#243 Why You Don't Enjoy Parenthood As Much As You'd Hoped You Would

Rachel Denning (00:10.382)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. We're your host, Greg and Rachel Denning. What is that going on? We're going to Morocco. We are so crazy excited. Like I've been giddy for several weeks, maybe a few months to go back to Morocco. I was reading from The Alchemist last night, right there in my Bits nightstand.

And I was so excited because he's in Tarifa, Spain right now talking to Melchizedek, who is telling him to basically pursue his dream. And he's sitting there looking across the strait to Gibraltar. Exactly. Like see and smell Africa. So calling to him. And I'm super excited because.

we're driving to Morocco and we are going to be crossing that same place. We're taking the ferry from Tarefa, across the Straits of Gibraltar to Tangier. So it's going to be awesome. Oh man. And there's something so magical about that country. You know, we've traveled, I'm getting, I think I'm getting somewhere close to 60 countries, which still there's another 120 to go. But in that many countries, you know, you see and experience so many beautiful things.

but a few of them just pop. Well, and in some ways, not to be snobbish or anything, but a few of them are worth going back to. And Morocco is one of them. This will be our third time there. Yeah, it's magical. So yeah. Yeah. So some countries, you're like, I've been there. Yep, that was great. If I never go back, fine. Yep. Some of them are like, I want to go back. I have to go back because it's so special. And we're going back to Mongolia in July.

as well. That's another one where I'm like, and Nepal. So this is going to be a good year next October. Yeah. So those are the ones I went with some of the kids and I'm going to, I'm going to take the whole family back. So it's awesome. Okay. So today we're going to talk about, um, really how parenting. Well, we're, we're addressing real life situations. And I hope you realize this every time we do a podcast in a way we're talking to someone, we don't,

Rachel Denning (02:30.798)
We're not calling them out. We're not naming them by name. But we do have somebody or multiple people in mind. Usually a lot of people because it's common. Yeah, because it's a common theme. We have someone in mind that we're talking to. And in some ways, I'm talking to myself, especially my younger self as a mother, and I'm talking to mothers all over who ultimately,

who get into motherhood and realize that it's not what they expected. It's not like they dreamed, especially if they had this, like I did, idealistic view or vision of motherhood is going to be like this, ah, you know, and it's so picturesque and it's like, for me it was children on a picnic blanket in the sun and they're...

dressed in these cute clothes and they're clean and they don't have snotty noses and they're behaved. And so you have this vision of what it's like. They each prepare their own meals and they're feeding each other. Yeah, exactly. And so you have this vision of what it's going to be like. And I don't think we should discount that, honestly, because it's actually very important to have that vision because if we didn't have a vision of what parenthood is going to be like.

We wouldn't have children even an idyllic vision so without something to draw you right into it Because if you saw it as like I'm never gonna sleep again. Yeah, I'm out. You saw it as the reality Mostly the negative realities because the positive realities are still good If you saw it as just that you would never have children and a lot of people don't have children because of that because they think Why would I do that? It's it's miserable. It's

It's painful, it's sleepless, it's all of these things. Why would I ever become a mother? And so we have to have those idealized visions because they actually draw us into it. And I think it's biological, it's spiritual. Like there's so many elements there that draw us into motherhood. And that's a good thing. It's supposed to be like that. But sometimes, well, not sometimes, often,

Rachel Denning (04:47.117)
Then once we get hit with the reality of what's also included with that, because there are those idealized moments, but they're moments. And then there's other moments that are actually terrifying and stressful and depressing and exhausting. Which I think is important to also point out, those are also moments. Yes. Neither of those are constants. Well, sometimes it feels like the negative is a constant. Especially, as we are going to talk about today,

especially if you have these misaligned expectations and rules. That's where you get in trouble, is with the rules. Yeah, and so when you have that, when you have too many expectations, too many rules, then motherhood, parenting start to feel more like it's a constant negative, it's constantly entering. Sorry, do that part again. It's very different for men and women. Okay, so it's fascinating because it is different for men and women.

I also another man like we'll we'll envision something we'll kind of see something that's gonna be great. I okay maybe maybe this is the the the analogy or the metaphor is like when you think about the wedding day, right? Many women started when they were little girls. I mean, they had flowers picked out colors. Yeah, they had all the details and they just had so much emotional attachment to all these details.

For the most part men are like man. It's gonna be an awesome day get together people celebrate get married. Wow, it's gonna be great And that's about that like and so like well this color this color. Okay, whatever Let's let's get married right and the only way you're gonna throw that way off is if like the wedding way off, right? I am generalizing but I'm like, yeah, we're gonna get married. We're gonna have friends over the cool things Like would you want this cake of this guy? I don't really care like whatever running care. There's take I

Like for me, I was like, can I wear flip flops? Yeah. It was a hard, it was a hard no. I'm like, I hate shoes. I especially hate dress shoes. Like we're, ironically you actually love shoes. You have more shoes than I do. I hate wearing shoes. It's so strange. But so I had the vision and I had this kind of fuzzy vision of family life and children. It's going to be awesome.

Rachel Denning (07:15.757)
And for me, I'm saying this sincerely, like everything I dreamed, like we have, it was awesome. But I will say I had details in certain areas where you had more details and emotional attachment in other areas. I had, and this is what we're going to get into. I didn't have like hard rules because even as a kid,

I saw it with my stepdads coming through. And then I was out of my own at 16. And it was interesting. I ended up in a lot of other families. I ended up in their houses. They'd had me over for dinner. They'd had me over, you know, because I didn't have a place to stay. And they were, we'll come stay with us for a few days or a few weeks or a few, few months in some cases. So I actually got to go immerse myself in other people's families. And it was, it was one of the best things I think that ever happened to me because I was able to be immersed.

in another family culture and see all their rules and their expectations and their dynamics or culture. And being an outsider in their family allowed me to objectively view what was working and what wasn't. And so I would see some siblings react very poorly. Or you'd feel, like if you come in as an outsider, you feel this.

