The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Raising Values: A Two Way Street

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

https://www.facebook.com/RaisingValuesPodcast/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.instagram.com/raisingvaluespodcast/http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.prepperbroadcasting.comhttps://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastGillian and Phil are back at the table to talk through an experience they had recently: that moment when the parent/child relationship became a two way street. The Rabalais' have always believed in maintaining an atmosphere of discipline and respect in their home, pushing back HARD against the uniquely Millenial urge to befriend your children. But, along the way, they also worked hard to keep the lines of communication open with their daughter for those moments when she needs to check in with her parents on how the communication is being received.Raising Values Podcast is live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices.family, traditional, values, christian, spiritual, marriage, dating, relationship, children, growing up, peace, wisdom, self improvement, masculinity, feminity, masculine, feminine

Welcome to the Raising Values Podcast, where the traditional family talks. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. You can support the Raising Values Podcast through Patreon. Bill and Gillian are behind the mic, and we hope you enjoy the show. welcome back to raising values good morning everybody i apologize in advance for the coughing i'm still feeling crappy sinus infections are a thing especially right before prepper camp that's like i don't think i was sick last year though before prepper camp you didn't go last year i know that's why i wasn't sick so it's prepper camp that you're allergic to it's the stress of i don't know it's also working with children

the little germ factors i do feel better i don't feel like i don't feel horrible. I feel a little run down, but I apologize for the coughing. And for the audio listeners, I have given her pre-instructions to please stop speaking, then cough, then start again, so that I can end as much of this possible. We'll see how that goes. We'll see how that goes. But anyway, good morning. Hello, Phoebe. Welcome to the podcast. We'll see how that goes. But anyway, good morning. Hello, Phoebe. Welcome to the podcast.

Yeah. We have a busy two weeks ahead of us. We will not be on air next week as we will be at Prepper Camp. Well, but let me qualify that. We won't be streaming on YouTube and Rumble next weekend because we're going to be in Saluda. On YouTube and Rumble next weekend. Because we're going to be in Saluda. But if you listen to the audio podcast. Or if you.

If you. Well actually no. I take it. I stand corrected. If you're subscribed to YouTube. Our audio podcast do rebroadcast on our YouTube channel. And we are going to be releasing content from Prepper Camp. Well as a matter of fact. Are you releasing it on Raising Values, too?

It's on the same stream. But what I'm saying is, like, you and I have... Take that back. Well, you, me, and Andrew have really talked through, like, is that going to be... Is that morning show we do all three days going to be just a matter-of-fact show? Or are you going to join us and it be just the three of us together? Because... I think it needs to be the three of us.

Okay. So... Decided. For those of you who don't care about matter-of-facts, because you're not part of the crazy Prepper The three of us together because... I think it needs to be the three of us. Okay, so... Decided. For those of you who don't care about Matter of Facts because you're not part of the Crazy Prepper people, and I don't blame you, but you do listen to Raising Values, then you would be able to catch this on YouTube

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning because as long as the gods of cellular networks, you know, behave themselves, we're going to record a morning show and upload it. It should be up by like, I don't know, 9, 10 o'clock in the morning, depending on upload speeds. Sure. Whatever you say, dear.

Podcast producer. So anyway, Harper Camp is next weekend, and we'll be there the whole weekend. We don't leave until Monday. And then what else? Merch, merch, merch, always merch, merch, merch. And you can look at the show notes to purchase T-shirts, mugs, whatever. Do you want to grab those koozies?

Oh, yeah, we do have some koozies. So I'm not a koozie person personally. I don't drink. Let's see if I can make this a little closer. I like this one. I have a shirt like this. It says, first of all, I'm a delight. And it has the angry possum.

That's a fun one. This is a matter of facts one, although it doesn't have matter of facts on it. But it's what would Bert do? Bert Gummer from Tremors. If anybody doesn't know who Bert Gummer is, you led a very tragic sheltered life this one's my favorite raising values podcast one it's the happy camper thank you nina i love the new shirts too and then um created this one for a matter of facts it's um what is it street fighter so this was a riff off of like the street fighter player select screen from way back in the day when we were kids and this is like who are you going to be in the apocalypse what kind of warlord are you going to be are you going to be lord humongous or are you

going to be you know mad max yeah so you can it says apocalyptic warlords player select and then the matter of facts and it's got six different warlords on it and then of course just our regular logo um but there's more stuff on there there's more uh there's different graphics that i just don't have actually i do have these right here too the burnt out but optimistic which is my favorite of your line by the way and all of these you can get on shirts too and then this one is my one of my favorites, by the way. And all of these you can get on shirts, too. And then this one is one of my favorites. Good energy is contagious. It's a raising values. Anyway, so, yeah.

Options, options, all galore. You can head over to Southern Gals Crafts and purchase all that stuff. And I think the plan was to bring those to Prepper Camp as a bribe for people joining us on the podcast. Yeah, I think if you sign up to become a patron, right there at the booth you get a koozie. Oh, I was going to, like, if somebody wanted to interview with us. Oh, we could do whatever. I don't care. I don't care.

But these two are staying here because they're my favorites. Anyway, so yeah, prepper camp i don't think there's anything else announcement wise that we need to go through and then i don't really think there is i mean prepper camp is like you know kind of well at least for at least from my perspective like that's one of the two big events a year that this this group of podcasts does and mean, you and Piper did not come last year, for which a lot of people asked where are Piper and Gillian. And this year I'm glad you are coming back with us. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, as long as Mother Nature behaves herself.

