why she doesn't like to talk to me or maybe I just need to talk to her more. Like he's trying to kind of solve this problem. And, And there's this gut, there's this like, there's this mama bear in me that just wants to go smacker. Be like, be nice to my kid. Like, what is your problem? You're five years old. But then there's this other side that, you know, like, yeah, he's only six, but he's already,

he's going to have to learn how to navigate his relationships without me there. And so just, so I'm already with a kindergartner. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to mess him up. I don't want to like swoop into the situation and like try to fix it. I want to, you know, like equip him and encourage him to be able to be himself and be kind and loving to other people, even when they're not kind to him. But that is a really challenging thing. That's a really challenging thing to try to teach your kid. So whether it's to that specific situation or really to anything else, like just in general, like are there things that you have learned as.

a parent where you thought, oh, this is, I thought this way for a while about parenting, and I wish I hadn't done that. Or I see parents, you know, thinking this way, like normal parents, kind of thinking this way. And I feel like we need to take this road instead. Like, what can we do, oh, wise father of teenagers? What can we do with these little kids to, to kind of get to a point where when they're older, it's not even just that they're, you know, confident in who they are, but like maybe the question of like, what do I talk to my kids about? Maybe that's not even really an issue anymore because you just have relationships with your kids. You know, you've just developed relationships with your kids over the years and blah, blah, blah.

That's a lot of words. Do you have any thoughts for me on that? No, no. I totally, I totally agree that, you know, what you're saying with the, the, the, inclination, the natural inclination for parents, especially for younger kids. I would say anything from 10, 11, probably as much as 12 years old, our inclination to be the hovering parents, and maybe not that extreme, but just to be the caring defender and savior and, like you said, the mama bear wants to go in.

Sometimes mama bear goes in angry rather than loving to protect. tech and defend. And I think that that's a stronger inclination probably, you know, from birth up to 10, 11 years old. You would hope level-minded parents start figuring out as they enter that middle school age that there's a little bit of letting go and sort of, and they're responding to you with a little bit more maturity in being aware of themselves and things like that. I mean, that begins to happen, you would hope. for the most part, most kids, you know, at that age. So going back to what you're saying, you know, loaded question with, you know, what have I seen

or what I have done different. You know, I was talking with someone the other day who's actually a peer of mine. I mean, we went to high school together and we're good buddies, but he chose to marry a little later and so he's got younger kids. And I shared with him, I do know that in a general garage stroke that when I went through the Grace Life counseling stuff probably about five years ago, six years ago,

here in Charlotte, and then went on to go through to be certified as a counselor with them, it changed. There were some things in Grace Life that obviously I learned about myself, but it actually, there was a book that we read that totally transformed my view of parenting. And I kind of wish, and of course, you know, don't want to live in regrets, but you kind of learn something, and when something's new and refreshing to you,

you're kind of like, wow, I wish I could have gone back in those previous, you know, years, especially in their early childhood, and been more of this type of parent. or probably, you know, applied these principles, would it have changed? I don't know. I mean, it could have changed a dynamic maybe a little bit more. But we immediately, as middle schoolers at that time, when that happened, they were all in middle school. At that time, we immediately started applying some of these principals, and we saw almost overnight. and I would say, literally speaking, it would be within a few weeks we noticed a different

dynamic in our family. Wow. And so a couple of principles, you know, with that is the idea of parenting that I learned in that that was sort of new and refreshing to me is that I, my goal is to not raise an obedient child. That was one of the most transformational things to me. is that my goal as a parent is not to get my kid to do everything that I want him to do. And that can be controversial in itself with a lot of parents that are concerned about that.

But what that does, what that says to me and what kind of unfolded with the book and with the conversation that we had around the book was the idea that how the principle there of if I get my kids from all the years that they're under my roof before they go out on their own, if I get my kid at the end of that period of time to have done everything that I asked them to do and they became the most obedient child. Okay. And at the end of that, I got them to do that, but I had no relationship with them. What kind of parent would that be? Right. You know, what kind of situation would that have been?