They're like, and you just feel the awkwardness, the weirdness, like, oh, that didn't go over well. But you'd sense it. And I started noticing that. So I, I started pulling back from rules and, and, and then I started also like voraciously seeking the secrets to happiness and success. So I was just devouring all the books. I was just looking everywhere. Good. And what I found was not rules. There are some rules, but I found was principle.

principles and practices. And, and what's awesome about a principle is that it's packaged for application. It's pragmatic. It's adjustable. It's agile. It's, um, it's flexible. And he like, we use the principle where the rule can become so rigid that it causes breaking in the parent or the child.

Rachel Denning (09:36.749)
It causes additional stress. It causes stress that would not be there otherwise. And I think a great example of this that we have seen countless times in all of the counseling and coaching that we've done over the years is especially, I think this is especially true with new parents and it makes sense why it would be that way, but we've seen it carried over into experienced parents with grown children, these hard and fast rules around say, curfews with older children.

Bedtimes with young times with younger children. Like it's like hard and fast. Like you will take a nap at noon every day. Hard and fast rule. You will go to bed at nine PM every day. Hard and fast. You know, you will be home at midnight. No matter what or not, whether we're out or not, no matter what's happening, right? Like this hard rule. Okay. This is maybe a tangent for another day.

It's so curious to me, like, where do we come up with these arbitrary rules? That's not research based. Right. And it's not like this works based. You realize, oh, well, my kids, they get tired, I notice, and their behavior declines as they get tired. So the little ones, if they take naps and they're rested, well, man, they feel better. There's the principle. That's if they get rested, it's better. They take the principle, make a rule.

Noon daily. Well, right. Where does that even come from? I think it does come from some of this, you know, research based stuff that works. It comes from good intentions, ultimately, because they think, oh, if my kid has a nap every day, they're going to be better off. They're going to be more rested. They're going to be less grumpy and cranky. I need to make sure they have a nap every day. And so we take it's like we take that idea and then we want to make it a hard and fast forever rule. Like.

this will happen because if it happens it will make our lives better, which is true, but then because they try to force it happen, exactly, they try to make it rigid and try to force it to happen, it then actually does the opposite thing. It makes their life more stressful and more challenging because now they're trying to force something that, yes, works when it works, but when you try to force it, it actually then doesn't work. And you're right, it doesn't.

Rachel Denning (11:58.893)
always work. So it creates frustration, irritation, disappointment, anger, which all of those all those energies spill onto the kid and the relationship. So now this little kid, whether they're two or 12 or 22, is a recipient of a lot of negative energy. So that's that affects it. But then the reaction.

yelling, screaming, scolding, insulting, punishing over an arbitrary rule now damages the relationship and the kid. So all of that is this recipe for making parenting way harder torture and torturous and miserable. Yeah. So it's, it's actually self -inflicted suffering.

on the parent and the child. Right, and I think part of the irony that's involved there is because as a parent who is essentially a young person who's growing and developing, right, you are a young person who had a child and now you're becoming a parent and in this process of becoming a parent, we think because we've heard it or we've been taught or we've been told that if I stick to my principles,

That's how I become a better parent. And that's how I teach my children that I'm this kind of person, that I'm this kind of person, that when I say something, it happens no matter what. So if I say, you're gonna go to bed by this time, or you're gonna be home by this time, that's what I mean, and I'm not going to back down on that because I am the kind of person who keeps my word. Right, so, okay, the principle is I wanna be a person of integrity. Right.

So then we think I have to attach that to an arbitrary rule and I have to keep the rule no matter what, which actually backfires and creates the opposite result because you don't, you don't earn respect for your integrity. You, you earn resentment for your stupid rule. Right. Exactly. Backfires. You're like, and we think somehow we try to make these connections that sometimes they do connect, but not always. And I think that's important to the principle. The principle is.

Rachel Denning (14:12.909)
Well, sometimes yes, and sometimes it varies. It's flexible. Sometimes you have to apply a different principle in place of those things because it's a dance. Or a different rule that still maintains the principle. Right. But the principle is held fast, and so you maintain your integrity. But if you attach it to, I think this is, I like thinking through this, because if you're latching on to hard rules to try to maintain the principle, the rules often too rigid.

And it just, it becomes fragmented and broken and dangerous. And so then we cause all these problems where you think, Hey, you know, we're not going to do this as a standard. We're not going to do this. And they're like, what about this exception? We have to be able to say, yeah, there are exceptions. You have to, if you're so rigid, you make yourself miserable and you make your kids miserable. Now. Okay. Okay. Here's.

And then talking through this now thinking through this all these examples because we've been able to work with thousands of families across five continents We use exceptions the wrong way to right where we're like we just said like okay No, the hold this hold the principle and there will be exceptions to it and you still get to keep the principle the integrity so the exception Helps you maintain the principle. We use it the wrong way. Most people are like

They set a standard of like, I'm just not going to eat junk food. And I'm like, well, except on special occasions. And then there's a special occasion three to four times a week. And so then then they're mostly living exceptions. The exception becomes the right. Exactly. So they're like, exception, exception, exception. And you're you're making exceptions for the wrong thing. You're like, no, I I don't I don't ever have to eat. OK, here's one for me. I don't ever have to eat fast. And and you get going, you're like.

man, I was so hungry. And the only thing that was available was fast food. In those instances, and they've happened many times to me, I just say, well, I'll just be hungry. It's okay to be hungry. I don't have to break that one. But here's another principle. Another principle for me is getting up early and having a solid morning routine. That was even well, that was crazy important to me. But let's say I was

Rachel Denning (16:37.773)
Okay. I cross the Atlantic ocean so many times in the last four months. It's a, it's a dizzy. So I've been traveling so much. I spent so much time on airplane. So let's say I started a flight in. Where I don't know, Boston, New York, DC, Atlanta, wherever. And I fly across the ocean and it's an overnight flight, but it's six hours and I only slept three of them and they get over, you know, just spent.

Am I going to have a later start to my morning? Sure. As soon as you figure out when morning is. Yeah. When morning is and my body's like, whee. Like as soon as, if I find that I'm like, yeah, it's okay. I'll start later. And I, uh, I'll share this principle cause it's been super helpful for many of my coaching clients. And I share it in, uh, my be the man, um, masterclass group. You treat like a morning routine and evening routine.

