The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Raising Values: Hey Piper, I have a question for you.....
Episode Date: November 10, 2024https://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:Â https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon:Â http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon:Â https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastA random reel crawls across Gillian's feed late one evening, prompting her and Phil to ask their daughter some questions. The answers were surprising, and not surprising. The effect though, was gaining some understanding and insight into the changing personality of their child.https://www.instagram.com/mister_joshuat/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
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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 afternoon i said good morning i forgot to turn on these
two ring lights and we honestly don't even need them because it's two o'clock in the afternoon
it's sunny outside if you don't think we need them okay i can plug them in okay um
yeah so welcome it's been a day already and it's been a fun day um piper and i and one of her
friends went fishing this morning up in washington parish which is about well it we went to
one of my favorite state parks in the state of lou. Um, it's actually where one of my,
uh, one of my dear friends was injured and, um, ultimately passed away two days after he was,
um, injured on the job. He was a park ranger at Bogochetta State Park and, um, we lost him.
And it wasn't that, I mean, like it was around this time i think it was no it
was in july that we lost him but his birthday is i think his birthday was in october so anyway
we went up there it's one of my favorite state parks if you think of louisiana you don't think
of hills and like really pretty terrain and all that stuff I know a lot of people think swamplands and flat
and nothing to really consider, whatever.
But up in Washington Parish, it is very hilly and beautiful.
And you can almost kind of imagine a fall up there.
The leaves are turning and so it's not a lot of evergreens.
I mean, there are, but you know what I'm saying. But anyway, spent the morning up there with Piper and one of her friends doing a, um,
today was, uh, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries get out and fish event. So you could
go and you could have a, get a rod and reel and bait all for free. Um they stocked one of the ponds with 800 pounds of catfish,
but no catfish were biting. And well, somebody, two people caught a catfish while we were there.
One of them was pretty big. It was like four pound catfish, but I have to say I'm okay not
having caught anything because I really didn't want to come home and have to clean any fish.
anything because I really didn't want to come home and have to clean any fish. I haven't cleaned a fish in a very, very, very long time and it wasn't on my to-do list today, but it was fun.
How long has it been since you've been fishing? Because I mean...
Piper was two.
Before, I was about to say, I know it's before Hurricane Ida because it was on the pier that
got wrecked for Hurricane Ida that I think they're still fixing.
Piper was two when she caught her first pit fish out at uncle john's pond yeah it was during the fourth of july so it's been a while since i've been fishing it's been even longer
since i've been hunting but anyway so um that was my morning and then um home. But I do have to say, and Phil doesn't know I'm about to do this,
but I am going to publicly apologize to my husband for last week's episode.
I was called to the carpet by a few people for my passionate.
You do know we're live.
My passionate, very heartfelt know we're live, my passionate,
um,
very heartfelt,
and this is recorded,
um,
push to see Phil fulfill his authentic self and,
um,
the plans that we have and the steps that we've made this week has been a very,
uh,
very busy week as far as the plans that we've made this week has been a very busy week as far as the plans that we've been kind of conjuring up.
And we're not quite ready to announce that yet, but it is coming.
Another big adventure for the Rabelais family and the Cummings family.
So that information is coming soon, but I want to just make sure everything's nailed down, uh, properly before we announce that.
Um, so my, and I did apologize to Phil that, that evening.
Um, I think I was very.
I think what she said was, I didn't realize I was that hard on you.
Well, I wasn't trying to be hard on you. And I wasn't trying to be mean or anything else.
I was just fired up with I know the potential that you have.
And I think that you can do this.
And I don't know.
I mean, you push me to my limit.
You push me to do more and better and all that stuff.
It's just not usually broadcast live
on the internet and um so anyway i've already apologized to him so i'm apologizing to you all
now my mama got on to her butt about it that afternoon your mama your your dad olivia um i
think there was somebody else in the raising values chat that was like, oh, wow.
The manner in which you spoke to Phil today was crazy.
It's okay.
This little baby boy here can handle his wife, his mean old wife.
I haven't handled you yet, but it's coming.
Anyway, I think we probably will need to turn these on.
So I will do that really quick.
And yeah, so.
Can you reach the.
I can.
So today's episode.
So if you're watching live, give me just a second because the lights are about to be really bright.
Today's episode is kind of.
Do you go up or down?
Go all the way down.
All the way down.
Now hit the second button from the top on both of them. Today's episode is kind of, do you go up or down? Go all the way down. All the way down.
Now, hit the second button from the top on both of them.
That switch to natural light.
Then hit the plus buttons twice each.
Perfect.
Okay.
Yeah, because the light outside is, it's kind of cloudy outside.
Okay.
Even better.
All right.
So today's episode, oh, wait, there was another.
Go to the banners really quick because I always forget to do this. Speaking of the Raising Value Signal Chat, I'll go back to that one. The Raising Value Signal Chat was pretty fired up this week. I kind of started that.
I'm glad and I'm not glad, but there were some bombs dropped in there by myself. So I've had quite
the week with listeners and people who watch and listen to the show, drop some bombs in there on
some friends of ours, not bad bombs, bombs about myself that I don't think anyone saw coming. And I mean, take with it what you will.
Take it how you will.
It is what it is.
And it's the way that I feel
and the journey, the spiritual journey
that I'm going down.
So I hope I don't lose any friends,
family or listeners over my decision
in my spiritual journey.