What I realize is that as you look at how God dealt with Israel in the old covenant, the Abrahamic covenant compared to when Christ came and there was a new covenant, the new covenant of relationship, then, you know, we began to unfold that and say that it was to the heart. God went to the heart with when he sent Christ. And so now there's this idea that, look, I do. want you to obey because my principles are true and right and life giving. But what I want most of all is for you to know that I love you and I want a heart-to-heart connection with you. Because when you

are connected at the heart, then the obedience comes a little naturally. Now, the caveat with that is you got a kid who is sinful and has to experiment and have to come into themselves as they mature. And so the second principle I would say is that it's okay to have a kid be stuck and not think that we have to save them and not allow them time to kind of figure things out. Now, you know, a couple examples that I'm not saying in extreme. So if your kid, if your little boy, you know, five-year-old boys riding his tricycle out in the driveway and he wants to experiment about how, would be to ride out in the middle of the road, I'm not saying that, you know, to give him freedom to do that. Don't take me in extremes. And neither do I need to expose my boy to binge drinking to show him the horrible effects of alcohol and not to be an alcoholic. You know, let's be

level-headed here about what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that parents think so much, especially Christian parents that think they have to have a Bible verse. for every situation, you know, to help a kid who's maybe having a little love bug problem with the, you know, the girl or the boy they like at school. Or maybe your situation where a kid, you know, feels like that they're someone who's being, you know, mean to them at school and how do I respond to these? I think there's definitely need for conversation and to work through some of that. but sometimes it's okay to allow them to kind of just be stuck with that and keep the conversation going.

But, and I'd go in a third principle as well, and that is ask more questions than make statements. That's good. That's probably been one of the hugest things to me in dealing with my boys that I regret that I did not do early. is that probably about late middle school, and especially over Landis' high school years, I think our relationship has improved a little bit by me just learning to parent a little bit different the way my dad and mom parented me, particularly my dad.

And I love him. I grew up as a pastor's kid. But he, you know, he had quirkiness about himself, and there was this idea that they were very concerned about what other people thought growing up in the Baptist Church. and I had a lot of pressure on me. And so there was never conversation with me. It was always, you should do this.

And if you don't do this, there's a consequence. And so there was no relationship there at times, you know. And so once this book sort of unfolded some of those things, I began to really, you know, he might would share something. My son would share something. And instead of me saying, well, I think you should blah, blah, blah, because that's what the Bible says. I would say, well, how does that make you feel?

And what do you think is the right thing to do? And even if he says the wrong answer, well, I think I'd like to just go punch the guy. Okay. Well, if you, you know, if you do that, what do you think is going to happen? Right. Well, I'll probably go to office, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I don't care. Okay, well, let me just tell you, you need to think long and hard about that

because just going to the office could bear some great consequences and being willing to just cool down and hold back and hear what they've got to say because a lot of times I found teenagers particularly are not really going to follow through with a lot of what they say. They're testing to see if you respect them wanting to just blab and say what's on their mind or if you're going to have a reaction to their shock and all statement. and so many parents overreact that I think that they say too, they make too many statements rather than be willing to go into that real messy, squishy area of asking questions and be willing to be kind of soft on the response to those questions. That's really good. I've never actually heard, well, first thing, is the book loving your kids on purpose? Is that the book you read? Absolutely.

Okay. That book is fantastic. It is. It's like transformational. It's so simple. But that's the one thing that I walked away with the first time I read it too. And I need to read it again because the first time I read it, I had one kid and he was two. So it's like, you know. Oh, sure. Yeah. There wasn't as much I could really apply at the time. But the thing that I walked away with was, yeah, our goal is to not raise obedient, compliant children. And I just blew my mind. It just was crazy. But I haven't heard anyone really say. what you just said about with the questions and the statements, but that kids, especially teenagers, they're really not going to follow through on a lot of things they say. And I was involved in high school ministry for 10 years. And you're absolutely right. I never really connected those dots,

but they're just processing. Like they're just saying words and what a gift to give them to be comfortable with them and let them be comfortable with themselves to say these sticky things. that, yeah, they're trying to get a response or maybe they're trying to understand their own response. You know, like hearing it kind of out loud and saying it to a person, like, I just want to punch the guy. You know, you can, there's there's something about saying words out loud that can either take away their power or can empower them even more. And, and so it could be that, like, what a, what a wonderful gift to give your kids just to have a conversation with them about that kind of stuff. and to not, like you said, to not, to let them stay stuck. Like, it's okay to let them stay stuck.