I don't know the idea of an accordion works for me. Where sometimes when you have the time and the space, it can be an hour, two hours, just an awesome, you know, I'm reading from a great book, spiritual time, exercise, meditating and vision, visualizing, I was going to say visioning, visualizing and affirmations, declarations, like you're really getting dialed in. But on your, on your crap days,

where you didn't sleep well, you don't have time, something's off, you don't just toss it. You don't say, oh I don't have time to do that, so I'm not gonna do it in the morning. You take the accordion and you slide it down and you're like, I have 15 minutes. So two minutes of exercise, two minutes of reading, two minutes of meditation. And people say, well it's not even worth it, two minutes is nothing. No way, if you have a phenomenal book and you can read a page or two from it, there's gonna be insights on that page.

that's gonna help set your mind right and get you in the right heart set and mindset and even a skill set. On a couple of pages, you could get an idea to transform your business or your life. And even more importantly than that is that you're maintaining that consistency so that you develop the consistency of being the person who does a morning routine almost every day, at least 80 % of the time, because of this accordion where you can bring it in and bring it out.

Rachel Denning (19:02.509)
So I still did it. I still held my principles. I still kept my standard. I still did my morning routine. And I want to point out cause people will be like, well, exercise. You can't do anything in three minutes of exercise. And to that, I always say, I'm like, oh yeah, try, try doing burpees for three minutes straight. Get a 50 pound kettlebell in your favorite song and do kettlebell swings the entire, I dare you. And tell me, tell me you don't get something out of three minutes. Like you've been gassing. Well, and so this is a perfect principle.

It's perfect application for parenting in what we're talking about because you can have these principles, you can have these standards because then the other side of that is, and we've seen this tons of times, is people throw out all principles and standards because they think it just makes me stress if I have expectations that my child is supposed to take a nap or my child is supposed to eat well or whatever, go to bed at a certain time. Or I have rules and my kids won't keep my rules. Yeah, so they throw it all out.

that doesn't work either because then there's no structure, there's no guidelines there and children actually feel unstable and they actually misbehave even more because of that. And so you take this principle of like, yeah, getting good sleep, going to bed early, that's a good principle. Taking a nap when they're younger, that's a good principle. But you adjust it in an accordion type way so that sometimes,

you're up till 10 o 'clock or later. Sometimes you go to bed earlier because they're extra tired. Sometimes instead of taking a nap, maybe they're just taking a short rest. You sit and take a moment together and they rest that way as opposed to they have to go down and go to sleep and take a nap for an hour. This very strict harsh rule that if you try to enforce that 100%, you're just stressing yourself out. And so it becomes this flexible dance.

It becomes like music. It's moving, it's changing, it's fluid. And that helps you to still have structure and flexibility, which ultimately is what you need in order to enjoy parenting. You have to have structure and flexibility. You have to have both. And what it requires, it requires us to read, so to speak, read the situation, read the person. And so NAPs do help.

Rachel Denning (21:24.301)
But let's say you're like, oh, hard nap time and you go and the kid is just wired. They're not, they're not tired or grumpy, nothing. They're just playing. Okay. Here, iconic classic example here. The kids actually playing peacefully in like in the zone. They're in this creative space. They're playing Legos or drawing or cutting things or they're playing with sand and bugs or whatever. And it's beautiful. Like they're in that creative zone of genius.

And I think little kids, they can like, I don't know, transport other realities. So they're gone. So they're not causing problems. They're not grumpy. They're not upset. Nothing's wrong. It's actually exactly what you want them to do. But you as the parent go, it's nap time. And so you interrupt something wonderful, something every parent should want, wants or should want. You interrupt that to keep your rule. And so now the kid's upset. You're like, he's just...

hold me back from this other realm of awesomeness, which we all hate in this lane of flow. Yeah. And you're just erupted me. And it's your nap time, but the kids are so wired on creativity and goodness and wonder. They don't want to sleep. And so you're trying to force this and they're fighting it. And again, we're using the nap time as one example, but it's also a metaphor or representation of all the other times we do that. We interrupt something beautiful.

for some arbitrary rule. And I think often what happens, at least I know that this is something I did, is as the parent, you're future forecasting some negative thing that's going to happen because you think, my kid's not getting their nap, which means they're not gonna be rested, which means they're going to be grumpier later on, which means, and so you're creating this whole potential scenario, which may very well happen. It's not that, you know, based on experience, it's happened before, it could happen again.

But the problem is that you then begin to create more of that problem because you're thinking that it might happen in the future and you want to prevent it. And so you take actions that interrupt, you know, the state of flow or whatever it is to then prevent something that might happen later on, right? And so it's kind of this crazy thing that we do to sabotage ourselves as parents and, you know, the relationship with our children in order to try to prevent

Rachel Denning (23:53.389)
future problems, we create more problems in the moment. Exactly. Instead of... That's a great way to articulate that. Well, and it does require, like you said, this reading of the situation and the people, instead of having the flexibility to look at the child, see that they're in the flow, they're in the moment, they're being happy, they're being pleasant, and allowing that to play out. And then, if and when they finish that, and then...

perhaps now they're done and now they're grumpy because maybe they're hungry or they are tired, you then take them out. And I think that this is actually something that we've been doing, I don't know, as long as I can remember in our parenting, is that we're not reactive but responsive to the changes of our children. So then when we see that they change and their mood changes, their demeanor changes, that's when we take action to prevent future problems.

by responding in the moment to what they now need. Well, and paying enough attention and having enough awareness that we respond at the first sign. Yes. Because most people will be, they'll lack awareness and they'll wait until it's ugly and then they'll react. Yeah, then it becomes actually this self -fulfilling prophecy because they think, oh, well, I let them play and now look at them. Now they're grumpy. See, I should have just given them a nap. When no, that's actually not the answer. What you should have done was,

Let them play and then the moment they start getting grumpy, because if you pay close attention, you can start to see that. You don't have to wait until it's full blown. You can start taking action then and that's when you say, let's get a snack. Let's go cuddle. Let's go read a book. Let's go calm down and get into that nap mode. That's the perfect time is you wait for those natural transitions rather than creating forced transitions that just create more problems.

So the invitation for everybody is look through your life and see where maybe hard rules have slipped in place of principles. And question all your rules. Are your rules based on solid results and real results and real research?