Yeah, it looks like we might be camping in a tent through a tropical storm. So we'll see. Which I will just point out that several years ago i was on the fence about going to prepper camp because this is back when i was still going by myself before y'all started joining me and i was on the fence about going because we had like a little i think it was a cat two hurricane that was passing right through here like on a monday or tuesday and it may have had to have been a Tuesday because it was supposed to pass through here and Thursday morning in the wee hours of the mornings when I

get on the road to go up there and I was telling everybody like hey if we get smacked by this hurricane and it's bad like I can't leave my wife and daughter here to deal with it and as it turned out the hurricane went way over to the west and it went over I want to say between Lafayette and Lake Charles so I told everybody her, okay, the hurricane didn't come my way. I'm getting on the road. That hurricane went up through Lake Charles, Lafayette, swung hard right and hit me in Saluda, North Carolina. I want to say it was Thursday night. It was the night I got there. And I remember texting you from the tent while it's blowing overhead say hey babe remember that hurricane that missed us it's here i know what did what

did surprise you that i've already started looking at like hotels just in case just in case the weather gets too bad that i'm not surprised i'm i'm just gonna to say that, like, I think we'll be okay. I think we will be, too. Just the thought, though, of being in a fabric shelter in a tropical storm. I didn't. Good for you. You also went to war, and you did all sorts of things that I will never, ever, ever want to do. Or if I'm made to do, I might just figure out a way to get out of it.

But camping in a fabric shelter in a tropical storm slash hurricane is not up there on my to-do list. So we'll see what happens. I mean, if it got bad enough, I'd have crawled inside the truck. Ay-yi-yi. Anyway, get on with the show. On with the show. So we kind of went back and forth on what to title this. It's called A Two-Way Street.

That's what the title of today's episode is, A Two-Way Street. And it can go all sorts of ways. But the way that we wanted to kind of focus this was based on something that happened this week because that's what this podcast is about is true life things and things that happen in the Rabelais house. So a two way street and where we're going with that is parent child relationships being a two way street. So give you some backstory. I can't remember what she did are you looking at me like it was bedtime yeah oh that's right it was bedtime which it was bedtime which is 10 o'clock

because it was 10 30 well no her bedtime is 10 o'clock right no it was 10.30. I thought. No, her bedtime. She was going to push it back even further. No, no, no. Her bedtime is at 10.30. I mean, I'm sorry. 10 o'clock is her bedtime. She likes to watch things on her phone or do things on her phone or whatever. So for the past couple of nights, she's been coming in and asking for an extra 15 minutes.

Can I have an extra 15 minutes? Extra 15 minutes. Can I have an extra 15 minutes, extra 15 minutes? She had been working really, really hard that day, the whole day, even at school, on writing up a campaign for our Dungeons and Dragons thing that we do. I don't know. I don't know the lingo yet. I'm still just, I'm learning who I am in Dungeons and Dragons. She's a level two elf druid. I'm a level two elf druid. Okay. Anyway, so Piper's writing this campaign. And when I tell you writing, she's like writing backstories of characters and she's writing plots and she's writing the story, the whole backstory. characters and she's writing plots and she's writing the story, the whole backstory. It's insane what this child has created. And it's, you know, five or six pages long right now, whatever.

So she had been working on that diligently all night. Well, 10 o'clock rolls around and she realizes, oh, it's bedtime. I haven't had a chance to get on my phone and tootle around and do what she does on her phone. So she comes in and she asks if she can have an extra 15 minutes. Well, Phil being Phil, no offense, don't take offense to this. Hey, 10 o'clock is your bedtime. No, we're not. You keep asking for extra time. Why do we have a bedtime if you keep asking for it and we keep giving in and giving you the extra 15 or extra 30 or whatever? You know, it was one of those things, make better choices kind of thing. Like, you know.

Manage your time better. Manage your time. Think about the outcome of your time. And, you know, you stayed up writing this thing all night. Now it's bedtime and now you want to do something else. Well, time's up. So that's something that we've been trying to teach her. And that is a lesson that will go far in life, especially when she has deadlines with work and deadlines with school. And we all have deadlines. We all have things that we have to meet at a certain time. It could be even a

doctor's appointment or whatever, keeping your appointments, keeping your deadlines and your time management skills up. Got to teach them these things as they're kids. Well, Phil being Phil, and me being me, can't we just give her 15 minutes? She's been working really hard. At least it wasn't something that she's just been, you know, she didn't waste her time. She's been using her time efficiently doing something that she loves to do. Can't we just give her 15 more minutes? Well, Phil, anyway, this whole conversation ensues. Piper's crying, not like hysterically crying, but she's upset.

She's disappointed because she's not going to get the extra 15, whatever. And Phil is kind of riding her a little hard about he was upset because this look I'm getting from him. Well, now I was upset at you and her because I'm getting it from both ends. Well, that's what I'm trying to get at is, and it made total sense once you said it, getting it from both ends. He's getting the attitude in the morning of not wanting to wake up. And that comes from me. That is hereditary. My sister is watching. I don't know if she's like this. I'm sure she is. And Andrew, her future husband can attest to this. We are not nice people when we are woken up. There are three

alarms that have to go off in order for me to wake up in a pleasant enough mood that I'm not going to commit. I'm not going to break any laws. I'm going to put it like that. It's not that bad, but it is that bad. It is that bad. It is that bad? It is that bad. Well, it's hereditary, and Piper obviously has this same trait. So she sets her alarms, but she turns them off and continues to sleep. So we have to be out of the house by 7, 10 in order to get to school on time. So by 6.30, she needs to be out of the bed and doing the things that she needs to do to get ready to get out of the house in 40 minutes. Um, and usually Phil has to go in there and wake her up. Usually Phil is her fourth alarm clock. And that's why at