That's just really, really great. That's really great. And I will piggyback off that. I know you may have some other questions, but I know kind of one primary question you sent me, I think you even kind of said it a little bit ago. We may have gone a little bit of different direction. But one of the primary questions you said is, like I get listeners asked about,

how do I have conversations at the dinner table with my older kids, you know, kind of thing. And I thought about that and a little bit of kind of what we've just shared in the last minute or two, I will tell you something that's very powerful that you don't even have to say or doesn't require words is I would question the parents, especially dad and or if it involves boys or young men, is what type of things. physical touch are you providing to them? That goes a long way.

And it doesn't have to be like this cheesy, you know, I'm going to go over and hug my 17-year-old kid, like, you know, like I'm going to hug my wife on our wedding day kind of thing. But it can be a father just going over and respecting and esteeming him as a young man. and doing maybe what you would do if you were a man doing to a work colleague or a golfing buddy, and that is, you know, just put your hand on your shoulder or just sort of tap them on the back and have eye contact with them. I mean, that's something as I've gotten older. Here's something crazy. It's the craziest thing in the world.

And I think, I don't know where it started. I have a feeling it started about three years ago when our oldest, because we're crazy parents. probably would get arrested for a lot but we sent our boy off to some uh program that he went he loves marine life and dolphins and studying you know aquatic life and so there's a program a very nationally recognized program out of of all places raleigh but they do high school college trips all over the world and he went to belize for three weeks he didn't know anybody we didn't know anybody. I mean, we did our due diligence, but, um, but I mean, we didn't know like a friend doing or anything. And he treks off and goes around the world to believe for three weeks.

We, I think we talked to him once each week or every four or five days. That's it. And, um, anyway, had a wonderful trip and learned a lot, got some college credit for it. But when he came back, I think, I'm thinking that it was about that time that something happened. in a dynamic that had never been present before, at least as them as teenagers, that every night before he goes to bed and before he leaves for school in the morning, they did it this morning. If he comes up and hugs us, he hugs me, okay, an 18-year-old boy who comes over and hugs me. Okay, so that's pretty crazy.

And the other two don't really do that. They watch their brother do it, they don't do it, but I'll tell you this, I have kind of our own unique with each of the others. I have our own unique handshakes, kind of like our little, you know, South Central L.A. kind of, you know, the Bronx kind of thing. Right. And I have one for my youngest. I have one from my middle.

And it may sound cheesy, but that's about the extent of the physical touch that we get. But it's us. It's our thing. And it's an expression, a nonverbal expression of, you know what, you and I are okay. And I love you. It might be a little weird creepy for you right now, and I get that. I respect that for you to say, I love you, Dad. You know, I want them to hear it from me, but I don't expect it back.

But when we do that handshake kind of, I think we don't know, before they go ahead, they walk out the door of school, we do it. So it's a couple times a day. But it's our unique kind of agreement, our thing that you and I are okay. I've just learned that the greatest thing that I can do for a dad, as a dad, to helping my boys is not just having my own agenda of, of, you know, expressing that to them, but just sort of saying, okay, if you're comfortable with a cool handshake, then if it's our handshake together, then that's what we're going to do, you know.

And, you know, I'm going to put my hand on you on your shoulder. I might not embrace you, but we'll put my hand on my shoulder and I'm going to respect you as a man. if, you know, how are you doing today? Like, talk to them as you would talk to your friends if they're older, you know, don't baby file. I enjoy, I enjoy having conversations with you about people because you're a relational person and you, you see people really well. Like, you, it's, I don't even know if you remember this or not. You were one of the first people. I was at your house at the barn doing some of it. I don't remember what the event was. But you were one of the first people that I told about the lazy genius that wasn't like, you know, like my family or my best friends or something.

And I didn't really have an idea. Like I had an idea. I had like an overarching like, I just feel like people are trying so hard. And I want to help them like stop trying so hard about all these stupid things. And I had had conversations, I think just the week before with some people who I like totally respect. and like we have a mutual respect. It was, you know, really great. But, but trying to kind of share this like ambiguous, unformed idea of what I wanted to do. And it's not, I don't know it's that they didn't get it. But part of it is I just hadn't articulated it very well. I didn't really

know what I was trying to create. But, and so it was those conversations that I had with those people were a little discouraging. Like, am I a crazy person? Like, I feel like this makes sense in my head, but I feel like it just landed on deaf ears right there. And I don't really know what to do with this. And then I was at your house and shared some of it with you. And it was like you got it from the beginning. And which was so encouraging to me. So I was like, Chad's like a normal smart person.