But that's it. I'm not ready to go
public with that yet. I'm still trying to figure my life out. And I did feel, and I guess I do want
to say this on here, is I do feel like I can trust the people, the patrons that we have,
to not be judgmental, to not be harsh on people
who have difference of opinions and different beliefs and things like that. And so I was very
grateful to some of our listeners who had a lot of questions for me over on the Raising Values
chat. And I don't know, maybe one day I'll come around to making it a public kind of,
I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I don't know. But if you're in the Raising Values chat,
and you have been this week, then you've got a lot of information about yours truly.
And a lot of really good conversations go on in our chats so that we do have a matter of facts and a raising values signal chat for our patrons.
So if that's something that you want to be a part of, I sometimes have to mute the matter of facts.
And sometimes I have to scold some of our patrons like Eddie and Stuart.
Eddie and Stuart can be troublemakers sometimes.
Sometimes Chris.
Sometimes Chris.
Sometimes I have to just be like, all right, now we're adults.
You never have to scold me, though.
No, not publicly.
Anyway, so join us in those chats.
Become a patron.
We actually just got two new patrons this week, which is really nice.
And we always put a disclaimer out for those Signal Chats, especially the MOF Signal Chat.
I will just say that if you are a patron and you didn't get the memo about the Signal Chats,
the absolute simplest way to deal with it is to log into Patreon and just send me a message directly saying,
Hey, I'm a patron wired in the signal chat and
i'll work with you to get you booted in it's and you don't have to do it um oh no it is totally if
you want to carouse with all the rest of the psychos but yeah we phil will add new people
and a lot of us will be like i'm so sorry so are you sure you want to make this life choice so the
some people in the matter of facts group would probably accuse me of spoiling their fun but
i give a warning to everyone before i drop them in oh do you yes every last one i don't tell them
what's coming but i tell them just i feel like you have to you have to give people a warning well
and especially like the matter of fact signal chat because those boys
can get a little bit rowdy sometimes it's all in good fun it's all good natured but they get a
little rowdy sometimes so i just like to warn people like if you're looking for like the family
friendly group you should probably be over here and if you want to be raising values chat and if
you want to be in the one that's less wholesome and more psychotic, probably this one. Full of nerds.
Yes.
Speaking of patrons, this is our second annual.
We are having our second annual Secret Santa patron.
Oh, Stuart's going to be so glad you reminded me of that.
I didn't remind you.
You reminded them.
I reminded myself, and now I'm saying it.
Yes.
So there is information in the Matter of Facts group.
We can send it to you.
If you are a patron and you want to participate, you have to have your name and your address.
You've got to give it to Stuart before, I think I said November 11th.
That way everybody has time to mail out.
He has time to assign who your person is.
mail out you know he has time to assign who your your person is and i actually dropped a quick little like two three minute blurb on the patron only podcast feed so he did say that we have more
this year than we did last year which is fun already um and it is it's a it's a fun event
and um the the prize i mean the the gifts don't have to be prepping related.
They don't have to be super serious.
They can be funny things.
There's usually some humor involved.
So anyway, if you're a patron and you'd like to take part of that, you have until November 11th to get your information to Stuart.
And I cannot remember the email address to save my life right now.
I know it's protonme.com or something.
I don't know. Don't take my word right now. I know it's protonme.com or something. I don't know.
Don't take my word for it.
It's in Patreon.
Yes.
Go log into Patreon where patrons should be members.
Because if not, we have a different discussion to have and the information is there.
Yeah.
And then merch, of course.
We have merch if you ever wanted to support the show and Chris and Tiffany that way.
You can certainly log on.
It's in the show notes down below with the address to go do that. There's all sorts of things that you can purchase
for raising values and matter of fact. So you can go purchase that stuff.
Now, on to the show. As usual, as per Gillian's norm, it was 10 o'clock last night and I had no idea what the topic of the day was going to be.
Mainly just because, yeah, I actually I went back and forth with discussing what we talked about on the RV chat.
And like I said, I'm just not ready to do that yet.
So I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across this.
I came across this account.
Did you put it up there?
It's at Mr. Joshua T.
And he is a child therapist.
And his content revolves around, well, child therapy, really.
So there's a lot of things on there for parents. There's a lot of things on there, even for like grownups who deal with children and things like that. And so
one of his, it was, it always happens. It's always like, oh, here, here's something to talk about
tomorrow. One of the things that he'd posted a long time ago and we, yes. Okay. Anyway, sorry.
time ago and we yes okay anyway sorry I had like three thoughts in my head at that moment um so yes mr. underscore Joshua T he had seven questions that he
asks his patients are they patients clients no children the children that
come to see him patients patients, patients, right?
Clients, I think is what Eddie refers to them as.
Clients, patients, right.
The children that come to him, see him as a therapist, he asked them seven questions.
And a while back, he had commented about one of the questions he asks his clients or the
children that come to see him.
One of the questions he asks his clients or the children that come to see him.
And so that kind of snowballed into, well, what are the other things you ask?
Because it might be good for parents to ask their kids this stuff.
So he went through the seven questions.
And I'm like going through them.
And I'm like, oh, my God, I need to know the answers to these questions. So, of course, I scream across the hall to Piper, who has her headphones in, of course.
And I said, hey, Piper, I have a question for you.
So she comes in and I was like, actually, it's seven.
And you're going to sit there and you're going to listen and you're going to give me like full responses.
Like I want to know these things.
So these are seven questions that Joshua T.
I don't know what his last name is.
