When Doing My Best Isn’t Good Enough | Ep. 18

0:00 [Music] hi everyone welcome to this edition of the connected families podcast I'm Stacy belward and I'm so glad you're joining us this is the second of a five-part series for dads and curious moms we've heard from enough dads across the country about the issues they wrestle with and in this series we're hitting on five topics we think will help dads everywhere feel better about their parenting this special series is funded by the memorial gifts dedicated to the

0:28 memory of James Jackson the father of connected families co-founder Jim Jackson who passed away late in 2019 today's topic is when doing my best isn't good enough so listen in as connected families co-founder Jim Jackson and close colleague and parent coach Chad Han share ways to help your kids understand your good intentions for them hey Chad hey Jim how you doing today doing well do you have good intentions for your kids today always always have good intentions for our kids

0:58 don't we and yet sometimes times they just don't get it in fact even as I hear myself say that I kind of reflect to my past and remember myself with great frustration saying it just seems like they don't get it right these kids just don't get it what is wrong with them right it's got to be them it's got to be them it's all about my kids right exactly and of course we're joking about that because we've come to recognize

1:22 that when we feel that way certainly there could be something about how our kids are receiving the information that we're sending out that they're just miss interpreting it but it's our job if they're misinterpreting it to help them interpret it properly right right yeah at least to have that awareness to ask a couple questions about what's happening here or why are my good intentions not being received as I had hoped and often times for me it would come across as

1:46 even a lack of gratitude like here I am doing these things and that's your response to me right or any number of different things that are in our mind that our kids aren't getting right now and it kind of hearkens me back to my relationship with my dad and this podcast series is in his memory and at the end of his life my dad and me had come to a place in our relationship where we were resolved and everything

2:10 that I'm going to talk about in this podcast series was stuff that I talked about with Dad yeah but there was some tough times back in the day when his good intentions were driving me away from him and he was big and he was firm and he was harsh and he was scary and there was a point in my life where where I wasn't even sure my Dad loved me right and that led me to some poor choices and

2:31 it led me to some discouragement and it led me rather than to try to seek resolution even as I was getting old enough to start thinking about these things to grow in bitterness and to grow in resentment and to even want space from my dad it's hard as a child to recognize the the good intentions you kind of observe certain things but then it's really hard to to figure that out and then as you get older as you're

2:53 talking about into your teen years or even your 20s you start processing and maybe sorting through things a little differ which is exactly what I did and I came to a place where the angst inside of me about my dad was causing me so much difficulty not just in my relationship with my dad but I was short with my kids and I was short with my wife and I was more impatient than I wanted to be and show up in other ways

3:15 yeah it started showing up in all kinds of other ways and I realized and it actually took the the nudging of other loved ones in my life that I maybe could use some help this conversation hearkens me back to a time with my dad and I'm not going to go into big depth about this but there was a season when I was in my late 20s when I was in therapy to reconcile some of the issues with my dad

3:35 and one of the issues that the therapist was going to help me address was the fact that I was coming that late in my life to recognize dad had good intentions he just didn't know how to communicate them very well to me and that hurt me that's a pretty important realization yeah and when I realized that I wanted to figure out how to resolve all of that I wanted to figure out how to hear my dad's heart about his

3:56 real intentions I knew I couldn't be in control of that I could only be inol control of me and the therapist equipped me with a way to confront my dad not confront as much as have a conversation with him the therapist suggested would be a confrontation because at the heart of it was the statement that he equipped me to go to my dad with which was Dad I appreciate all of the things now that I'm this age that you did for me when I

4:16 was younger mhm but when I was younger I missed it and I really for a while didn't believe that you loved me and that was hard for me and it led me to be pretty discouraged for a season wow and what the therapist predicted icted happened and that was that Dad blew up how dare you suggest I didn't love you how could you say such a thing and my tone of voice doesn't compare anything to how dad delivered it that day there

4:41 the therapist had prepared me for this so I I took a deep breath as Dad basically launched into me I did this for you I provided I was faithful to your mother we made sure you were in the good teams and go to the camps and did all of the stuff yeah how could you possibly not know that I loved you what I want to talk about as it relates to that right now is the fact that I think

5:01 my dad represents a lot of dads who have good intentions for their kids for their wives for their families that just because they're in their head just because they're in their heart the kids and the families are not receiving or understanding those good intentions they might hear them through the context of a lecture or a defensive Outburst or something like that but they they don't actually fully Embrace these things because dad hasn't figured out how to