Rachel Denning (26:15.309)
are they based on a principle or did you just come up with rules? Like some people just come up with crazy rules. They pick it up from their parents or whatever. A parenting book that says, you know, you should have this sort of schedule because that works and maybe it works for this lady. And then now that becomes your Bible for how you do your family life. And I wanted to point out a couple more principles that I know that we've seen and that we've personally on the flip side done, especially because of our unique life. I mean, we've been traveling to...

50 plus countries for the past 17 years. And I mean, we did nap time, we did bedtime on the road, sometimes in cars, sometimes in hotels. Yeah, we did all of these things. And so, you know, sticking with these metaphors, which I think work, nap times, bedtimes, curfews, is there's this flexible dance that goes on where, yeah, there are exceptions. There's an exception to bedtime. There's an exception to the curfew. There's an exception to the nap time.

But when the exception becomes a rule, then we kind of pull back and we're like, oh, let's go back to an earlier bedtime. Let's go back to an earlier curfew type thing because now this thing that's an exception, because there are legitimate times when you're out having a great time. Maybe you're seeing something or exploring or you're out with friends. And to put an end to that fun that's occurring so that you can stick to your bedtime.

or you can stick to your curfew. And blame it on your kids. That one just gets me like, oh, we have to end this because the kids need to get to bed. It's like, it looks like the kids are doing just fine. Yeah, exactly. Blame it on the kids and or you're creating resentment from the kids towards you because you've interrupted the fun. Everyone's having a good time and you put an end to it because you have to stick by your heart rule. It just doesn't work in the long term. It just, we've just seen it time and time again, just create resentment.

between the parent -child relationship, which is not producing the outcome you ultimately want. Yes, you want to be a person with integrity, and you want to be a person with good principles and standards and structure. Phenomenal habits. And great habits. Absolutely world -class habits. We think, again, there's the rule. Not to a fault where you are now screwed in a way with everything in your life. Because you're like, you might be like, well,

Rachel Denning (28:35.437)
In our family, we'd get up early and start the day. That's great. Which means no matter what, we go to bed early, which means we're not staying up to have any fun because we have to get up early. And so every once in a while when family or friends come into town or you're out on this amazing adventure, I guess here's how we learned this really well. Because we were out traveling when our kids were little. And when you're an international traveler, you're all over, like all of your best laid plans. We're gonzo.

either in negative ways, like, okay, everything we had planned completely fell apart, or in great ways where we had this plan and this came, like this serendipitous experience. Like we didn't even know this existed, or we just met these incredible people and they invited us out to this beach or this waterfall, this mountain or this cathedral or whatever. And to say, oh, sorry, we can't do that. It's our bedtime. You're like, no, we're taking advantage of this. And then you start wrestling and I can, I can.

Here's how you start wrestling with like, yeah, but we get up early. Okay. That morning sleep in. Yeah. Let your kids sleep in. Cause you just had an epic experience. And isn't that what we want most as parents to have our kids have a lifetime full of unbelievably cool memories and experiences that instead of lots of built up resentment. Yeah, exactly. Like because mom or dad always.

put a kibosh on the fun because we have to stick to our rules. We have to stick to the curfew. We have to stick to the bed time. But then I hear people. I can hear it right now because I get asked and I can just hear you guys. But wait, how do you maintain and establish good habits if there's all these exceptions? How can we make sure our kids develop good habits because all my kids have good habits? And again, it circles back to the principle. Well, and it also circles back to the reality of living.

coming from two people who have raised seven children who have had a lot of experiences. Like we've had multiple lifetimes of experiences, no kidding. There comes a point when you just can't have any more experiences. You just have to like take a break and be like, we're just sitting home today. We're just gonna do habits and routines and that becomes actually what you want to do. You want to do those, I mean we've had every.

Rachel Denning (30:59.629)
Even you, you know, who's on the extreme end. This is the funniest thing. We started last December, so it was a year ago, literally like a week ago, a year ago, a week ago, December 4th, we started and we flew to Oslo, Norway and ended up doing, we didn't plan on it, but it ended up being, I think six months and 17 countries. We had a ton of experiences.

all with the plan that we were gonna be moving to Portugal, which is where we are now. And by the time it was May, so it's been five plus months of nonstop traveling, we were in Egypt. We were in a gorgeous Airbnb that we'd rented right near the pyramids. We'd ridden the dromedaries. You rode the Arabian horses in the desert. Like it was incredible, but at night we would go home and I remember you laying on the couch saying,

I just want to go to Portugal because as incredible as it was, we were tired. It was exhausting. We just wanted to just sit home and do nothing. And the interesting thing about that is how overstimulating Cairo is. Oh, well, yeah, like that didn't help. Cairo. Like if you if you want external stimuli, yeah, Cairo is so it was like the pinnacle of this whole adventure. Just go, go, go, go, go.

Cairo. And I'm like, I loved it. I loved it so much. I'm like, I need some, I need a break. I need a little bit of boredom. We're coming from me. That's a big thing. And so we're telling this extreme story because it's representative of what we're talking about. Like some, and I think this is also true. Sometimes exceptions might last for a week or a month or maybe six months. You're traveling the world.

nonstop with your family. There's a lot of exceptions that go on, back even to the food thing. Because you said, yeah, we never eat fast food, never. But there are times we eat food that we wouldn't eat at home because we're out traveling and that's what there is. Like, you know, turkey with french fries. French fries are served in every meal. Like, what the heck? But even in that, we would take a couple of steps down the rung.

Rachel Denning (33:15.885)
But still, at least for me, I'm never eating this. If there's nothing, I'm like, let's do a three day fast. I'm not eating that crap. It's never going in my mouth. And I think that's also a principle too, because if you're living up here and these are your expectations and standards, that's fine. Sometimes you do have to drop down in order to...

embrace the flexibility of life, you don't have to go all the way down here and be like, that's it, no bedtimes, we're staying up all night, all the time. It's an all or nothing reaction. Yeah, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. There's many, many layers there, and you get to decide where the hard deck is. Like, no, this is the hard deck. For us, it's fast food. We're never, and our kids know this, and we joke about it, never eating at McDonald's. It's just not happening, right? But there are other levels there of, you know, we'll go to a cafe and get a chai latte, which I wouldn't get.

at home or wouldn't make at home because they has too much sugar in it. But when we're out, I'm going to get a gelato. I don't think so. So some some thoughts on where we've observed parents become rigid. I like the bedtime kind of curfew one because parents get thinking, well, if I let my teens stay out late, then they can get into trouble. Nothing good. And and that's

While that can be true, it's not necessarily true. It's not always true. And so the principle is, yeah, well, and it's all backed up by the research of sleep. You should be in bed. And a couple hours before midnight, the research is all there. Get your butt to bed. So that's it. So the teens, they need sleep. Absolutely. And they need the growth hormone that they get early on that they won't get if they go to bed late. So it's a great, it's true. It's a good principle. Right. But.