And he understands what I'm talking about. This is so good. But that was one thing that was really that I've seen in the couple of times that we've been able to interact. and I've seen you interact with others is that, and obviously I see this and what you're talking about with your kids is there's something so important about seeing people, not just through your own, the lens of your own agenda or your own personality even all the time. Like just to be able to look cleanly at a person with empathy in whatever kind of situation and just to be able to say like what you're feeling right now is valid. And even if maybe I wouldn't feel that way in the same situation, that doesn't mean that you need to change. Like my, for example, my four-year-old is we call him Angry Sugar. His name has Ben, but his nickname is Angry Sugar because he is either the sweetest, most precious little boy who you just want to steal or he will punch you in the face.

Like there's not a lot of middle ground with him. And so he's just really emotional. And one day we were at the store and he did what a lot of little ones do. He just decided, I'm not walking anymore because I don't want to leave or whatever we were doing. He did not want to do. And so he just stopped. He sat in the floor like a rock and started to sob. And I thought, okay.

And of course, there's all these people around. And so I started to think that like what you were saying before about your folks. Like we really do worry about what people. people think. You know, that's such an ingrained thing. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm that mom. Everyone's like, she has no control over her kid, you know, all that stuff. And then I just put that aside. Clean up on alpha. Right, right. So I just put that aside. And, you know, I feel, I feel really grateful that I was able to put it aside in that moment. But I thought, okay, he's sad. Like, he's genuinely sad. This is not like a power trip thing. Like, part of it is,

he's four, but he's really sad. He doesn't want to leave or he doesn't want to go where we're going. And so I squatted down and I said, hey, Ben, are you sad? He said, yeah. And I said, it's okay. I was like, it's okay to be sad. You don't need to, like, you're not in trouble for feeling sad. And I didn't say anything else. And, um, and he like kind of took a breath and he sniffed. And I said, um, can we leave even though you're sad? Like, it's okay. You don't have to be happy for us to leave and he said okay mommy and he stood up and he was still crying but he held my hand and we left and i just it kind of blew my mind that that little moment of just validating him not being like you're being silly get off the ground or picking him up and just dragging him out like just looking at him

like a per even though he's four like treating him like a person and seeing that he was genuinely sad in that moment it changed him he was willing to come with me and um because it was it wasn't that it was necessarily on his own terms but i feel like he felt like he was seen. And that's such a, um, that's such a need that we all have. We just want to be seen for who we are and not always have to be fixed.

And, um, whether that's in our, our marriages with our kids, with our friends, with our parents, whatever it is. Like, we just want to be understood. Um, and in turn, it takes a, it can take a lot of practice to kind of retrain ourselves to see people the way we want to be seen, you know, to like, to move into those relationships and be like, okay, this is not about me right now. I want to understand what's going on with you. It doesn't matter how I feel about this in this moment, you know, and that's a hard thing to do is people. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life,

whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Right, and one of the foundational points of the book, you know, that loving our kids on purpose, is the idea that we really should be parenting in a way that God parents up. and the patience that he had with Israel. And the idea that he wasn't crass to say, well, I don't care how you feel right now. I've got to get you to the promised land.

It's like he even allowed to make some poor choices. Now, there were consequences to those because he was still in control. But he allowed them to say, oh, okay, if you're going to do that, well, then guess what? If you're going to do that, you have every right and freedom to do that, but just know that I'm going to do this, you know? And I think the failure for parents, what it is, is like, I will be okay if you will just do what I say. And if you don't, then I have a fear. And so what happens when we react at a fear?

You know, that's sort of a dialogue itself. But when we react at a fear, we usually are making some very poor choices. And, you know, specifically in this category, parenting choices, it severed the relationship even more. So contrary to your situation where you chose, you wanted him to get up and get out of there, but you took a moment to validate his feelings and say, and maybe it would have gone a different direction.

Maybe he would have sat there and then started getting a little bit more ornery. Right. You know, at that point, you know, it's like, okay, well, here's the deal. You can sit here and be that way. but if you choose to make, you know, if you choose that that's your choice, then I will have to do something, you know, for the best of both of us. You know, we can't sit in the middle of the aisle. Right.

You know, this is not home. This is a public place. And so, you know, we don't need to go down that path, but just the idea that being willing to validate the feelings, being willing to validate the feelings, being willing to validate. the personhood of someone and to know that something's hard right now or you are angry about something. You know, I learned in my grace life stuff that feelings are really neither good or bad. They're just indicators of how we're processing our experience, you know. We are emotional people.