I guess I should have looked that up. But Joshua
asks his children in the office. So the first one is, what are the things your parents worry about
that they don't need to? And okay, I'm trying. Yeah. Okay. That's the question. I know. I'm crazy today. All right. Piper said,
my feelings. She said that, mainly me, I hover too much. I'm always asking, are you okay? Are
you okay? Is something wrong? Are you okay? And all period, the period time, period. That's what
she said all the time. That I worry too much or
that Phil worries too much or we're always asking her about her feelings. It would have been really
interesting had we started asking these questions to her at like five and then 10 and then 13 and
well, she's 12 right now. But anyway, it would have been really interesting to ask her these
questions and see how they change. So that was the first one. What do we worry about that we don't need to?
How would you have answered that question? Honestly, probably similarly. Yeah. Well,
so and you and I, you know this about me that like one of the weird little quirks in our
relationship is that sometimes Phil is just quiet and broody and, you know, I'm mulling something over and you will pester me like 14 times about what's the matter.
And the answer is either nothing or I don't want to talk about it.
And the answer is not going to change until I've had time to like decompress it, think about it, you know, figure it out.
Like I have to figure things out in my own head before I can talk to anybody else,
if they even need to be talked about.
Sometimes I just think to myself, it's a thing that's bothering me.
I know rationally it shouldn't, so I just have to get over it.
And there's no point bringing this to you or anybody else
because I know it should not be bothering me.
But sometimes you have difficulty accepting when I say,
nothing, babe, I'm okay.
What I'm telling you is I'm going to be okay.
And that's not an acceptable answer.
It's not.
Okay, so let me explain this for those watching and to you.
And I don't know if Piper would even like take this in.
I have always been the fixer. I've always been the fixer of everyone's
emotions, everyone's problems. I've always been the one that's been like, you're having a bad day.
Well, I'm going to fix it. I'm going to help you have a better day. You having a problem? I'm going
to fix that. You're not going to have a problem anymore because Gillian's here. Yeah. Peacemaker.
And so that has obviously turned into a hovering mother who is constantly asking her
teenage daughter, are you okay? Are you okay? Because I can pick up y'all's energy. I know
when I know all of your energy. I know when something's wrong. I know when you're sad. I
know when you're mad. I know when you're depressed. I know when all of these things,
anxious, I know when all those things are happening. And her, they all kind of like blob together.
So it's really hard for me to discern what's happening with her.
She internalizes a lot.
But she does release an energy that is like, okay, something's off.
Something's off here.
And so I always tell you that, like, you're always like, sometimes you're like, no, babe, everything's fine.
I'm fine.
And I know that I am sitting in the same room with you going, no, you're not.
I can feel your energy.
You're not.
But I also very frequently tell you, if that was the answer you got the first time, why do you think I'm going to change it if you ask twice?
Because I want you to tell me the truth.
But what I want you to do is just back off and like give me some space.
Well, that's not what you say though.
So if you say something like that, then I will be like, okay,
I need to let this go and remove myself from all of this and let him sort that out.
But if you say nothing,
I'm fine. And then your energy continues to put off the same way.
I'm going to be,
I'm going to be asking,
okay,
well,
you're not fine and you're lying to me.
So I need to know what's wrong.
But if I were to tell you I'm angry,
what would you do?
Would you think to yourself,
Oh,
he needs some space to like get over this.
Or would you immediately say,
what have I done to upset you?
And I would want to know why you're angry. telling you what the emotion i'm feeling is is not going to get me to
the result i want which is please just give me some space so that i can like i can figure this
out okay so just say that okay we'll try that we've never tried it anyway so i think that's that when she's when her answer says my feelings
are you okay all the time she's basically talking about me um i also think some of it is like from
my perspective at least and i never i never know like how much this is like me projecting
or how much of it truly is missing a commonality in her
her personality in mind but like sometimes i don't think her feelings are as easily hurt or near or
for as near as long a period as you believe they are like that was one of the things we'll get into
later but like i think for a lot of things yeah she might be like upset or disappointed or whatever
in a moment but then it passes very quickly as opposed to some other people where it like lingers for a while.
And I think that's just something that we have to kind of adjust to and figure out, like realize that she might have the ability to just like take it on the chin and say, well, that sucks.
And five minutes later, she's over it.
taken on the chin and say, well, that sucks.
And five minutes later, she's over it.
And that's something we have to, I guess, come to terms with,
is that it doesn't make the hurt any less,
but just accept the fact that, okay, her feelings are hurt.
Give her a couple of minutes with her headphones in,
listening to heavy metal.
She's so my freaking child, by the way, when she gets like that.
And she'll be okay. She'll work through it.
Yeah.
Like, sometimes the talking it out is not what she needs.
It really isn't.
I think sometimes when it's a complicated, I think sometimes when it's an emotion and
she doesn't know how to process it, that's when she needs to talk.
But if she's already, like, done the work and worked through it,
she knows exactly why she's upset.
The only thing left to do is just let it go.
I don't know how I would answer that.
What are the things your parents worry about that they don't need to?
I don't know.
At 12 years old, there was just so much turmoil in my house.
Anyway, I don't know if...
If your husband asked 40-year-old you that question, what would your answer be?
About my parents?
Or what are the things your husband worries about that he doesn't need to?
Put this in your terms.
Because when you asked me that question, I answered it from my current perspective.
Oh, you did?
Okay, so what are the things that...
And not even just me, but what do the people around you worry about that they really probably don't?
Like, you're okay.
I don't know if people worry about me.
Oh, bullcrap.
I worry about you constantly.
Why?
Because you're my wife.
Are you worried, like, I'll forget how to get home one day?
No. And see, I don't ever worry about you in terms of stuff like that.
I worry about whether you've had a bad day.
I worry about whether someone at work has upset you.
I worry about whether you and Piper are having a disagreement.
I worry about all kinds of things with you.