It can't be a hard, hard deadline. Like, no, never. Because then you miss out on seeing the Northern lights. Right. That only happens at like 2 a .m. At the top of Norway. And you're like, nope. The best ones. Nope. We go to bed because this is our principle, this is our rule. You're like, dude, you're going to miss out on a genuinely special experience for your dumb rule. So the vast majority of the time, we get to sleep at a good bedtime. Because it's healthy. Well, and even...

Rachel Denning (35:36.013)
But something like that, a cool experience, or even service. Well, wait, wait, hold on. Even a less extreme example of that is that, you know, we will still stay up if we have friends over. If we have friends over, and especially if they're leaving the next day, yeah, we let the kids stay up late to talk and to visit and, you know, all of that. Because it, and you have to think about this also, I guess, the point is, from your child's perspective. Yeah.

you're not trying to be a fun parent just to be a fun parent, but you're also not trying to be a stickler about everything because that doesn't, it doesn't breed respect ironically or enjoyable. Your parents don't have more, sorry, not your parents. Your kids don't have more respect for you as their parents because you never allow exceptions. Ooh, I think that's so important to emphasize there. Being really strict does not,

necessarily earn respect. Right. And in fact, often, unfortunately, I mean, if we could say the common thing that happens most of the time is it actually creates more resentment, especially as they become teenagers. I think it starts though when they're young, it creates, it generates more resentment than it does respect. So, okay, let me, yeah, this is so good. I've been working closely with youth, young adults, teens and youth for over 25 years.

And you're exactly right. The kids with strict parents, they don't respect their parents. But the parents think that they're going to earn respect by being strict. It's not true. And they also think that they're going to keep their kids safe and disciplined and good.

by being strict and ironically it's also usually the opposite. It actually and you know speaking from my own experience with my specifically my dad it generates the opposite. It creates rebellion, resentment and disrespect. And flimsy habits. Right. Because they're like oh my parents had such strict habits like I'm just gonna kind of...

Rachel Denning (37:54.733)
because I always want to enjoy my life now because everything was so unenjoyable around the strength. Right. No, that is actually the other thing that does happen. And partly the reason for this happening is because when the parent is the one enforcing all the rules, the child never gets to practice doing that. And that's been another reason why we've taken the approach that we have. In fact, I mean, we don't actually have an official bedtime. We never really have. We allow our children to choose.

even while they're young, because they get to practice paying attention to their bodies, noticing when they're tired, doing something about it instead of waiting for mom and dad to always tell them when to do it and, you know, like making the decisions for them. You're allowing them to practice their own decision -making muscles so that they can choose for themselves the habits they want to have, which obviously results in them making mistakes and...

bad choices, but better that they do that while they're at home living with you than when they move out as a college student. It's small mistakes because you're there guiding and mentoring and helping. And providing feedback. So when they wake up the next morning and say, oh, I'm grumpy and it's because you stayed up too late. Here's the feedback on why you feel like that. And so our kids are already very autonomous and very mature, and they're very self -directed because we've

been guiding that process from the very beginning, instead of being the parents with lots and lots of strict rules and making all the decisions for you, the kid remains underdeveloped, atrophied. Yeah. Yeah. Underdeveloped. So you point out something, I think it fits right here too. One of the things we see a lot of strict rules on is keeping our kids safe. And so that starts with little kids. We don't even let them out to eat dirt.

Right? Because we're like, oh, they'll get some kind of disease, right? The thinking is, well, my kids will get sick. Well, yeah. But interestingly, if you protect them from eating dirt and touching things and picking up something off the ground and putting in their mouth, I mean, it's gross. Even right now, you're like, don't do that. And yet it's it's been shown now very obviously that kids who are overprotected end up with more allergies.

Rachel Denning (40:15.885)
and weaker immune system. And so now they suffer the rest of their adult life with all kinds of allergies, all kinds of immunity stuff and getting sick all the time because they didn't build an immune system. So letting them get a little sick and letting them touch all those germs and all the disgusting things, it's actually really good for them. Really, really good for them. Taking them out and exposing them to everything that's out in the world. And

And we were able to get our little, little ones, right? So our fourth child, our daughter who's 16, we started when she was four months old. I think she was four months old. We drove the Pan American Highway into Central America. Our first travel experience. And so her entire life, she's just been exposed to the food and people and places and cultures and animals and the jungle and the desert and the beach and the mountains. And I mean, all of it and all the food and all the crazy things.

And she's been in close to 47 countries over 45 countries. And man, she's, she's got a travel bug. Like nobody's been, she's got it. She just wants to keep exploring. She loves it. And she is just healthy and strong and, and developed in all these great ways. Right. So then that's the manifestation when they're little of like, do we let them climb on the monkey bars? Yeah.

You do. Can they get hurt? Yep. Right. And you might think, well, when I was a kid, I fell to monkey bars and knocked out all my teeth. I did. And so you'd think, well, I'm not letting my kid do that. Or I had a trampoline and I did flips off the trampoline and I broke my leg and I broke my arm, which I did. And so you'd think we are never having a trampoline in our family. And I was like, no, it's not the case. My kids are going to climb on everything. They're going to jump off everything.

little boys love to jump off things. I think we were just, God created us to jump off of things. So teach them how, when they're little, teach them how. Now, when some of you, like you'd crap yourself or wet yourself just watching my boys jump off. Well, and I think that you did learn something from your past experience as a child. And so what you've been great at doing is teaching our children how to do as Jordan Peterson,

Rachel Denning (42:41.453)
puts dangerous things carefully. So we're allowing them to do dangerous things, but we're teaching them, yeah, to take risks, but we're teaching them how to do them in the safest way possible. Obviously it's not 100 % safe because then it's not a risk. But you can lower the amount of risk by learning how to do it in a different, with a better skill set. One perfect example that this happened to us for real is we'd already been traveled to, I don't know, 30 plus countries.