God created us to be that way, but what gets us in trouble sometimes is that we live out of our emotions and that's not that's not how God intended us for the you know for us to make decisions so um if we kind of keep that in mind of just like look how many times i'm ornery on a daily basis with god you know it's like and look at his loving kindness and his patience and his you know even sometimes there's this consequence to my decisions that are that's a natural outflow if I make a poor decision, but that's just the way life is. So how do I transfer that into taking a moment in a messy moment and dealing with my kid by validating him, but yet knowing that I still have to parent, you know.

And that's where it's not easy, you know. It's not easy. And I find that many parents approach parenting thinking it's worth parenting thinking it's one, two, three, and I'll do this, and everything will be fine. And, oh, boy, if it's not, then my automatic resolution is, you know, spanking or timeout or, you know, grounding or what, and there's no conversation. There's no, how did you feel? Okay, I want to understand how you're feeling.

I know you're angry. I know you're sad. I know if there's no interaction. And then they wonder why they have a no relationship or they can't get respect. Which I'll throw in something I've learned in student ministry. I don't believe, believe it or not, I don't believe that there's such a thing as a rebellious teenager. I don't believe in that term. What I do believe is that there's angry teenagers that are letting that anger out because they're crying out for someone to just at least take a minute and hear them out

and to understand that either through their experience or through their presumption of something that hasn't happened. yet they have a lot of emotions with their you know with themselves that they they're still undeveloped you know their brains not even developed yet right and so I think that we especially with teenagers we don't we don't talk to them as adults and and and respect them to just hear them out and that doesn't mean that we let them do what they want, but, you know, we don't, we're not patient enough as parents or youth workers or pastors or whoever to just talk to them and let them, you know, tell us how they're feeling. Right.

And so, anyway. I think that's really good. And this, what I wanted to respond to that, we'll kind of segue into just quickly into kind of relationships, like friendships because I think that when we're parents, we see our job as like solving problems, like solving our kids problems. And, um, and that is not, that's not always the, you know, situation or, um, that's not even our role, you know, like, because we're not going to always be there to solve their problems. And, um, but there is something about, um, being comfortable.

I think people are are too uncomfortable sitting not just in silence, but in lack of resolution. Like if a friend, if your kid or if a friend comes to you with something really difficult or even not difficult, just something that is messy to them, that's making them unsettled in some way. we we kind of automatically want to fix it because we want the people we love to be happy. And it's really, which is a beautiful thing. There's nothing wrong with that. But there's something so hard about just sitting and not saying anything or like I just, I have recently in the last couple of years have and even a couple of months,

my little niece got diagnosed with cancer just a couple of weeks ago. And she's four. and, and, and I've, you know, I've had friends who have had cancer and, and, and all kinds of, like, hard things. But there's something, we have this automatic, again, especially in, in the Christian world, is we have this automatic response of like, you know, oh, well, God's got everything in control or God's going to work everything out. Or, you know, it's, it almost sounds like these platitudes that we sort of give people because we are so

uncomfortable sitting with them when they say that they're angry about something. Like that if your kid says, I want to punch that guy, you would be like, no, no, you can't punch that guy. Or if your friend says, I don't know, I feel like God has abandoned us. This is so hard right now. I feel like he's abandoned us. And our response is, oh, no, he's not abandoned you. Like, we react rather than being like, I can understand why you would feel that way.

Because it makes us uncomfortable. Exactly. Exactly. And so there's something, there's something inherently beautifully difficult about being a person because we, we can find, like you said, we want steps one, two, three. If we do A, B will happen. And we want that in all of our relationships, I think, you know, like if you, like, if you can just find a friend who, or even like, we'll talk about like your marriage. Like if you're like, well, you go out on a date, if you have a date night every week and if you did it up, you know,

like you list all these things. Like if you do these things, then your relationship is going to be fine. And that is just not to me, that's not how my life has ever worked. Like putting in these placeholders, these relationship placeholders, they have never ever worked. And so I wanted to ask you, this is like a sho segue, but about about friendship too, because I know you're relational person. And I also know you guys have moved a lot. And so when when life kind of becomes unsettled and I've thought about this with friendships. And I had a reader named Hannah who was asking about this. I think she either has recently moved or maybe this has been part of her thing. But being a friend, being a grown up friend is a lot. It's been a lot harder for me than I thought it