that moment when I've got her, I've got her, you know, kind of from my perspective, I guess, fussing a little bit about bedtime. Then I've got you saying, well, just give it to her. And I'm like, that's when I finally said, I'm like, okay. To Piper, I said, the next time you sleep in, I'm not coming to save you. I've got to let you. Apparently, the kinder, gentler dad that pats you on the butt and says, hey, honey, it's time to get up, that's not working. So I'm just going to let you fail. And when you fail,

when mom comes and finds you at like 10 minutes till seven, you got to rush and have a bad morning. That will be your lesson because I'm not able to teach this to you apparently. And that was the same thing I told you. When you have to wake her up and deal with the attitude, then you can come back to me and we can talk about what time her bedtime needs to be. I was basically just washing my hands of it saying, fine, if y'all both think that the bedtime is unreasonable, I'm going to let both of y'all suffer the consequences that I am currently getting. So it made sense that he was getting it on the front end, which is the wake up, the padded poking stick kind of wake up the dragon and then also getting asked on the back end can i have extra time before i go to sleep knowing that she needs sleep because she's a growing child and obviously um obviously has the same traits as her mother as far as waking

up and what phoebe just said rushing in the morning makes me more upset than anything. And that's, that is Piper too. And so we are very mindful of that because she even gets upset if we are rushing and I go to the car before her, like we have to walk out the door at the same time because then she's a little bit okay. But rushing her in the morning sends her just, it's, it's a bad day. It's And it affects her entire day. It affects her entire day. So we have to choose between the two evils. Are we going to rush in the morning and she's going to miss all of her alarms? Are we going to go in and poke the bear and get her up out of the bed so that she can get going? Anyway, Piper goes to her room and she's upset.

We can hear her crying. She's upset. We can hear her crying. She's upset. She's having some anxiety. She's also like me in the fact that I have to go to sleep. I know I need to go to sleep, but I'm not tired and I can't go to sleep. So that gives me some anxiety. And then your head just starts spinning. Well, I'm going to be very tired tomorrow.

Tomorrow's going to be very rough. I need to be to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. So she goes in and out of the bathroom and we hear all this. And so we call her back into the bedroom and you can definitely see that she's been crying. And she said, uh, and so we start talking and we're not being rough or anything. It's very calm voices, very nurturing voices. We want to know what's wrong. Tell us what we know that you're disappointed in the phone, but what has transpired from our talk that made you this upset? Why are you this upset?

this upset. Anyway, so she tells us that she was actually scared to come talk to us and tell us that she does everything that she can write. She's, you know, she's an A honor roll student, like straight A's, has been her almost her entire life, we never have to fuss her about homework. We never have to fuss her about, um, cleaning her bedroom. Um, we do have to fuss her about bringing her laundry and bringing her dishes to the sink and things like that. Normal kid things, but there's so many things that we don't have to fuss her about. And her, her point of view was I do so many right things, but y'all always pick the one wrong thing that I did and harp on it and make me feel bad about it. And I had just told that to Phil before, like after she had walked out, I said, I guarantee you, she feels like she does good things all the time. And then that one time she stumbles we pick that

apart and throw it back in her face and then she came in and said that and I was like okay um and I know that feeling I know the feeling of trying my best and making sure that I'm on top of all my things making sure that I'm on top of it on top, making sure that I'm on top of it, on top of it. And then when I have that one stumble, man, am I hard on myself about that one stumble and not giving myself grace or trying to fix it and figure out, well, why did I stumble or anything like that? I'm just super hard on myself. And I think that's what she was getting from us was I stumbled,

and now my parents are being hard on me because I stumbled instead of giving me the grace. But what Phil does is this is where we differ so much in parenting and in life. We are opposites. Phil is able to look at things analytically and remove the emotion from all of it and see things for really what they are. And it's not like, and she's right over here now. It's not like she's not a bad kid at all. She is, we were saying this last night. We're lucky that we have a child. What? Oh, she just realized we're talking about

her. We're lucky that we have a child that's like her, that we don't have to fuss her for a whole bunch of things. However, I hate the word. I hate the phrase. We're so lucky that our kid is so awesome. So explain that. So my, my perspective on calling, and this isn't just our daughter. This is everything in life. I hate for someone to equate good fortune or good behavior or good outcome to luck. Because it removes all of the accountability and all of the effort from that situation. It's like if someone told you, oh, you're so lucky you have this awesome marriage and this awesome family and you'll live a comfortable life, it totally overlooks the fact that we have an awesome marriage because we worked our butts off to have it. We're very firm on having open communication.

We're both very committed to each other. Like, that's not luck. It's not like you rolled dice and won the husband lottery. It's been years of work to build this. It's been years of work to build this household. It's been years of work to raise her. And I hate saying that's luck because it just means that if we'd have rolled the dice differently, we'd have had something different. And that's not the case. We made intentional decisions and followed through to produce all of this. And so did she. That was the other thing I pointed out is that she works her butt off to be as gifted academically as she is to, you know, to cultivate the friendships that she has to be the kind of person that like, I'm super proud to call my daughter, that's work. That's effort. That's not luck.

And that's why I hate that phrase, oh, you're so lucky. Because I'm like, no. Luck is not a replacement for hard work. And that's why I said that. Because I knew that you were going to go off on that. And I agree with you. I don't think it's luck that we didn't just luck out with a kid like we have. Fortunate, maybe?