And then we had moved to Georgia just before COVID happened. And.

We went, in Georgia there's not a lot to do, we thought, and we went to the swimming hole, or it was a river or something, and everyone's on the one side, enjoying themselves, sunning, there's some rocks and playing and they're swimming, and then of course across the little river there's more rocks and stuff, and obviously that's where you guys were gonna go, and so you decided you're swimming over there, and you took, I think, probably all of the kids, including the young ones who needed help swimming.

You swam over there, you had a good time. You got waved down by the police on this side of the river. And they came over and basically like got after you. Like you can't do that. It's dangerous. You shouldn't be swimming over there. People will drown. He just tore into us about how negligent you were. Yeah, what kind of father are you? You don't even love your kids. People drown swimming across that. And my boys...

My boys are standing there, they're just jacked, six pack abs, just shredded. And we're standing there looking at each other and looking at the cop like, dude, it's like a hundred yards, maybe. Like, what? And of course he's overweight and pudgy like, people can die. And I've done emergency rescue stuff, I've been a triathlete. And so I know I can.

Rachel Denning (44:43.213)
I can put the kids on a backstamp. Like you circled Iceland. You'd already done all of these things. And so we were kind of like, yeah, rural Georgia didn't want us to swim across the water. But I get the point. The point is, yes, for some people that is dangerous. For some people, that's a huge risk. For some, they're going to drown. But see, that's a great example because the rule is don't take the risk. Yeah. Some people have drowned here or some people could drown. Don't do it. That's a hard rule versus whoa.

That's a long way. It's colder, it's exhausting. Make sure you're being safe. Can you think through contingencies? And even before that, to prepare yourself to be able to do those types of things, because you'd already, you know, that wasn't the first time you swam something like that. You've already done lots of swimming before. So you do that for warmups. Yeah. So each of you were prepared.

to be able to handle that kind of risk. And that's kind of what we're talking about, is that you can mitigate the level of risk by increasing your level of skills. So the principle is, we want our children to be safe. Well, but it almost seems contradictory to the principle of we want our children to take risks. Well, and in fact, we have to even allow our children to take risks in order to learn how to be safe. Right. Another.

parallel there is we want our children to succeed, but we also want our children to fail. Exactly. Because you have to fail in order to actually succeed. So what we ultimately want, we want fully developed children in order to do that. They have to fail and succeed. They have to take risks and be safe. Right. Right. They have to go through all these things and you as a parent in order to enjoy parenting, you have to have structure.

and flexibility and, and you have to watch and guide your children through risk and danger and through failure. You have to let your kids fail. Yeah. And you have to watch as your kids get hurt and fall down and cry and stumble and struggle. Like you're guiding that could be really miserable. Especially if you in your vision.

Rachel Denning (47:02.061)
are living with your ideal. Yes, your ideal your kids never fail is it's only success and there's no risk. It's just total safety. They're never gonna have any scars. Remember our kids got they get lots of scars. And I remember you this never this never occurred to me because as a dad you're like, Oh, yeah, my kids will definitely get some scars. That's gonna be pretty cool. And I have you know, I've got scars all over broken bones. And I'm like, those are great stories. I remember when our kids got cut or something, there was a scar you were just sobbing. And I'm like, what? And she's like, like,

perfect, beautiful little child is scarred forever. Like they're ruined. And I'm like, Whoa, what? But that was your vision of like this. I took something perfect. I did something that is all ruined now. That kid is going to have a scar for the rest of his life. He's ruined. Right. And I don't think that's a cool scar. Right. And it's totally perfect. But the kids have to fall down and get cut and bumps and bruises. Now we're not going to let our kids play in the road.

Cairo right? That's crazy or anywhere in Egypt despite the fact that there's constantly people crossing the road the highway oh my goodness but in fact we're not gonna play in the road any anywhere at all but are we gonna let them get on those camels or even jump on those Arabians out in the desert? It made me a little nervous. Oh me too and those things are they're pretty wild but are we gonna do it? Yeah.

We are and we're gonna jump on ATVs and boats and we're in cliff jump like crazy In fact the kids they went by themselves now and went and found some big cliffs and and the waves were huge and so they had to time the jump, you know, and if you time it wrong and Miscalculate the time it takes you to fall. Yeah, and the the wave drop There's a long way down and they went and did it and they did it great and they they're safe about it and I train them how to think through the rocks and to look

And if you can't see the bottom, you don't do it. And we'd walk through there like, oh, I just want to jump, let me jump. I'm like, if you can't see the bottom, you never go. You don't know what's in there. And so we go down, jump in, check it all, and then find the exact spot and go. So it's just, again, a representation of what we're doing. So just to reiterate everything we're talking about today. Well, to reiterate the point of.

Rachel Denning (49:25.389)
entering, we enter parenthood with this idealized vision of what it's going to be like, which is good and necessary. It draws us into this adventure, but. And I would say we should still have ideals. Absolutely. Maintain ideals that are drawing you upwards. Right. But with, I love to use the analogy of travel because I think it's a perfect one for life. Like the reason you go out traveling is.

often because you get wanderlust, which comes from seeing an idealized picture of some place. And you think, I want to go there and I want to see that. But the reality is in order to get there, there's a lot of Instagram picture. Yeah. To take the Instagram picture, you have diarrhea blisters so bad jet lag. Yeah. There's a whole process. You have to go on an adventure and an adventure actually includes.

a lot of suffering. There's the whole thing, even the simple things like sitting in the airport for hours and then sitting on the plane and being uncomfortable, and especially if it's a place that's really far away, you've got like this 30 hour flight and you're miserable and you're cursing and you're like, why are we doing this? It's so horrible. And then, you know, all of the things that take to get there, I think that's very real to what parenting is like. And so we have to have those ideals.