5:26 put the right effort behind his good intentions feel the passion and intensity coming out of your dad right of how dare you yeah I mean those words are pretty significant words and like something missed the Mark here y right how dare you say those things when my very intentions were so good for you and I would have done anything to have provided or protected or I wrote a a blog post a while ago dad would you take

5:54 a bullet for your child mhm right taking a bullet for your child I I don't know know a dad that wouldn't do that but this is a different kind of bullet of sorts right it's not the big bullet it's the little bullets right right the day in day out every day kinds of things so we're going to talk in the next session more about kind of my journey with my dad and some of those things but I think

6:16 for the purposes of just getting our arms around this idea of how our good intentions go bad I'd like to do a role play oh really yes really I'd like to do a role play I'm going to be the parent and I want you to be the child okay and we're going to role playay a 9-year-old child who's been told over and over again to pick up the mess in the entryway and to empty the garbage before

6:37 you get on your computer game okay and I'm going to come home from work and I'm going to see you playing a computer game on the couch with your little device and I'm going to see a mess in the corner and I'm going to see the garbage in the canister and we're going to play this out and I'm going to do the best I can to be kind of the typical dad that I hear from okay yeah great so I come home

6:55 I come in the door I rustle about I take a look I Look At You and I and I start talking Chad Chad what are you doing Chad get off that thing right now we have had this conversation a minute just a minute I need quiet I need quiet okay I'm taking okay it's in my hands you're not going to get it back stop your yelling we talked about this yesterday and this is not okay all right we're

7:21 going to stop the role play here I'm sure people are curious where this might all go and the truth is it can go any of a thousand different ways the point isn't at this point did I say the right thing or the wrong thing the point that I want to drive home for just a little bit is what are my intentions and to start the conversation there so I'm sure if we're in a room full of people and I

7:39 said dads you just saw what happened what are my good intentions here what are some of the good intentions as we do this kind of role play in other places that we hear people say all the time yeah just to be responsible take care of your stuff yeah responsibility before you get your privileges just cleanliness right respect of my stuff respect of of your stuff yeah so there's respect there's responsibility there's obedience there's cleanliness there's listening so

8:02 those are my good intentions and those are good intentions to be sure Bible tells us to train up our children in the way they should go so that when they're old they won't depart from it and those are the sorts of things we ought to be training our kids in right right on so we're going to come back after the break and we're going to unpack how that might have landed on you the child so I've got

8:21 these good intentions but what did you get from me just there because this is a really important thing we want to help parents understand is that your kids are interpreting something at times like that what is it and what do we want to do about it is the question we'll address after [Music] break one of parents' biggest frustrations is not knowing how to respond when their kids misbehave they want to teach good lessons and stop the

8:45 bad behavior but the efforts to do so often make matters worse as frustration and resentment grow between parents and their kids hi friends we're Jim and Lynn Jackson and over our Decades of working with parents we' found that there is a better way not just to make the behavior stop but to grow character and closeness right in the middle of misbehavior and discipline we want to help you learn to use those messy conflicts to build skills wisdom and faith in your kids

9:14 that will equip them for a lifetime so we've made this course to be eight sessions it's interactive you'll dig in with other parents and it's designed for parents who want more for their family than just quick fixes or behavior modification tricks we're going to teach you an easy to remember frame work for parenting and tons of practical tools that will apply to any situation you can imagine with your kids whether they're two or 12 or even 18 or

9:39 [Music] more discipline that connects runs twice a year registration is open in January and the course starts in February you can find all of the information in our show notes or at Connected families.org I'm Stacy belward the course moderator and I hope you join me and hundreds of others as together we learned to connect deeper with our children before the break we did this role play MH and I talked about my dad

10:09 and I I want to connect those two here just a little bit because the role play that I just did flowed pretty naturally for me yeah it was familiar for me too it's kind of in me and I learned it and then I did it with my own children and it started to become a habit the difference between my dad and me is that that habit continued because he didn't learn a new way and so when I was 9 and

10:30 10 that's what it looked like when I was 12 and 15 and older it got more and more volatile I kept feeling the same way only at a greater level and it made me as a youngster who's now gaining power and an ability to fight back yeah it didn't make me want to comply with Dad and do what he wanted me to do it made me want to run away and that's in a sense what I did and what led me to