Well, yeah, we're fortunate. But she's a product of the two of us. She is definitely a mixed bag of the two of us. But she works her butt off. And a lot of things do come easy for her. She is so smart she's like so brilliant like she can read something and she knows all about it um and then she'll like pour herself into something and then she knows even more about it um and i take dungeons and dragons Dungeons and Dragons as an example. She will tell me all sorts of things.

And to me, she's speaking French, but to her, it is another language that she is speaking. And the crazy part of it is that you and I both know her brain is running twice as fast as her mouth is. You can see it in her eyes. Her eyes are going all over the place because she's pulling information from different parts of her brain.

It's insane to watch this kid. But it's been like that since she was little bitty. I see a lot of that from you and me, though, because you are that way about entomology, biology, and things that interest you. And your brain can just like brute force that information out of your mouth at a speed that most people can't pick up and i am that way with like technology mechanics most you know things i'm interested in where i'm just like oh you want to know how an

engine works i'm going to waste 45 minutes of your life explaining to you everything about internal combustion works from 1902 to current see and that's the difference between me and you as far as that goes, is I've learned how to install a filter of, I'm going to give you just enough that you need, the information that you're looking for, and then I'm going to hold back. And then if you ask questions, then I will give you more information, but I'm not going to sit there for 45 minutes and tell you why a spider eats the way that it does it's hard to put a filter on a fire hose though well anyway so back to the topic at hand of making it a two-way street so i i kind of

turned to you in the bed and i looked at you jokingly a little bit. I was like, sounds like a really good raising values topic of keeping those lines of communication open. But here's where I was. Here's kind of what this episode is about. We are able as parents to call Piper out on the things that she hiccups on or stumbles on or whatever. Not necessarily just everyday discipline kind of things, but we point out the discrepancies that she has as a child growing up. Like, hey, you did it this way. I've been there, done that. Let me tell you about the easier way to do this kind of thing. But where parents I see and grew up with and saw with most people my age, their parents and grandparents, where we have to start allowing our relationships to go is allowing our kids to

feel safe enough to say, mom and dad, look, you stumbled here. I need you to do better in this area. And not getting our feelings hurt and not saying, well, I'm the adult, so it's my way or the highway. But allowing the child to call you out and say, you messed up just as much as I did. And allowing our adult egos to drop and be like, okay, tell me, tell me exactly, point it out, tell me what I did, because I'm trying to be a better parent. And I don't think this is soft parenting at all. I think it is mature for an adult to be able to listen to their preteen teenage adult children and say, you're screwing up right here and I need you to do this. That's something that I've never had.

I've never been able to, well, I've said it time and time again until I'm blue in the face of this is where you're screwing up mom and dad. Like I need you to do better. I need you to do this. We have to allow our children to be able to come to us and say in a safe, you know, feel safe and not threatening or like they're going to get in trouble because they've called their mom and dad out. Like there's been a couple of times where Piper has called us out and been like, that's not fair. Why, why do you allow this, but you're able to do it and I can, or why do you, why are other kids able to do this and I can? Or that's not a good example.

But it is a good example because sometimes the answer is as simple as why are you allowed to do certain things and your daughter isn't? 30 years of age separation. Sometimes that's a pretty fair answer. Why do so-and-so's mom and dad allow them to do that but not me? Because so-and-so's mom and dad don't parent the way we do, and they don't prioritize the things we do. I don't know what to tell you, hon.

I don't think they're doing the right thing. I think we are. But the point is to be open to that conversation at least. And I think that's the big part. That's the big part. Because sometimes she brings things to us, and you know what? I'm going to hear her out. I probably won't agree with her. at least. And I think that's, that's the big part. That's the big part. Cause sometimes we, she brings things to us and you know what, I'm going to hear her out. I probably won't agree with her. I might see things differently. I might, at the end of the day, I might just say,

I'm sorry you feel that way, honey, but I'm, I'm, I'm standing firm on what I said or what I decided. I feel like I'm doing the right thing here, but I'm at least going to hear her out. And the answer is never going to be, cause I'm dad and that's that's final because that it's like i've tried to explain i've had this conversation really in the guise of like as children transition into adults and how the parent-child relationship really does have to change i saw it with my parents but like even at this age where she's starting to flex things a little bit, you have to be willing to accept that there's going to be pushback. And you have to be a little bit open to at least hearing them out. Because I'm very particular with Piper about when she asked me why we do things a certain way.

A lot of times I'm very willing to engage with her and explain to her, this is why. This is what I'm thinking of. This is how I'm prioritizing these things with her and explain to her this is why this is what I'm thinking of this is this is how I'm prioritizing these things I'm going to give her the why because if the only answer she ever gets is I'm dad that's why it doesn't that all that does is teach her that you can't ask questions and I'm always right right as opposed to dad why can't we go to Disney World this year because dad needs to put money away in retirement so I don't die, you know, penniless on the Walmart floor when I'm 65, 70 years old. Like, you know, that's a hyperbolic answer, but sometimes that is the answer.

It's finances or it's priorities or it's something. But it's never shut up and do what you're told. What I've learned as not just being a teacher but being involved in the education industry for so long is that kids are are um able to understand more than we give them credit for i have for example i had a tour last year of my pre-k-5 parents whose children were going to transition into kindergarten. And I had on the floor, I had a bunch of small Lego bricks, like the little bitty Lego bricks that you buy when you're 12 years old and you put the things together. I had those on the floor and I said, oh, it's, it's funny. Cause I just had your children in class, and they were playing with these little Lego bricks.