But it truly is, it's never like you don't have the capability of
handling it. It is more of a, I just, it breaks my heart to see you and Piper unhappy. So I just,
I understand like rationally perpetual, always happy is not possible, but I just naturally like,
I feel that very deep inside me when my, my girls are upset about something.
I don't know how to answer that.
There's your homework.
Yeah, I don't know how to answer that.
Probably because you're too busy and focused worrying about everybody else.
Yeah.
Well, that's what keeps going off in my head is like.
Joe said good luck.
Thank you, Joe.
I'm going to need that.
I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know how to answer that question.
But you do worry about other people, usually to your own detriment.
More than myself.
Well, the same could be argued about me, though.
But I see that as a feature, not a flaw.
Yeah.
But anyway.
I don't know.
I'll have to give thought to that.
Okay, so question number two.
What are the things your parents don't worry about that they should?
And her answer was, I don't know.
I don't know.
She kept going, I don't know.
But if you think about it, the fact that her first answer was like, basically, I'm okay, backup, give me some space.
Then the natural inverse of that is, there's nothing y'all don't worry about that you should.
I'm asking you to worry less.
Yeah, that's true.
I guess so.
What are the things your parents don't worry about that they should?
What are the things your husband doesn't worry about that he should?
Yes.
I'm not worried about you cashing me in for the life insurance policy.
If you were going to do that.
How did you know that's what I was thinking?
I ain't worried about that because I won't even wake up one morning.
Oh, stop saying those things.
Stop it.
Just remember that if something happens to me under mysterious circumstances,
you are automatically suspect number one.
I'm not going to do that.
I got upset today because
you didn't go fishing with us. You think I'm going to
try to
K.I.
double hockey stick you off so that
I'm not
with you forever?
If you got angry enough in a fit of rage,
you know, moment of passion.
I don't think so.
I was already upset with you this morning
about not being with me,
so I'm not going to intentionally make it
so that you're not with me.
So what I'm hearing is I got to keep her on the hook.
I guess so.
All right, number three,
because there's not much to do with number two.
This one kind of caught me off guard, her answer.
It did to me.
But it also made my mama heart so happy.
What are the sweetest things your parents,
what are the sweetest things that your parents do that they don't realize you appreciate?
Okay, wait, let me start over.
What are the sweetest things that your parents do that they don't realize you appreciate. Okay, wait, let me start over. What are the sweetest things that your parents do that they don't realize you appreciate?
And her answer was make my favorite food.
Food is a love language.
Food is a love language.
Little tidbit about me.
I love to cook when I have the energy to cook.
Usually like on a Tuesday or a Thursday when I have robotics
and I don't get home until 5, 5.30, but my day starts at 6.30. I don't have the energy to come
home and cook. I don't have the energy because now that we've, especially now that we've become
an ingredient household and I have to stop at the grocery store and I have to get all the
ingredients for this and it's whole foods and things like that. Like we're not cooking from a box or a bag
anymore. There are no more grab the bag of chicken nuggets and throw the nugs in the air fryer. No,
if we want chicken nuggets, we're getting chicken breasts and coating them with the bread, the bread
crumbs that I made from the butt ends of our sourdough bread. Doesn't that just sound
amazing? Yeah, it's a lot of work. Anyway, like for instance, yesterday, and she woke up talking
about this, but last night I made, I made trout. I made like a herb crusted butter trout and it was,
oh my God, amazing. I'm not a big fish person but i was
really impressed it was so good she she asked us to have more fish in the house and two things
about fish he didn't like to eat fish and i'm afraid to cook fish and i know that sounds really
crazy but i'm always afraid i'm not going to cook it. I'm going to overcook it. No, I'm going to
undercook it and then I overcook it and then it's rubbery or it's not, it's not good. But, um,
I cooked this trout to perfection last night and I am going to brag on myself because it was so,
so good. I will just say that just because I don't prefer fish doesn't mean that I'm going
to pitch a fit if you decide to cook it.
It's just like if somebody ever asked me, what do you want?
Fish will almost never be the answer.
It's just not one of my favorite things to eat.
Yeah, fish and shrimp.
I just don't like to cook fish and shrimp.
I don't like shrimp a lot, so I don't cook it either.
But that's one of their favorite things to eat.
But I get so much joy. this is going to sound really creepy,
just sitting there watching my family eat my food.
And the compliments to the chef that they give, it's just like,
okay, if I don't do anything right in this life,
I have at least cooked a nice, delicious,
hearty meal for my family. And, you know, not that I didn't grow up in a household where we
didn't have food. I grew up in a household where my parents fought over what was going to be cooked.
I can remember a huge fight that took place in the kitchen when my mom wanted to cook breakfast for
dinner and my dad threw this god-awful fit because he kept saying, you're not feeding my children
that for dinner. You're not feeding that to my children for dinner. And I was like, but I really
wanted eggs and toast and sausage for dinner. Is that why you're so averse to ever saying what you want for dinner?
Because why?
Because of all the fights
and the people pleasing
and I'll just eat whatever you want.
No, no.
I'm so averse.
Or is that just because you're a woman?
I'm so averse because
you cannot go wrong
if you pick one of three things with me.
Maybe two.
Steak.
Okay, three.
Steak.
Kabocha.
Sushi.
Steak, sushi, and tacos.
But y'all don't want to eat steak, sushi, and tacos every night.
No, no, no.
I don't want to have to afford taking y'all out to steak, sushi, and tacos every night.
I don't mind making it here in the house.
Yes, but it doesn't taste as good.
Well, you know.