But we also have to then realize this is actually an adventure that I'm on. I'm pursuing that ideal, but it's going to require all of these other things. And I have to be able to be structured and flexible. I have to be able to take risks and be safe. I have to learn how to do both. That's why we love yin and yang. You and I love that image because in essence, that's the perfect way to move through life.

is you've got a foot in order and a foot in chaos, and you're going back and forth between the two. And that's what parenting is. It's the greatest adventure. And it is order and chaos. And it's wonderful. And it's terrible sometimes. But I guess the question is, are you enjoying the adventure? Well, and I've. Go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to add to that for a second, because there.

Rachel Denning (51:47.501)
At least from my own personal experience, I know there's a difference between the suffering that comes from me sabotaging parenting and life because I'm holding onto this thing that I just have to have it this way. That's a different type of suffering than this flowing flexibility, going with the flow type thing, but in a responsive way like we've talked about, you're responding to and.

adjusting to the things that are happening and coming at you. There's still suffering that occurs with that. You're still gonna have a child that's crying or upset and you have to come for them and sleepless nights. But it's more natural feeling. It's more...

Rachel Denning (52:34.061)
I don't even know what the word is. It just feels better in a way. It's suffering that feels better, which sounds weird. Because it's part of the journey instead of an unnecessary part of the journey. So, okay, I think it's a really important distinction because we could, you know, we'd say, hey, hold up ideals. And you might think, yeah, my ideals is sleeping through the night. Well, actually, that's not a very wise ideal, especially with with kids. You are going to get woken up. So.

If you're like, I'm holding on to my ideal of sleeping tonight. That's actually, I would say don't have that idea. That's not a good one. When you have babies. Have an ideal of your kids respecting you because you've earned it and you have a really great relationship with them. That's a great ideal. Well, I think especially for babies and young children, the ideal is not that I'm not going to wake up during the night, but that I am going to be responsive to my children's needs. That's the ideal. My children have needs.

and I'm going to meet them. Pleasantly. Pleasantly. But that's very different than I'm going to enforce my rules on my child. That's not meeting their needs. And you might think it is. You might think, well, my child needs a nap, so I'm going to enforce that. That's different than meeting their needs, because meeting their needs is a flexible, dynamic, changing thing. That means in one moment, they're hungry and you should feed them as opposed to,

I only feed my children at 6 p .m. Which that's another thing. The on -demand breastfeeding versus the scheduled breastfeeding. I mean there are people out there who literally have a schedule for breastfeeding and I will feed my baby at 6 o 'clock and I don't feed them before that. That's how feeding means meeting their needs. My kids eat breakfast at 8 noon and 6 period. If they're hungry, too bad. Right. What?

And where does that come from? That's so arbitrary and insane. Right. And going back to the whole thing, I mean, that creates resentment. Your kids don't always know that. In very young babies, what it actually creates is this sense of, I can't, there's no one out there that listens to me. Nobody understands what I'm trying to communicate. Nobody meets my needs when I need them. Because if your baby's hungry at five and you're waiting till six to feed them, you're essentially telling your baby, I don't care about you.

Rachel Denning (54:56.429)
and you can cry all you want, I'm not responding because, and they don't know that, that you have some rule that you have to wait till six. Even when they're older, they can give a crap about your rules. Or the time. Because it's just arbitrary. Time is irrelevant to them. It means nothing to them. They know nothing about time and they don't know if they just ate an hour ago. I'm giving my kids structure and I'm teaching them discipline and I'm teaching them that they don't get instant gratification. Because again, the principle is I don't want my kids to have instant gratification. So.

I'm gonna set up a rule that's arbitrary and they're gonna get it. No, they won't. That kid's gonna grow up as an adult and it just feels I was never heard, never loved, I'm probably not lovable. They're gonna have all kinds of insecurity issues. Which is the basis of many insecurities for a lot of people because that is the parenting style that's been around for a long time. Popular for some stupid reason. So, oh man. So, ultimately,

You have to find the balance. And the right ideals, because we say hold up ideals, and like I was just saying, you can put it in the wrong thing. So hold up the right ideals. Use principles and practices versus rules. Again, we have some rules, but very few rules. And the rule, man, if it's a hard rule, it's

it better be well thought through and be there for a reason. There's only a few. Otherwise, it's a principle and a practice. And again, not to be misunderstood here. So I don't want people to think that that we have a very laissez faire life and that our habits are flimsy or non -existent because we want to be flexible and adaptable and spontaneous. So we don't want a structure. We actually have. Well, it'd be interesting if people come and stay with us. They go to the sun trips or if they were to come stay with us.

And they do. People come and stay with us all the time. And they're surprised by how much structure we have and discipline and habits, but also so much. How relaxed we are, too. People come and like, dude, your family's really intense and super chill. Yeah. It's like this dichotomy. They're both. How are they so chill and so spontaneous and yet so structured and so disciplined? Right. And it's that. It's like.

Rachel Denning (57:16.045)
Yeah, we work out, so we work out as a family and we work out hard. When it's workout time, like we work out crazy hard. We're like, okay, yeah, that means like every morning, 6 a .m. No, well, what time you work out? I don't know. When we get to it, it happens in the morning. You don't have a set time? No, we don't. But man, when we work out, we work out. We're like, well, how do you make sure your workouts get done? We're like, because they get done.

It's that principle, like I don't know exactly what time it will happen, but I know it will happen. It will happen. Right? Well, what time do you read? Because it's a routine rather than a schedule. Right. It's a principle and a practice. Which is another principle. Like, you can have a routine, but that's very different from a schedule. You can have breakfast time and then play time and then nap time and then, you know, whatever, but that's different than breakfast is at six and lunch is at noon and nap time is at one.

They're very different things. And I think that that's a good illustration of ultimately what we've been talking about in this entire episode is that live by routines, not schedule. Yep. And so we have lots of deliberately crafted habits and routines, massive amounts of structure in our lives and our family with massive amounts of flexibility of all the, the travel and the chaos and all the, I mean, we're all over the planet.

doing all kinds of epic things and an opportunity pops up, we jump all over it. Right. And yet even in the midst of all of that, we maintain the habits, we maintain the principles and the practices and it's all there. And we, we can say this sincerely, wholeheartedly, transparently, we love parenting. Like this is our, we're living our dream life. We're living what we, well, that's way better than we dreamed of.