I guess I was shocked because I see it every day, and I work with these kids all the time. The parents could not wrap their heads around the fact that their kids were playing with these little Lego bricks, that they were capable of building things with these little Lego bricks with their little bitty fingers. But at home, they were too scared to do that, and they were still playing with the big Duplos. My kids, are they able to play with those? I didn't think that they were able to do that. You can get into the fridge. You're just going to be on camera.

No, I want to use the ice maker. Oh. Bear with us for a second. Oh, bear with us for a second. Stuart would say he loves these sounds because it's the sounds of home life and being a family. We live here. This is not a studio. Anyway, so the parents were really kind of shocked that their kids were able to do something that they weren't doing at home.

But they weren't doing it at home because the parents didn't think that they were capable of doing it. We're good. Keep talking. Okay. They weren't capable of doing it at home. And I said, absolutely, your kid is able to handle these smaller bricks. And I said, I said to him, I was like, that's one of the things we do at school is to push them to their next level. I said to him, that's one of the things we do at school is to push them to their next level. You have to push them at home, too, to their next level. So as adults, I don't know. For me, I think it's different, and I'm not going to toot my own horn. I remember a lot of my childhood as far as my internal voice and the things that I said to myself or the

questions that I had and the conversations that I had with people and wondering about the world and all that stuff. And it's scary because some of those same questions have come out of my kid's mouth and I go, oh God, I remember asking my mom or dad that and what was the answer? I don't know what they told me, but here's the answer I'm going to give you through my own experience. I remember those things. And I think it's important for parents to put yourself back in your 12-year-old shoes. Put yourself back in your 6-year-old shoes. How would you have wanted to or needed your parents to respond to those questions or needed

to respond to those situations? I needed answers. Most kids need answers. I mean, we're born not knowing anything. We know how to breathe, eat, and poop and sleep. That's all we know how to do. And so our entire life, even through adulthood, is still learning. We're still learning about the environment around us and what does this and what makes that tick and all those different things.

And so I think it's important for parents to take a step back and look at your child like they're a human being. They have a brain. They're trying to work out this problem. And now they've come to you to help you work out this problem. But they need you to actually answer. And the answer is not because I said so or because blah, blah, blah. The answer needs to be you disagree with me.

No, no, no. I had a perfect analogy. Oh, okay. Sorry. Keep going. The answer just needs to be you need to clarify because kids are able to handle more than what we give them most of the time. I would say 95% of the time kids can handle the answer. So give them the answer.

And if they don't understand it, explain it a little bit more. And then let them go and figure it out. Because I can guarantee you that that child, not only will they think about that conversation over and over and over again in their head from time to time, they'll remember it when the next time it comes up. They'll remember that conversation. They'll remember your answer. They'll remember the way that they felt and the questions that they had. So just answer the question. So what have I consistently said about the parallel to the parent-child relationship? Is that we're ultimately our jobs to teach, right?

We are our child's first and last teachers. We're going to teach them from their first moments of consciousness until we leave this physical plane. We're going to always try to teach them things so that they can profit from it. You're a teacher by trade. If a child comes to you and says, why is the earth round? Is the answer, because I'm the teacher, that's why? Or do you explain to them? No, I'm always going to explain things. So that was the analogy that jumped into my head is that it's a relationship of teacher to student. So if our child asks us a question and the answer is, because I'm the teacher, that's why. That's a stupid answer.

You wouldn't accept that if you were at a job and a person said, this is the way you do the job. And you said, why? Because you were trying to understand, okay, what's behind this procedure I'm being taught? And they said, because I'm the trainer, that's why. That's a stupid answer. Or because that's how it always is. That, by the way, is the answer I get at my workplace a lot, which everybody at my work knows.

Don't utter those words in my presence because it just drives me up the walls. It's a stupid answer. So I guess that's what I would offer is the reason you don't say, because I'm dad or I'm mom, is because you wouldn't accept that answer from anybody else that was trying to teach you something. You would want your question answered. And it's also very important at this moment that I point out, like,

there are moments that some children will say why, and it's not really because they want to know why. They don't want to know why you've made that decision. They want to know why you get to make that decision. Yeah, and that's kind of what Nina had said up there. Yeah, I'm going, I want to go back to that. Before you go there, can I just say this? I just say this because you kind of, if you don't know the answer, say you don't know.

When I worked for Audubon, that was one of the things that they harped on the most because we would give, we had all these educational chats. I mean, gosh, I was bringing out animals all the time, talking about the different facts about these animals to educate the public that were coming in. I would get questions sometimes that I didn't know the answer to. I don't know. I don't know why that spider does that. I don't know why that fish does that.

And what we were trained to say is, I don't know. I don't know, but I can find the answer for you. And I can find you before you leave and give you that answer. And I would run back to the classroom and I'd do my research and I'd find the answer of why such and such did such and such. And then I'd find that guest again and tell them. They always appreciated it. But guess what?

So were your kids. I can't tell you how many times I've told Piper, I don't know. I don't know. But look, let's look it up really quick. Let's figure out why this is this. And I do that with my students too. I don't know the answer. It's okay as an adult to kind of cool your ego down a little bit and say you don't know the answer.

If you don't know, just say you don't know. It's okay. Kids don't come with instruction manuals. This is something that my father used to say very, very regularly, which was a way of telling me, like, I don't know how to be a dad. I'm figuring this out at the exact same time you are. Yeah. And that was the same thing he told me. He reminded me of when we were getting ready to have Piper.

Kids do not come with instruction manuals. You are going to have to learn how to be mom and dad at full speed. Yeah. Because they're, and look, I'm going to be to learn how to be mom and dad at full speed. Yeah. Because they're, and look, I'm going to be honest with y'all, like peeking behind the curtain to look at the wizard, I can't tell you the number of silly things Gilly and I Googled when Piper was like from zero to two weeks old. Like, is this normal?