But the hibachi I made the other night was really good. But it tastes a lot better to my checking account, so there's that.
Well, I know.
But the hibachi I made the other night was really good.
I made like real hibachi, y'all.
I was very proud of myself.
That was good.
So I was really excited about her answer for that because that is, like, one of the –
I don't even know how to describe this, and maybe some of the listeners do,
but I will creepily sit here and watch them take their first bite
and wait for the noise that is made or the
oh my god that's so good mom or oh my god that's so good babe i i will like wait for that
there's i know it is a little creepy i watch y'all eat but there has been like maybe there's
been murder mysteries that have that exact same scene in them
by the way so like when the chef eats the brain yeah no when the chef is just sitting there like
grinning and staring i swear i didn't put anything in in it just love i used to tell piper that all
the time um because she'd say well what's in it when she was a little little baby little girl
what's in it mom and i'd say a lot of love i. What's in it, mom? And I'd say, a lot of love.
I made it with a lot of love.
And she goes, ooh, I love the love.
Fortunately, love is not arsenic.
No, it's not arsenic.
That's not something I just sprinkle into y'all's food.
So anyway, Creepy Gillian loves to watch y'all eat her food.
And I love to cook the food.
And Phil is always asking me, well, I'll make dinner if you just tell me what the recipe is. And it's like, dude,
I season things until my ancestors say that's enough. That's enough, babe. You don't need to
put any more basil in that. But this is one of the, this is one of those like famous differences
between me and my wife is that like, I'm a baker at heart and baking is all about science and
precise measurements
and following the recipe.
Like if you're going to deviate from the recipe, you have to know why you're deviating from the recipe.
You can't make cookies and sit there with the baking powder and just until your ancestors say something.
That's why I'm not a baker.
But that's why I am because.
I will cook the savory and you can cook the sweet.
Nerdy little ingredient measuring, that appeals to my personality.
That works for me.
And you would never cook a day in your life if you had to follow a recipe.
How would you answer that?
Are you thinking of yourself right now or as a child?
What's the sweetest things your parents do that
they don't realize you appreciate i i don't know it's really hard for me to put myself back into
those shoes 30 years ago i i can say for me and it revolves around food again i can say for me the
sweetest thing that i can remember was my dad bringing me out into the herb garden to,
and he took the time to teach me about herbs,
which is where my,
my love for herbalism and,
um,
which you woo woo stuff came from is being in the garden with my dad.
I do.
There were good times in my life.
I promise it wasn't always bad.
I'll go down that road with you though.
Cause like thinking back on it, I think the things that my parrot, good times in my life i promise it wasn't always bad i'll go down that road with you though because
like thinking back on it i think the things that my parent the times my spirit parents spent that
meant the most to me was when they were teaching me things yeah i think so too because like that's
that's what i feel like because like there's so so much of me versus my parents is fleshed out
like differences of opinions and my parents and i are just very different people in a lot of ways but I always reflect back on like all the things I learned
from the two of them because you know like simple stuff like how to bake how to cook how to do
dishes how to take care of a house um frankly sometimes some of the some of some of my very feeble attempts to mentor my daughter emotionally, that probably comes a lot from my mom.
Like her teaching me all those things.
And then from my dad was how to manage money, how to manage a household, mechanics work and carpentry and all the man stuff, so to say.
But I have always had that mentality, like I don't like to do for someone.
I want to teach them how to do it so that they don't, not that I mind, but so they don't
have to come back to me.
Excuse me.
There's something floating around.
me excuse me there's something floating around so like when a person takes time out of their day to to teach me something or help me work through something i'm trying to do like that still to
this day is very impactful to me because the of all the things in in the world that i believe
are in the short supply time is probably the most in short supply.
Because from the day you're born, you only have so much of it,
and you don't even know when the last moment is.
So when a person gives you their time, that matters to me.
Yeah, I think looking back as an adult, the time spent with mom and dad,
the nurturing, nice, sweet time that I spent with mom and dad was always the best.
Oh, he said, bless you, Phil. Excuse me. There's, I don't know why I haven't sneezed all day and all of a sudden it just popped out. Okay. So the next question, I think we're on four. Yeah. We're on
four. What do you like doing with your parents?
And I wasn't surprised by this answer at all.
Kind of, I guess, in a way.
Her answer was geocaching.
So we like to do geocaching.
Last weekend, you should have seen us.
Some of the geocaches that we were looking for were right up against a five-lane highway.
And so we probably looked like the big
morons out there trying to find the cache, but we like to do geocaching. And she said mini golf
and arcades. So it's a tradition in our little three, three family, three person family,
no matter where we go for vacation, if they have a mini golf place, we always have to go.
So anytime we go to Gulf Shores, anytime we go up to Arkansas, anytime we go anywhere, if there's a mini golf place, we're going to mini golf.
And one of my favorite places that we've done it, and I don't think she remembers it because she was super young when we went, was on the side of a mountain in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
That was a fun, fun place to go.
So, yeah, mini golf, arcades, geocaching was her answer.
Yeah, anything outdoors, Joe said.
My kids will tell you anything.
His kids will tell you anything outdoors.
I think there's probably more to that.
I think family game night is, I think anything where we're doing something fun.
We do have family game nights.
We haven't had one in quite some time.
And I think that that's just, you know, the season of where she is in her life.
I mean, in August next year, she's going to be in high school.
So it's not as cool to hang out with mom and dad.
And maybe she doesn't want to hang out with mom and dad as much anymore.
And right now it's just a convenience that mom and or dad or both of us are there
because we have to drive her with her friends and all that stuff like today.
So, yeah, I think anything really.