10:53 counseling I don't advise it yeah right but it's what happened right because the messages that I got from my dad in those little things just continued to grow over time because that sort of Engagement became habitual frankly as I learned to avoid my dad it became less and less frequent just cuz I stayed away from him mhm yeah so the relationship there just weren't as many opportunities to which he had the good intention of having a relationship with his son which

11:20 then wasn't happening and made him more angry at me and resentful toward me and so on and we've got a big snowball rolling here that I left home with right so I want to go back to that role play you know part of me as I reflect on all of this what would my dad have done if he had been a dad who had learned the things that we're talking about now at a time like that which really are the key

11:43 things that maybe drove you and Lynn to start doing some deeper things around this as well it's true it's true our learning led us to capture what we were learning and just start talking about it with parents and one thing led to another and pretty soon the ministry started to grow and here we are 20 30 years later but I want to go right back to that role play and talk about what it was like to be you so I'm the dad I've

12:05 got good intentions I'm saying what I said to get you to clean up your mess and to get off your game you're getting messages from me right now and when we say messages it's like we're communicating most of our communication with our kids is non-verbal not verbal we're communicating with our body language our tone of voice our pacing volume all these things communicate to our kids and they communicate messages to our kids about who they are about

12:28 their identity so and especially if this is the way it normally goes these messages start to become ingrained in kids so what are the messages that you were getting from me as I was addressing you with these good intentions yeah I I think things like you came in really irritated so I felt like I'm really an irritant to you also that I'm incapable of uh taking care of my own stuff you need to remind me over and over listen

12:53 wrong with you you're a bad listener you're naughty you're irresponsible you're disrespectful all of those things kind of were flowing into me which creates the wall up it goes so a lot of stuff just happened in 90 seconds if we as dads don't recognize what's happening and go back to try to do some things to undo what we might have done in those 90 seconds then they just sort of stay there and then they grow and then they

13:17 fer they're repeated right we just we get into patterns and scripts and unless we recognize it and and see a way through and out of that we'll keep doing it so we talked in the last segment in the last session about these four messages mhm and the messages you just said that you heard from me were quite the opposite you're irresponsible you're an irritant you're a pain you're a problem whatever the messages were right with the goal of communicating a message

13:42 to you the child you're safe with me you're love no matter what you're capable you're called you're responsible for your actions what are some things that I as a parent might do differently through the lens of your eyes as a child to communicate those four messages as soon as you get really angry you're triggering me to to fight back I'm not the kid that's going to passively sit there and then you ripped my screen out of my hands okay so of course you

14:06 weren't obeying me I know I know but it creates this lack of safety or even I'm responsible right because now you're responsible to remove things from so your interpretation of that wasn't what I wanted it to be MH yeah so you know what maybe a little calmer coming in maybe just asking me what I'm doing yeah asking me a couple questions about what I know about the situation as opposed to justking out a of orders and so in the

14:35 grandest sense what I hear you saying is be attentive to even if not approving of what it's like to be me and what my agenda is right now as a child as a part of administering your agenda or your intentions I don't think it's all that different although I know the roles are different but if if somebody walked into the living room and you're reading the newspaper and they said get over here right now get these things done or you

14:58 need to get out outside right now or your neighbor came and started demanding things of you you'd be like what are you doing right right I actually have a different picture in my mind of reading my magazine when I ought to be getting dinner ready and Lynn comes into the room and the first thing I hear is oh no and that communicates a message to me that I'm a disappointment or that I'm doing something I ought not do so

15:20 let's role play that again the child the parent and I'm going to see if I can't heat a little bit of your advice here in my approach to this so rewind we're going to go back I'm going to come into the house there's the mess I see the garbage in the can hasn't been taken out I look over here and Chad is playing his video game on the couch not at all attentive to me and I take a deep breath

15:39 that's just to me not that he can even hear and I say Lord give me your wisdom for this and then I address Chad hey Chad buddy Chad buddy what are you up to over there sh just wait just wait just wait Chad I asked you a question pal come here I'm going to get behind you I'm going to rub your back a little bit I'm going to look at your game I'm going to see oh you're playing that game

15:56 that's so hard for you to get off of aren't you yeah that game don't you yeah do you want to keep playing that game pal wait Chad do you want to keep playing the game cuz if you do then you need to listen to me right now yes I do okay then give me the game I do give me the game if you want to play it again later give me the game Chad it's hard isn't it it's hard when you love

16:15 something so much to get off of it on it right now that you don't like so much it's hard isn't it yeah but it's good that you gave me the game now what do you need to do in order to get the game back and for us to have a conversation about this uh remember or do you need a reminder um oh yeah I think I was supposed to do something when I came home yeah yeah you're you're on to