Is my child dying? Do I need to take her to the ER? Because, like, you know, we didn't know. Nobody knows how to be a parent. Why won't she stop crying? Yeah. So I did want to go back to Nina's comment, Garden Girl. If I bought it, why can you take it away from me was the question we got yesterday.

That's a good one. I can't tell you how to answer that question, but I can tell you how I would. I would like to know how you answered that question, Nino, while Phil tells us what he would say. So, again, I am my child's teacher. And one of the things I have to teach her along the way through life is consequences. Consequences come from actions. They can be good and they can be bad. And I always try to draw an analog to what I'm trying to do here and what is going to happen to her out in the real world.

And out in the real world, if one day you decide, I don't like my job, and you quit, and you stop getting a paycheck, and you can't pay your rent, and you can't pay for food, there are bad consequences that come from that decision. And if you say, my job sucks, but I'm going to continue to go, and I'm going to continue to keep my job while I look for a better job, that's a better decision. You get better consequences from that. So my answer to you would be, I bought it with my money. Why do you get to take it away from me? The answer is you live under my roof and I'm trying to teach you consequences. I can't make you homeless and starve. Like morally, I can't do that to my kids. So I have to find something else to take from you as a consequence for poor behavior or poor decisions to teach you to make better decisions. Because if the answer is, I mean, put this in the guise of, I don't know, our kid starts driving. Let's say hypothetically, she buys her own car. She pays her own gas.

She pays her own insurance. That car financially is nothing from us. But she's living under our roof. And then one morning, she blows curfew. She doesn't come home when she's supposed to. She does something catastrophically out of line. And we say, give me the keys. You're not driving.

There has to be a consequence. I have to take something from you to negatively incentivize you doing this again. And the answer is, well, that's my car. Well, it's my house. You don't have to live here if you want to go live in your car, but I have to take something from you. So I don't know if that holds water in this case, but that's my thought process is that I hate to use the old, as long as you live under my roof, it's my rules, but it's more of a, as long as you live under my roof, I have to be able to continue to mentor you and give you consequences for actions because the minute you're out of this

house, the world gets to give you consequences and it's not going to be as nice as I am. That's another Carl Rabelais-ism. When the world doles out the consequences, And it's not going to be as nice as I am. That's another Carl Rabelais-ism. When the world doles out the consequences, the world's not going to be as nice as I am. Garden Girl said, We can take it away because it's causing you not to do the things you're responsible in practice, cello, clean your room, wash your laundry. Okay.

in practice, cello, clean your room, wash your laundry. Okay. So to me, I guess to me, whether or not the child, I'm assuming, by the way, we're talking about a child under the age of 18. The water gets a little muddy when you have an 18-year-old living under your roof because technically they're an adult. And if you take their property legally, they could go to the police and say, my mom took my property and you'd have to give it back legally.

But then you're also in the situation of, I can't take your stuff from you, but I can tell you to get out of my house. You know what I'm saying? To me, I always have to have a lever as a dad I can pull to incentivize good behavior. And if I don't have a lever, then I have no way to compel you to behave like I'd like you to. I see that. Yeah, and I knew that it was going to be because you live under my house. You live under my roof. Those are my rules kind of thing.

I don't know. That's a hard one for me. It's like, well, you did buy it with your own money. It technically is yours. But I get it. I'm't know. That's a hard one for me. It's like, well, you did buy it with your own money. It technically is yours. But I get it. I'm still mom. You're still 12. And it's causing you to not do the things that you're supposed to do. She said he's 13.

He bought a new mouse for his computer. His husband, I mean, I'm sorry. My husband said we could always let him have it and just turn off the internet. And you see? Man, smart thinking. Smart thinking. See? And I mean, honestly, that's what I would offer him.

Be like, you want the mouse back? That's fine. Unplug the router. Solve that problem. I mean, I could read a book. I don't need the internet. You know, we used to struggle with that with Piper because sometimes we would take TV away and she would just go sit in a room and draw or something.

It was like... I know. She was always this oddball of, well, what are we going to take away from her that's actually going to do anything? And we could say, oh, well, you get no TV tonight. And she would be like, okay, can I still read a book? And we were like, yeah, you can no TV tonight. And she would be like, okay, can I still read a book? And we were like, yeah, you can read a book. And then it was like, cool, I still get to come read a book.

I was like, crap, I can't take your books away. But like I pointed out to you years ago, I figured out when she was very, very young, the ultimate lever to pull with her was always attention. She does not like being by her now now that she's a teenager she is kind of like drifting into her room by herself a little more often but when she was younger attention was the ultimate like nuclear option if i just told her like just go to your room and sit sit there on your bed by yourself five minutes and that was it she hated being by herself it was yeah and i guess to me yeah it was kind of awful well and and i know i told you like there were times when she was in

punishment and you'd come to me i'd have tears come down my face because i don't like punishing piper i never did but again what what has been the consistent in our lives together because i don't like doing something is not the reason i'm not going to do it i don't care whether i like doing it or not i don't like i don't care how painful it is emotionally physically or otherwise i will do it if i think it needs to be done so the fact the fact that she was crying and I'm crying in two separate rooms and she had no earthly idea that I was as upset as she was, I'm still going to do it because I had to. It had to be done. It had to be done.

The fact that I didn't like doing it, that did not factor into my decision making. It never does. Yeah. And then Phoebe's comment up there says, some parents are too lazy to explain things to their kids and want others to do it for them. Yeah, we see that. I know teachers see that daily.