would be like just in the last I'm 34 years old just in the last five years or so have I really started to make my friends that I'm like oh this is what friendship looks like um it's kind of a it's kind of an interesting thing because everyone told me you know um high school is the best they're the best years of your life and then when you go to college you're going to make your best friends ever for some people that might be true um it was absolutely not true for me and um and so just kind of the um I mean I mean, I have, like, friends from college that I still talk to, but, but, you know, it's, it's a different, it's a different, it's a different, it's a different, it's just been a different ballgame of how life is done. And so, anyway, all that to say, I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on, um, being, being a friend to, like, being a friend to, like, your peers and what that looks like, um, the messiness of that, you know, and like, what does it mean for you to be, you to be. a good friend to a person that might not look the same way that other people view adult friendship. Oh, boy.

Well, I will tell you, it's been extremely difficult for us the last two years. You know, even though we've moved, we've been here going on three years, August will be three years out here on the farm. On the farm. On the farm without animals, you know, without crops. So whatever. The homestead. I would, it's like we have neighbors out here in this rural, you know, farming community, crazy country, Podant County.

We have neighbors, but they're like, they all own land too. So they're like up the road behind all their cornfields, you know. But it's like we don't know them, really. Our church environment is not one that's in this community. Again, there's lots of explanations on that, but basically, most of the churches out here are not a fit for our family in regards to their, you know, 150-year-old churches, and they're only 60 people, and they're all over 80 years old, and I don't know if they'll be around in the next five years from these churches. And so lots of reasons that way. So we're driving a little ways more into the city, into Charlotte area. to go to a church right now.

And the reason we chose that a little bit connected with what your question is, is because when we did live more in the suburb of the community that we were in, the church we went to, we got to know all these people. And so now we're driving quite a distance, you know, most Sundays. And mainly because we, you know, we want to see those friends again. And so I will say that it's been extremely hard for us in the last couple years, mainly because of the dynamic of not just, not that we've moved away from our friends, but it's the fact of where we live. It's been hard for us to kind of even make new friends because of the type of environment that we're in. You might see them at the local Walmart if you hit the right day, you know.

The boys are to have friends at the high school, but we don't really know the parents of those friends. You know, we try, but it's been a challenge. I don't have a huge answer for that in our present situation. You know, prior to that, we moved in areas that we were always in neighborhoods and we would just pick up friends and that kind of thing. this has been a real challenge and you know for me as an extrovert it can be especially challenging because one thing you know that I find that I do thrive off of is interaction with you know other other guys other friends and you know we we do have some friends that both as a couple

Like I like the husband and she likes the wife. And so, you know, sometimes that doesn't always, that dynamic always doesn't fit. Oh my word. Couple friends are no joke. Like that's like a unicorn search. It's so weird. Wow. Don't you know?

I mean, how many times it's like the wives are friends like, oh, you'll love so and so. And you get together. It's like, okay, this guy, I have nothing in common with this guy. And it's like, let's not do anything. You stay with your girlfriend and I'll just find my own guy for. ends or whatever. But there are some situations that we

have that. And what we've had to do Kendra, and obviously we might be, I might be a rare bug in this, that most of your listeners might not be in the situation that we're in solely of where we live, being a little bit more removed

in a rural area. But what we've had to do is just, you know, thank goodness for the positive aspects of technology, that there's texting and email and things like that, and that you just have to be purposeful to say that, you know, hey, in a couple of weeks on a Saturday, we love to get together or something like that. And I know some of that seems sort of obvious, and it still might be tough to kind of actually

flesh it out. But I just realized that even more so moving out here, I've had to be more intentional as opposed to if you're in a neighborhood or a suburb or live in town in an urban community where you just happen to walk outside, you're walking your dog, you run into five friends within a 15-minute walk. Right. It's extremely challenging when, you know, you don't even run into them and you have to be very purposeful to call. Now, Michaelin obviously is a lot more like, yeah, I don't care. You know, I don't want to sound crap or be a wet blanket and be a downer. But like, if I passed away, you know, I think she would be perfectly fine out here on the farm and her

sister and you and a couple other people would come visit her every once a while. And life would be just fine. She'd be fine. You're married to the most. introverted I've ever seen. I love it. Yeah. So if it were the opposite, I think that, you know, how people live in the suburb and they buy like a cabin, you know, to go to on the weekends or buy a beach house to kind of get away. Yeah. I would probably still live here, but my getaway or my vacation home would be, you know, an apartment in Manhattan or something like that. Like, I would have to have escapes to run into people and just like have a way. weekend of just nothing but like total conversations and then I'd have to come back to my little