I mean when I got married I had this dream but this is way better than anything you dream like our family life is an absolute dream life. Well which is representative in what's happening next week I mean we are literally going to be driving to Morocco from Portugal we're gonna be spending a total of three months three weeks in Morocco going to Fez, Tangier, Cefchao in the blue city, Marrakesh, Casablanca.

Rachel Denning (59:39.053)
and then out and then we'll be celebrating Christmas there and then, which, you know, I mean, they don't do Christmas, but we'll be celebrating Christmas there. And then we go, we're leading a trip into the Sahara Desert. And I'm saying it like you, Sahara, the Sahara Desert over New Year's Eve. And we'll be in the desert for New Year's Eve, reading and talking about the alchemist and about living your legend. And we're doing it as a family. And.

I think is a perfect example of how we still, you know, that came to my mind, how we still have this structure and flexibility because obviously that schedule requires flexibility because we're driving, we're going to different places, we're gonna be sightseeing, we're gonna be doing a lot of stuff and yet this morning when I printed out charts for my three youngest kids, which I do every week, I printed out extras so that I can take those charts for the next three weeks with us.

So they still have their charts to work on. And so in the morning they still get up, no matter what Airbnb we're in or hotel, they get up and they work on their, now they don't get it 100%. And that's fine. That's not the point. We don't expect 100%. But the point is there's still structure there of like, Hey, this is what you're expected to do. Even though we're in Morocco. So even though we're on a trip, perfect example, we're going to go wander through some really exotic foreign land and we're bringing our charts. Yeah.

But it's not like we've found, we've created this balance of chaos and order of spontaneity and structure. We've created that intentionally and deliberately. And it works really well. It's really comfortable. So we're not, we're not fighting it. Right. Right. There's this phrase of kicking against the pricks, right. And the pricks were this, these, these

like a board with a bunch of nails through it where auction would kick back. And if they kicked, they would, they would hurt, it would hurt themselves like, Ooh, I shouldn't do that. And, and a lot of parents are kicking against the pricks. We're, we're, we're fighting something and it makes it miserable for everybody. Right? So we have structure and flexibility. We have spontaneity and, and plans. And we found this way to live in harmony with both things. So,

Rachel Denning (01:02:04.333)
we do the charts and it keeps our whole family progressing upwards. And we also know when, when we're not going to get to the charts. And if there's a day when we don't do the charts because we were out the whole day seeing Morocco. Okay. Great. And that's fine. You know, is education come from the great classic literature or does it come from having Epic experiences around the globe? Both. So some days you read,

Some days you go have the experience. Some days you do both, but it's not just one or the other. Like, my kid's going to get an education. And so they're never going to miss a class. Well, that's too rigid. You're going to miss all this other stuff over here because you're keeping a rule. Or you say, my kid's going to do world's going to go wander every day. He's not going to learn anything from a book. And suddenly they miss all the great classic literature. And so they remain underdeveloped that way. Right. So.

It has to be finding that harmony. And the integration. Which is so powerful. And then it makes it so enjoyable. Yeah. So legitimately wonderful. Right. To have a family. So I think the key takeaway here is in parenting, in motherhood, fatherhood, if you're not enjoying it as much as you imagined you would, you have to reevaluate how you're approaching it.

if you're approaching it and well, I would say actually there's probably both ways that we've seen this happen. Sometimes parents aren't enjoying it, often because they're too rigid. Sometimes, I think it's the extreme, they're too lax. But I would say that's probably more rare. But it's usually one or the other. And so you have to be able to evaluate that and say, where am I being too rigid? Where do I have too many harsh, hard and fast rules? Or even just one.

Yeah, there's some people like I'm not I'm not really strict and I'm not really Laze fair either. I'm but all it takes is one or two dumb rules that just don't serve you and that's enough to really cause a massive To destabilize the family and it's enough to cause misery for you and the kids It doesn't happen. You don't have to be like a super strict parent for this principle to really be a wrecking ball in your family

Rachel Denning (01:04:29.197)
It's like you just picked something dumb that you picked up from your parents or from some experience or missed some dumb book or who knows? I mean, you grab something and it just creates a massive headache. So check all your rules. Don't think, oh, that only applies if I'm a super strict person. I'm not, so I'm good. No, like look at all your rules and like, is this actually serving us? And would a principle and a practice fit better? And I would say in our experience, where you have thousands of families,

It almost always fits better. Yeah. It's, it's rare you want a strict rule like that. So you guys, we talk about this stuff all the time in a Rage Trials for 28 day challenge for moms or parents, couples. And then I have the be the man masterclass in tribe for men. And we're, we're teaching these things all the time. So there's well, we do our life coaching with the 20 day challenge every week and hit on these all the time. And I do, we're answering questions. Yep. So.

So again, what I'm saying is like there's more resources out there for parenting is, is I would say probably the most challenging thing. If you want to do it well, it's the most challenging thing you'll do in life. It really is. And it will exercise and test every ounce of discipline and creativity and responsiveness. Like you have to gain mastery and growth. I think that too few people take it seriously enough because you know,

We'll pursue a career with everything we've got essentially and want to become the very best at it. And yet we'll approach parenting with. Hope it works out. Yeah. Hope I figure this out along the way. And then you talk to your friends and neighbors and they're like, yeah, sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't. Some kids get lost. Even good people have bad kids. And it has nothing to do with you being a good person. It has to do with you being a good parent. Right. Which.

is a very specific skill set. It is. I mean, it has to be parenting is a very specific skill set. You can be an amazing spouse. You can be an amazing philanthropist. You can amazing business owner. You can be a great person who's, yeah, just really good world -class, amazing person. And you can suck as a parent or suck in certain aspects of parenting. And today's in today's episode,

Rachel Denning (01:06:46.829)
You could just suck at rules because you just even in your greatest desires to do good and be good and with the purest desire to help your kids be happy and successful, you have created a rule that is actually creating the very opposite thing of what you want. You're colluding in your own misery and your kids resent. Wow. Okay. Love you guys. Thanks for listening and watching.

and let us know how we help. Like, message us, connect with us on social, send us emails, ask questions on the platform, wherever. Let us know how we help so we can all live an extraordinary, genuinely extraordinary family life. Love you guys. See you chopper.

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