But those were the three things that she said the most.
And then the next question,
are you ready? What do your parents, what don't your parents understand about the world around you? I was, we were trying to, I don't know, the answer kind of doesn't fit, but this is what she said. She said, I don't care about most things.
We, everyone, so like me and Phil and then everyone else, always apologizes for things that aren't a big deal to her. That just goes against that grain again of people pleasing and
making sure everyone is okay and all that stuff, at least for me,
of, well, I'm going to apologize if I've hurt your feelings or if you're disappointed or whatever.
I'm going to apologize.
I mean, it already, like, it's a knife through the heart when I have to tell her something and it's going to disappoint her.
So I don't know.
I don't know how, I guess the hardest thing for me is to take that like 100% serious.
I don't know.
Maybe she doesn't care about most things.
And that apologies, you know, things just really aren't a big deal to her.
And so why apologize?
I think the way I read that, though, is that like there's a fairly small group of things that really are impactful to her.
And those things I believe she takes very seriously.
Well, that's the next one.
But then anything outside of that, it's like she said, like, all these things that don't bother me that bad.
Which I think is also just an aspect of us trying to learn her personality because over the last 12 months, obviously it's changed, but I feel like it's coming out.
We're slowly, one step at a time, seeing who she's going to be as an adult. adult and in some ways it's not really a shock and in other ways i feel like we're juxtaposing
what we're seeing against memories of this five six year old kid and we're having trouble like
making that connection between the two because who she's who she's becoming is dramatically
different in some ways than who she used to be. Yeah. And she's dramatically different from me.
And I think from me, and that is like, I think I'm having a harder time with that than I
am with who she used to be.
Although I do look back at videos and pictures of her when she was younger, like four or
five and six and think that is just, that was a totally different kid than the kid we
have now not in a bad way or anything like that because she is becoming more of the person she's
supposed to be and you know how i harp on um being your authentic self but i i don't know. I wish you could know who, like some of you might know Piper when she was little bitty.
And she wasn't afraid of anything.
She wasn't afraid of talking to you.
Nobody was a stranger.
She did have very good sense of people.
And so when Piper was uncomfortable around someone, we knew that that wasn't someone that she needed to be
around. Massive waving red flag. Yeah. And so when Piper kind of, you know, cowered away from someone,
we knew that it was a big deal to take that into consideration. And now she's just kind of,
I don't know, she's just a teenager. And I don't, I have a hard time because I'm not sure how she's processing her
emotions. And I want to make sure this is the hover mom. I want to make sure that she's processing
her emotions in a good way and not just, you know, bottling everything up and not expressing
the way she feels. I also don't want her to be mean or a bully or ugly to people either.
And I think sometimes I see that come out in her.
And I think it is, you know, I wonder if it's a shield.
I wonder if it's a wall that she has created so that her feelings don't get hurt.
What do you think?
You're thinking.
So, again. Or is she she just can she just be mean well and i think again there's one of those moments where i don't know if i'm projecting
or if i'm just seeing a commonality but like i know when i was her age i struggled a lot with
something you you point out to me even to this day at 42 years old, where you're constantly telling me, not everyone is you.
I tell you that all the time.
Because I do, probably like a lot of people do, kind of develop this idea in my head of like, well, I could have done that.
So why couldn't they?
why couldn't they? And my brain immediately jumps from that point to the reason they didn't do it is because they're lazy or because they don't work as hard or whatever. It takes some time to
circle back around to the fact that maybe that wasn't within their capabilities and they just
could not do it because they can't do it. But my brain doesn't go that direction because my brain,
it starts with this false premise that one of those
things that I talk about all the time where I'm like, rationally, I understand this, but there's
nothing rational about the way the human brain works sometimes. And I always start from this
perspective, discounting my own, my own capabilities sometimes like, well, if I could have done that,
they could have. And then you have to point out to me like, hey, babe, not everybody can sit down
and in a matter of like 10 minutes
figure out the shortcuts app in iOS
and start programming applications with it.
But for me, it was like, well, it's not that hard.
You just do this and this and this
and then if statement
and then put the script in right here
and it works just fine.
It's not that hard.
Or like I get into a lot at work where i somebody will send me a spreadsheet be like hey i can't i can't get this to work and i'm like seven seconds later i'm like
it's fixed what else you got because to me it is simple because it's it's a skill set i have
and i wonder sometimes if what she butts heads against is she compares another person, either their capabilities or their personality or something to her.
And the conclusion she jumps to is they could have done that.
They chose not to.
And she gets frustrated with them.
I can see that.
I can definitely see that in her for sure.
Yeah.
see that i can definitely see that in her for sure yeah it's something that i recognized in myself quite a quite a long time ago but at 12 i wasn't there yet like all i knew was i i had this very
like the word is egocentric which doesn't has nothing to do with your ego it just means that
like you you judge the world based off of your own individual viewpoint
and usually it's something that becomes later usually well after teenage years into adulthood
where we develop the ability to see things from other people's perspective it's not something
that's within the wheelhouse of young teens so that could be what's going on yeah so i don't
like my my viewpoint on her when i see her interact with like her friends is that
i don't think she's a mean kid by nature i think she probably gets frustrated with people
and that's yeah definitely and lashes out and teaching her to like pull that back
that's that's what she has parents for. Yeah, true. The next question was, oh, yeah.
What don't your parents understand about you?
And this kind of speaks back to something we said earlier in an answer that she, well, I think it was the one before this.
Her answer was, give me five minutes to be disappointed or to accept what's happened and I'll be fine.
But she did say that being wronged by her friend sticks with her longer.