16:34 something what is it um yeah oh shoot yeah do you need a reminder no no tell me entry way yeah yeah the entry way good good get over there hustle yeah you want I'll come over there with you do you need me to tell you what to do or do you know you got you got it okay do it yep so you put that away you put that away nice work what else there was one more thing um i' had to do um the the

16:56 garbage yeah so you listened well so go ahead and do the garbage Chad does the garbage okay buddy now before you get the game back I want you to repeat to me how this is going to go tomorrow when I come home uh tomorrow yeah what do you think is going to happen tomorrow uh like when I come home or when you come home when I come home well when you come home well I'm going to get my stuff done

17:16 I'm going to get my chores done which chores tell me exactly precisely what chores you're going to get done to get the entryway cleaned up a little bit yeah um and then the garbage I'm going to do the garbage okay fantastic and tomorrow if you don't do that stuff and I you on your game you're going to lose the game for a lot longer period of time okay is that clear I know it's hard but I bet you can do it cuz I just watched

17:35 you do it okay so I got to remember that so tell me one more time what you're going to do when you get home from school tomorrow and then I'll give you the game entry way going to be cleaned up and uh and then I'm going to I'm going to empty the garbage do you predict that you're going to be successful tomorrow or not successful yeah I think I'm going to do it I'm going to do it okay well let's see you

17:52 know what's going to happen if you don't you remember yeah what'll happen I'm not going to be able to play that game for a while and we'll decide how long it is based on your ude if that happens but I don't think it's going to happen here's a game you carry on okay wow thanks that didn't take so long did it had a boy Chad okay so there's the role play and we never know how this is going to go we

18:08 didn't script this we didn't even talk about it ahead of time but and we try to make this be as as real as we can with consideration for the fact that this child is still a bit malleable I mean if if this was a child that was super rebellious we'd have to talk about this differently but this is a child who's learning a parent who's learning and we're putting the kind of effort behind our good intentions that the kids can be

18:28 better interpreters of our intentions right and it's also recognizing that the first time you do this like I'm working at controlling me as a parent and so there aren't guarantees in terms of oh yeah this scenario would play out exactly like this every time and now my cares are gone yeah okay this is a a repeated kind of interaction where I'm controlling me I'm working through these messages and over time we've seen it you know regularly start to change attitudes

18:54 and behaviors but if that's my goal I'm just doing this to try to manipulate my kids see through that pretty quickly as well we received a story from a set of parents not long ago who had been through one of our courses or one of our resources and had learned these ideas and they were glowing about the things they'd learned about how to put the effort that reached their kids' Hearts behind their good intentions for the

19:18 child and this is a 9-year-old child and what they reported to us concisely was our child came to us after we had put these ideas into place for a while and said to us you know what Mom and Dad dad I used to obey you because I was afraid but now I obey you because I love you and I'm like wait a minute that's almost too good to be true and yet we hear stories like that all the time from

19:41 parents who decide to be a lot more thoughtful yeah about how to put the effort behind their good intentions that their children will interpret properly and that's what this is really all about how to make sure our good intentions get us where we at least toward better or more toward where we want to go right requires some deeper thinking than just a method it's it's it's about following these four principles that we teach in the connected families framework and by

20:09 that method we win our kids trust yeah it's huge it's huge and and I would just encourage parents encourage dads in particular that if if you find yourself in this place of good intentions but not really understanding the messaging or the the way that that lands on your kids that this would be maybe just one thing to take away is just watch just watch in your interactions this week no shame just identify where you're at and just

20:34 watch what messages are my kids receiving from me in the middle of behavior challenges yeah so interpret your kids well dads and figure out a little bit more what it's like to be them by paying attention by paying attention to them by paying attention to you and then we're going to come back in a week or so we're going to join you with a next session which is really going to dive into some of the Dynamics

20:56 with me and Dad and healing with my own father wound really and how did I get to a place of love and forgiveness with my own father thanks Jim and Chad the idea of thinking about how my kids are perceiving my good intentions has been a game Cher for so many parents including me are you enjoying our podcast please rate and review so others can find us more easily and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a single

21:20 episode all of the information about the discipline that connects with your child's heart online course is found through a link in our show notes register to day we look forward to next time when Jim and Chad will offer some insight for dads whose own fathers weren't perfect we hope you'll join us for more information visit connected families.org [Music]