farm and where there's no animals but you know ride my four-wheeler and fish and hunt and that kind of thing and I have found out that little side note here and that's all I have found I've discovered that either I'm getting older and more you know grumpy and crunchy and old or I don't know and or I've realized being out here and having a lot more alone or secluded solitude, that I'm not as extroverted as I thought I have been all my life. And so friendships are going to look different to people who are extroverted as opposed to people who are introverted. And so I would say I can't really answer that question on an individual basis to your listener,

but I will say the listener has to know who they are. And if they're a real extroverted person and it's still a challenge, maybe you have too high of an expectation. And if you're an introvert and it's hard, maybe you need to find that one friend that you do know, even though you may not see them very often, but find that friend that you do have in your life. And I would guess that most introverts do have that one extroverted friend and be a little bit more, be willing to kind of be a little risky and say, you know, I need to get out a little bit more. And, you know, I know I don't see you very often.

I don't see a lot of people very often. But, like, would you plan something for us? Right. You know, like, if you plan it, I will come. Let's say the, you know, the first Sunday of every month, Sunday evening, we're going to get together for coffee or we're going to, like, would you just help me, you know? Yeah. So I would say the answer kind of to that is just the listener has to know who they are.

They need to figure out if they need help being pulled or are they need. or they need to realize that they have too high expectation and they need to kind of chill out. Yeah. You know, and maybe solitude is helpful for them, you know. And there's something, too, about, I remember you saying one time that sometimes we have, this is just a random conversation we were having. And you said something about how often we kind of inflate parts of our personality, like you just said.

You've thought that maybe you thought you were more extroversation. than you are or that you needed more interaction than you necessarily do. And we do that a lot, I think, with our personalities that we kind of aggressively lean into parts of them. And a lot of time, you know, I see especially with, I think this is probably, I would assume, more true with women than it is with men, maybe not. But there's just, it's hard to be content with having, let's say, three friends. Like, okay, if I'm going to get together with friends, it's, it's me and three people. Like, that's what it looks like. Being okay with that when you see other people doing friendships so differently, having, like, you know, does it, like, just so many friends that they, you know, go on vacation with.

And they have, like, these elaborate girls weekends with, like, a dozen people. And those are beautiful things. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. And it's not that those things aren't real. But I think that so often we look at the way other people are doing, well, just about anything, but the way people are doing a relationship and it looks so much better than what we think we have and therefore we think we're doing it wrong. And it's really just that people are different.

Like you just people are different and it doesn't make you a bad friend or an unlikable person because you have a fraction of the relationships that, you know, Sally next door has. That doesn't mean anything for you. That has no bearing on your value as a person as a friend. and I think we just get too hung up on that sometimes. So let me, as we kind of wrap up, I want to ask you a couple of questions, and these can be whatever kind of answers you want. But can you tell me something recently that you love, something you need and something

you hate? I need music every day in some form. Like whatever mood I'm in, I mean, you would probably be really surprised. at my, you know, vast array of music appreciation, like, I might be listening to something that's very hard. And, you know, I grew up in the 80s. So obviously, I'm going to say that we probably had the best music ever. Of course.

Of course you're going to say that. So, but, you know, I like you too. I like Coldplay. I like, you know, I love the thing. standards. Like that's one person. A question was asked me one time, you know, who have you never seen in concert that you would love to see? And I said, well, I've never seen you two, and I would love to see you too. But I was like, another one is I'll never go get the chance and I would love to have seen Frank Sinatra. Like, I love the standard. So, you know, I even like, you know, the modern

Michael Boubley. I like that music. Yeah. You know, my parents, I can remember my parents listening at Christmas to Johnny Mathis. I love the old stuff. Um, easy as it is, you know, the carpenters or, you know, it just, I have such, I don't really lean a whole lot into hip hop, but I do like R&B, old R&B. So I, and whatever mood I'm in, and I love worship music too, blah, blah, blah, but like, I just know that even if it's a few songs that I listen to on my way to where I'm driving, I've got to, I've got to have some music. I need some music in my life every day. Awesome.

So that's one thing. Okay, what do I hate? Yeah, I can get a lot of trouble saying some of this. I don't deal very well with drivers who should not have a license so they don't know what they're doing. Oh, boy. You can leave it there. That's fine. You can walk away.