And I didn't say anything in that moment, but I totally understand where she's coming from about that.
And you know this about me.
I, and this is under one of those huge differences between you and me but like I am very slow to forgive
like
I don't always succeed
we talked about that last night as a matter of fact
about my notorious holding
of grudges but I
do my best to like if
I've been wronged by somebody I do my
best to at least put it out of my mind so I don't
continue to expend energy on it
I try I don't always succeed. I don't succeed. But I do not forgive and forget.
If a person has wronged me, especially if I perceive it as a lack of loyalty,
like I exposed my back to you because I trusted you and you betrayed me.
There will never be, there will never be reconciliation from that. There will never
be contrition. I will never trust you again. I will go to my grave remembering you screwed me
over. And some people have told me like, well, it's really not healthy. And I'm like, but you
know what it does? It ensures you will never get the chance to do it to me again. Yeah. And I think that's where that
came from because she, when she, and we know this is that as she's gotten a little older,
she has gotten a little slower to trust people. But when she trusts a person, she's pretty open with them. Yeah. And when somebody betrays that trust, I believe, I feel like that's extremely impactful to her.
And, yeah, I think she probably does, like, make a mental checkmark of, don't ever trust that SOB again.
So I think that's how I interpret that answer is that if it's something that isn't a big deal, she's disappointed.
She wishes it wasn't that way.
She's upset.
She's whatever.
But she's very quick to like decompress and unwrap and get rid of it, which, I mean, if that's what's going on, that will serve her very well in her life.
But what I believe is happening is that when someone it's not that somebody let
her down it's when somebody hurt her like intentionally hurt her or abused her trust
i think yeah she'll take that she'll go all the way to the ends of the earth for that because it's
loyalty is more i think loyalty is more important to her.
Whereas I,
I, I've witnessed you forgive quite a few venial and let,
you know,
more serious sins from friends of yours under the auspice of,
well,
they didn't mean it or they're my friend or they're going through a rough
time.
And you're,
you're just,
you're willing to give everybody,
I give everybody like four or five,
17,000 chances.
And here's the thing of it.
I wouldn't necessarily say one way is right and one way is wrong, but both personalities have consequences.
The consequences of me being the way I am is that I have a very small friend group because I don't let you in fast.
And once you're in, it's kind of like the mafia.
Like you're in this for life. There's only one way out, and I don't think you want fast. And once you're in, it's kind of like the mafia. Like, you're in this for life. There's only
one way out, and I don't think you want to go that
way with me. So
as a result, I don't have a lot
of friends. I don't have a big friend circle.
There's a lot of people I know,
like even friends of yours in the community.
I know them. I'm polite. I'm cordial.
I'm conversive. But they
don't really know who I am.
They don't know Philil they don't know me
and i don't know if they ever will whereas you because you're a little more forgiving than i am
have a much larger social circle i don't not anymore i mean i i have friends that i communicate
with or like i don't who do i hang out with like i don't feel like i don't feel like i
have a big like friend circle and i think there has to be different layers to the friendships
but you used to yeah i guess what i'm getting at but i don't think it was big i don't think it was
big it was a handful compared to me it was a handful of people i think it was around the same
amount of people. Anyway.
Yeah.
Anyway, you know, I see what you're saying about her.
And I.
I can be totally wrong, but that's that's how that's how it looks to me.
Yeah.
No, it makes perfect sense.
The next and the last question was, how do you feel loved by your parents?
Her answer, very, but y'all annoy the hell out of me.
I mean, that's what parents do.
12-year-old's direct quote was, how do you feel loved by your parents?
Very, I feel very loved by my parents, but you annoy the hell out of me.
I expect nothing different from an almost 13-year-old child whose parents annoy the hell out of her.
I mean, I love you dearly, and I tell you at least once a month that I'm shocked men haven't hunted all women to extinction for sport.
I am shocked about that as well.
I know that sounds awful, but I'm kind of shocked about that as well.
No.
But like I said, I mean, I guess to me, I thought there were some answers you and I got last night that were not surprise at all.
There were some that it took me a minute to think about it.
And what I feel like the totality of that list really kind of emphasizes is just the fact that like...
There's aspects of her personality that are very much in common with one of us or the other.
Mostly you.
Besides the food part.
That's me.
The food part is me.
Yeah.
But, I mean, at the same time,
there's a lot of her personality that does kind of ring true to me.
There's parts every now and then, though, where I look at her and I'm like,
oh, that's Gillian.
Oh, not even like a little bit of gillian but like that is full strength undiluted that's gillian
yeah there's been times when she's like come out of her bedroom or whatever we'll be riding in the
car whatever and she asks a question and i can remember asking that same exact question to my
parents and it's nothing major, usually.
It's like, why does this happen?
Or have you ever thought about this?
And I can just remember thinking, oh, my God, I remember that exact conversation with my mom or my dad.
So, yeah.
Sometimes I see me.
I see me in her a little bit.
But I see mostly you.
I see me in her a little bit, but I see mostly you.
And even your dad said, well, everything from the nose up is Phil's, but she got your mouth.
And I didn't know how to quite take that.
Did she physically get my mouth or did she get my mouth?
She did physically get your mouth and get your mouth.
She did.
Somebody, we were in class the other day and one of of her classmates so seventh grade was in my room and piper and i were talking about something and we both smiled at each
other at the same time and this other student was like oh my god you look just like your mom
i was like there's a reason for that it genetics, babe. I think you're learning that in science right now.
I was about to say, I'm not sure what year they learn genetics and biology and all that,
but they're in for quite a shock.