They want us to do all sorts of things for their kids. And it's not, sometimes legally we can't do it. And then other times it's like, absolutely not. This is your child. You do this kind of thing. And right in tandem with that is the fact that a lot of parents, the thing they're too lazy to do is the same thing I was willing to do, which is I don't want to punish you, but I'm going to.

They want to be their kid's friend. They never want to be the bad guy. They never want to be the one to dole out the consequences or the punishments. They want to have a friend relationship. And this is something I put in the show notes. They want to have a friend relationship with their child. They don want to be the bad guy they don't want to be the mean mom or the mean dad i don't want to be the mean dad either i mean you you and i have told this to piper directly the version of dad you get is not up to me it's up to you if you if you push

back against me i'm going to push. I don't have a choice in the matter. There's a path here I'm trying to get you on so that you can be the best version of yourself as an adult for you. Not for me. Not for me. I've told her before, I'm like, the easiest thing in the world for me to do would be to just hands off, feral kid, you go figure figure out your way in life and mom and I are going to go on dates and do whatever. And if you burn the house down, you burn the house down. It's insured. I don't care. That would be easy.

It's hard. It's emotional. It's draining to be that parent who is constantly thinking about how do I get my kid to be the best version of themselves? about how do I get my kid to be the best version of themselves? Like it's a near obsession of how do I be the best parent by making you the best you're able to be? Whether that's, you know, astronaut, president of the United States, or the best daggum ditch digger on earth, it doesn't matter. Or just being able to graduate high school.

Yeah. But no matter what that child's potential is, you want them to reach that potential. Yeah. And that's for them, not for us. But I feel like a lot of parents, that level of work is not something they're willing to put in their kids, which I think is criminal. But I also think that sometimes the laziness intrudes into, like you said, I don't want to be the bad guy. Yeah. I know that's what I see sometimes is the parents just want to be their friend. They don't want to make them upset. Maybe their home life is a little upsetting. Maybe they're coming from a broken home, you know, divorce or whatever.

And I would think that more often than not, mom and dad don't get along. That's why they got a divorce. And so they've learned this whole manipulation game. They've learned how to pull the ropes, pull the strings, and all that stuff. But what I honestly, I can't speak to this because we're not divorced. And we don't co, I mean, we do co-parent. but we don't co-parent in two different homes kind of thing. But I think that I would imagine that it's even harder to play mom and dad. Play is probably not the right word either.

But to be mom and dad and be in those roles of, no, now it's going to be doubly hard on you as a mom or a dad, a single mom or a single dad, because you have to stick to your guns because eventually those children are going to be out of your house. And you can't just, because your child is upset, you can't just be like, okay, well, let's go buy a new pair of shoes. Or, okay, let's go to the movies tonight. Or whatever. Because now they understand that I can act this way and I can do these things. And mom or dad are going to reward me even though I shouldn't be rewarded. Let me offer an alternative theory. be rewarded let me offer an alternative theory i think what you're i think what i think you're ascribing two parents co-parenting in separate houses divorced to two parents that could co-parent

in the same house and still have a very adversarial relationship because i've seen couples that i've seen separated couples that co-parent very efficiently together because they both acknowledge like, hey, you and I cannot get along under the same roof, but the child needs to be raised, and we're going to work together to do this, even though we're doing it in separate households. And those children still know the love of mom and dad. They still know stability.

They have two parents who are co-parenting. And I've also seen situations where two parents in the same household are constantly undercutting each other because they refuse to do the same things that you and I did when we were younger, where we were like, look, we're not going to agree about everything on parenting, but we have to figure it out together because we have one child we're both responsible for. So it cannot be your way or my way. And it also can't be your way when you're around and my way and when I'm around because that doesn't work for her. She needs a cohesive parenting plan that the two of us can both agree to.

And sometimes that involves compromise between you and I, where it's like I'm not totally happy with the solution, but you're not totally happy with the solution either, but we're meeting in the middle on this. But I see couples out there that don't do that, even if they live under the same roof. And I would argue that that probably existed before those couples divorced. And that's why you see it in divorce more often because I don't believe that happens just with parenting i believe that is parenting finances time allocation it is a constant battle of rather than two couples work

on the communication come together and figure it out it's i'm going to do my way or you do and you can do it your way and that doesn't work yeah it doesn't work for a couple much less for a family right i agree Doesn't work. Yeah. Doesn't work for a couple, much less for a family. Right. I agree. Carl Rabelais saying, her playing you. I don't understand my father's comment there. Unless he's referring to, like, kids. Piper. Piper playing you.

I don't know. What are you talking about, dad? Well, I will say, if I understand where I think he's going, like, yeah, kids, I mean, let's call it what it is. And I don't want to use the word manipulate in a malicious way, but let me use the word manipulative without the maliciousness in a totally clinical setting. Okay. setting manipulate only means to be able to like interface with something and then make it do what you want it to you know i'm saying parent kids learn how to manipulate their environment which includes us from their earliest their earliest you know moments on earth they learn that if they cry enough sooner or later someone's going to figure out what they want. Yeah. You know, you're going to check their diaper.