That's a good answer. not go there. That could be, I could kind of, yeah. Yeah, that's good. I could, I'm not even Catholic and I may have to go to confession, you know, if I go down that road. What do I love? I love, I love meat and chocolate. Nice, nice.

So, you know, like, I, I, A good steak that's done really well, and I had one a couple weeks ago with a friend. It's even better when it's with a man-dude friend that, you know, we... Do you grunt in each other while eating? And we learned about bourbon whiskey, and we had a great steak, and it was expensive, but it was worth every done. And I loved just that whole environment. I love learning about story, because we did the contests. We did the Kentucky bourbon tour or Kentucky bourbon trail, you know, buddy.

And I love learning about the history. I'm a sucker for learning history and the stories of people who, you know, fought hard for something that they believed in and they left a legacy. And so, yeah, I love that. That's awesome. That's sort of recent. I almost say that. That could change next week.

That's what I love. That's how it goes. We're supposed to change. It's fine. That's so good. I love those. Okay. Well, Chad, I'm so grateful that you did this. This was so great. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. And I have no doubt, no doubt that people listening, especially parents who are like just sort of waiting through this scary muck or maybe even just looking at it. Like they haven't had kids yet, but they want to. And it really is a terrifying thing. Like everything changes because you have people. like human people to take care of that depend on you. But it really is, you've shared a lot of freedom for people today.

And I'm really grateful for that and excited about that. And I think that's really exciting. So thank you for taking the time. Good. For not sounding selfish, because this is your podcast and all about you, but I will say for women who might be listening and maybe their husbands, would like to be encouraged. Yeah. You know, I do have the event coming up, Mantime.

Yeah. And they can find out more about that at mantime.us or dot us, you know. Mantime.com. And there's a chance that when this is released, because it's Manitimes in April? Okay. Yeah. Is that right? It's April 14, 15, 16.

Okay. So there's a chance that Man Time will have passed when this is related. least because frankly, I don't know when I'm going to do this because of this baby that's coming in five minutes. That being said, this is not a one-time thing that you do. They can also follow on Instagram. So there might be some Instagram encouragement, you know, for them. So that's just take out the dot. So it's at Mantime Us. At Mantime Us. And I really would encourage, because this is the second Is this the second time you've done man time, the midtime weekend? Second overnight.

It's the third man time, but yes, the second one that's the full weekend. And you feel like this is something that you will do again, too, right? We will do it and we're actually looking to expand it to where, you know, we were doing it once a year. I think now we're looking to do it or at least have under the flagship of man time have different events, multiple events that are going to happen this year. It's so awesome. It might not be looked the same way, but there might be just day events. We're looking at doing a father and son thing.

We're looking at doing maybe an off-site man-time thing. That's still man-time, but it's not here at our property, but we might try to organize something and experience off-site. So we're trying to plan that man-time as an entity will have multiple events this year. That's fantastic. So man time. Us and I'll put that in the show notes of the other website so people can click on that and wives can click on it and then send it to their husbands because that's so it's such a

it's such a wonderful thing. That's one of my favorite things about you and Michaelin is that's been really, I hate the word inspiring, but has been really inspiring for me just to see people who like they, they have uncovered what it is that they love doing. and that can change over time, but you guys have have found what you love to do, but you're finding your own way to do it. You know, you're doing it and what fits with your life and with where you are. And it's just really exciting for me.

And I know for other people to see that we don't have to do things the way everybody else is doing them, that you can have a passion for something and just create your own thing. You know, it's just a, it's so fun to watch. So that's exciting that you're expanding. That's just great news. Well, Chad, thank you so much for being on podcast. Sure. And I hope you have fun, making your fill your farm with goats.

I hope so, too. Thanks, guys, for listening. We have sadly missed this spring's man time, but we'll put links to the website and Instagram account in this episode's show notes at the lazy genius collective.com slash podcasts. If I were a dude, I would totally go to Man Time, so you should check it out.

We'll be back next week with Addie Jones, a designer for anthropology and all-around creative rock star. If you enjoy listening to the Lazy Genius podcast, so glad you're here. If you haven't subscribed yet, we have a few more episodes left. You can be sure to not miss any of those. And if you haven't left us a review, it's honestly not too late. Those matter all the time, anytime. So thanks for taking the time to do that. Thank you even more for being part of the Lazy Genius Collective.

and we'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

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