Yeah, right?
So anyway, I thought that was a fun thing to do with Piper,
and those are questions that I'm going to keep
because I want to see how they change as she gets a little bit older.
that I'm going to keep because I want to see how they change as she gets a little bit older.
I wish we had done this, these questions long ago to kind of see how much she's grown from then till now, but it'll be interesting to see in a few years. Cause I am going to ask these
questions again, maybe once a year. I don't know. I think it's just fun to kind of get a perspective from your kid. I don't,
I don't feel like, I don't feel like at least for me, these were questions that my parents would
have asked me. And maybe your parents wouldn't have asked you. I think, I think the way people
parent nowadays is very different than how we parent, how our parents parented us and generations ahead of them.
You know how I'm fond of saying that the world we grew up in doesn't exist anymore?
By extension, the world that our parents parented us in, that world doesn't exist either.
Well, no, it doesn't. But I think, too, what we do as we grow up and become parents is we learn how we want to
parent. We see from our own parents what we want to do and what we don't want to do as parents.
We all, we, I can't really, I don't know, I guess I can kind of say this. This was another
reel that I had seen last night. I don't know how I got down this whole
child therapy wormhole on the algorithm. Yeah, this side of Instagram. But there was another
woman who had posted something about living room kids. Have you ever heard of a living room kid?
The kids that aren't allowed to hang out in their bedroom? They have to hang out in the living room?
the kids that aren't allowed to hang out in their bedroom they have to hang out in the living room it's not a it's not a you have to a living room kid is someone who is a child who feels safe
enough to come into the living room safe enough to be out of the safe place of their bedroom
and um and in their mind it's safe to be in all parts of the house. And what this woman was saying was for her and
her husband, the living room was not a safe place to be emotionally. It wasn't, and sometimes
physically, it wasn't a safe place to be because that's where mom and dad hung out. And so it was
safer to be in their bedroom. And not that that resonates with everyone from our generation,
but I can remember days where it was like, yeah, I'm just going to hang out in here because right now it's just way too toxic, way too crazy out in the other parts of the house.
I'm just going to hang out in here and close my door and hope that everything stops.
So I can understand that term now of being a living room kid where children feel like it's safe to be here.
It's not this house.
I made this comment to Phil and Piper the other day because Piper was in her room.
Her door is open.
She's on her phone.
She's texting her friends.
You can hear her giggling back and forth with everybody in there.
Phil was somewhere.
I was in the living room.
Not one TV was on in the house. Not, you know, there was, I had eventually turned on like some
jazzy kind of soft music just to kind of do some work. But it was such a contrast to the house
that I grew up in. Like my mom played music and she played, you know, I still remember the music she played and it was like this jazzy soft music and whatever. But what I get in this house,
I get that every day. Like I, that is the vibe in this house. Sometimes the TV never comes on
in this house because we're sitting at the table and we're eating dinner or, you know, each one of
us are working on our own projects, but it's, it's not something like, this is just such a quiet, safe place. And I,
I don't know. It's peaceful. It's peaceful. And it, it is a living room kid's house.
Like Piper knows that she can come out and do whatever, and it's not going to be
chaotic. It's not chaos. Even though you tell me I'm chaos. You are chaos. So anyway,
that's all, I guess. Do you have anything else to add to this one? Go check out Mr. Joshua T.
on Instagram. Those questions are there, and I can definitely shoot you those questions if you'd
like to test this out on your kids and see what their answers are. But he has a lot of really good advice for parents,
especially because he's a child therapist and he sees children all the time that are going through
tough spots in their life or maybe it's an emotional management skills that they're trying
to cope with or learn how to deal with or whatever.
And kudos to the parents that send their kids to therapists and see that there is a need there for
that child. Because, I mean, I was sent to therapists when I was a kid. And a lot of times
it was a joke, I think. My mom would always joke, well, we have to give you something to talk
to your therapist about. And I was like, no, but really you don't. I really don't have to go to my
therapist and talk about the things that happen in this house. But therapy was always something
that I was glad to be a part of. I've kind of talked about, I've seen a lot of therapists in my life,
a lot, individually and together as a family. We've even had as a family, not this one, not me
and Phil, but my family growing up, we've had a therapist walk out on us as a family and say,
oh, I can't help you. I don't know how to help you. And literally walked out of the room on all five of us.
But that is something that I guess I have to applaud my parents on is knowing that a therapist
needed to be present. And all of me and my sisters went to therapy. And we had different therapists growing up.
We had tried all sorts of therapists.
And they continued throughout our teenage years and all that stuff.
So I guess kudos to my parents for seeing that we needed to have a place to escape to and actually talk about our feelings from an outside source that wasn't judgmental on what was going on in
our house. But kudos to the parents that do that. Piper doesn't see a therapist, quote unquote,
like in an office, but she is very much in tune to the therapist at school and knows that she can
go talk to her whenever she needs to. And we encourage that with her.
And one of the things that Phil and I did when we first started dating right
before we, before we got married,
we individually saw therapists and then we went to therapy as a couple.
And that is what set such a strong foundation for the two of us when we got
married. So yay for therapists,
yay for people realizing that therapy is there.
I am a huge mental health advocate because of the things that I've gone through in my own life.
So, yeah, go check out Mr. Mr. Underscore Joshua T for that.
A lot of fun.
OK, thanks for joining us on this day where we had to change the time.
We had some fish therapy to go to.
But anyway, I hope you guys have a great week ahead. And yeah, that's about it. Have fun with
that. Stop looking at me, Swan. Okay. Bye, guys. okay bye guys Thank you.