You're going to see how long some of this has been fed. You're going to make sure they're not cold. You're going to continue to figure out what's going on with this tiny screaming thing until it finally quiets down. And that's how they figure out how to manipulate their environment when they're babies, when they're infants. And then as they get older, they're going to learn, oh, when I do this, mom and dad get upset. When I do this, mom and dad are happy. If I want happy parents,

I do these things. That's all kids do is learn how to manipulate their environment and manipulate the people around them. That's all humans do is learn how to manipulate the environment around them. The key to me is to not allow your child to manipulate you to their own detriment. Piper knows if she does certain things, mom and dad are going to be upset. Privileges might get taken away. She might get a talking to. And as a result, she shies away from those things. But if we allowed Piper to manipulate us into doing things that were harmful for her then we're we're falling down our responsibilities so yeah yeah there was something else i wanted to talk

about now now i have to go back through the comments see try to jog my memory on something somebody said i think so Now I have to go back through the comments to try to jog my memory on. Something somebody said? I think so. I mean, we could talk for another 20 minutes about how hard it is to wake y'all up in the morning. Oh, Lord have mercy. No, thanks. It's hard.

I get it. I did not want to wake up this morning either. I let you sleep. Anyway. I was going to let you sleep till about 9 30 well did you find what you were looking for no i didn't i i guess i guess like the whole the whole point of what we want to talk about with this episode was really just to say that like it's super important that you have that open line of communication with your kids i mean at the end of the day you are mom and dad y'all get to make the decisions. They kind of have to go along with the program because that's how

this whole situation works. But I think it's super important to have an open line of communication so that your kids do feel comfortable coming to you and asking you questions. And especially when those questions are not coming from a place of, like I said before, it's the difference between asking, why do you get to make that decision? Because that's obvious. I get to make that decision because I'm dad. Why are you making that decision is a totally different question that sometimes sounds exactly the same. And I welcome my daughter asking me why. Because I want her to understand from my perspective why I'm making that decision. Because day she's going to have to make that decision by herself. I'm not going to be around. And if she says, why do you go to work every day if you don't like your job that much? Because it keeps a roof over your head and food

in your mouth. And I'm off almost every day by three-thirds of the afternoon so I get to spend time with you. I'm like, there's positives to that and there's negatives and you have to decide how much is it worth to you. But if I ever, if all I ever told her was, well, you're just kid or I'm the adult or whatever, that doesn't give her the backstory to be able to understand my decision-making process. And again, because we're teaching, because we're teachers, I want her to understand how I made that decision. She might make the decision differently when she's in my shoes, but I want her to understand where my head space was when I made that decision, how I prioritized those things. The fact that I even thought that decision through that far.

I don't want her to get to adulthood without the appropriate framework to look at the world around her and be able to make decisions on her own. It's the difference between, as a teacher, it's the difference between teaching a kid the test, teaching them the answers that are on the test, and teaching them to figure out the answers by themselves. I don't want to teach my daughter the test in life. Yeah. I want to teach her how to think critically and make her own decisions because that will serve her better. And then just to kind of recap the dropping your ego as an adult and as a parent of allowing your child that safe space to come in and say, hey, I think you messed up here. Can we talk about it? your feelings hurt or your ego, you know, blown up out of proportion because a juvenile has

questioned you on your decision, hearing them out and letting them have that space to say, I don't quite understand. Can you explain this a little bit more? Because that's really what they're asking is, explain this to me. Why? Why did you make that decision? And then being able to have someone younger than you and your child, hopefully your child, call you out on a bad decision or whatever. So, yeah. Yeah. And I would just say, like, to follow that up before we close this out like

it's not even always about your kid calling you out it really is to me it more is more just a function of like they want to know why they want to understand and if you're open to having that discussion believe it or not and this is why i named this episode two-way street y'all can both benefit from it. Yeah. We did. We are still after this coming February will make 20 years we've been together. We're still learning how

to be a couple. Yeah. And our child is 12 years old. We're still learning how to be mom and dad. And we're learning this at full speed. There is no pause button. There is're learning this at full speed. Like there are, there is no pause button. There is no, let me call a friend. It's, you gotta, you gotta stand up and make a decision and perform. So I always tell people, I'm like, you know, if you're open to your child, your child

coming to you and say, Hey, I don't understand this decision. I don't understand what you're doing. Can you explain it to me? It's an opportunity for you to better learn how to be a parent. It's an opportunity to teach them better how to be an adult. You just have to, like you said, you've got to let the ego go and approach it from that perspective. Yeah. Okay. Don't let parents show you.

What your dad was saying was she kind of showed her hands and was like, okay, no TV? Fine, I'll go read a book. And she showed her hands and saying, this isn't a punishment. I'll just go read my book. Yeah. But I will also say that, like, I don't think when she was younger she ever had any earthly idea how upset I was to punish her. I put on that poker face like you could have been shoving bamboo shoots under my toenails and I wouldn't have shown it.

But inside, I was just, it killed me. I hated doing it. I still hate punishing her. I don't have to do it very often. No. But I don't like any part of it. But it's one of those things where it's like, I'm going to do it because I think it's the right thing to do. Yeah.

But you're right. Dad's right. Don't show your hand. Parenting is a poker game. That's it. All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining us today. Be sure to tune in next week, like Phil said, for the shows from the mountain.

Yes. I don't know how else to put that. I mean, I will just say that, like, okay, so it's going to be next Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And if you're listening to this on the Prepper Broadcasting Network, this episode will get released the Sunday we're at Prepper Camp. So hopefully you are watching the audio feed and you'll see the episodes popping up. But I'm going to be releasing that content from the top of the mountain as long as the Cellular Network cooperates, which it usually does well enough. And it should be on YouTube for those of you who watch the streams.

It'll just be a blank screen and listen to the audio. But, you know, I don't know what we're going to talk about. It's not going to be like this where we have a topic. It's going to be kind of a house prepper camp going. What's the weather like? Hopefully we're not doing this in the middle of a tropical storm but you know anyway all right guys well we'll see y'all when we see you um have a great week and the rest of your day and thank y'all for joining us bye everybody bye Thank you.