Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
079: How to Stop Nagging Your Kids
I was talking to a buddy the other day about his son’s cleanliness (or lack of), and he said something that I think every dad can relate to.
He said he just wants his kids to be decent humans.
When our kids go off into the world, we wanna know that we’ve raised a decent person.
And this desire can lead us to correct our kids at every opportunity.
If we let something slide, we’re not doing our job as a dad to guide them.
But actually the opposite is true.
The more we nag our kids, the less impact we have on them.
When we ride them at every opportunity, it starts to knock down their confidence and degrade our relationship.
Instead, we want to pull back and ask, what does my kid really need from me right now?
This will allow you to let most things go.
Today's episode will help you to lay off a bit, and support your kids where they need it most.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode number 79.
Speaker 1:It is Monday morning and this podcast gets released tomorrow, so we're a little bit pushing a deadline here. Sometimes we're a week ahead, sometimes we're a few weeks ahead. This week we're not, and we have a daughter sick at home, so we're juggling, but that's just what happens sometimes in dad life and we've reprioritized. Maybe this is too much information for you, but the biggest thing I think on days like these for me is to take my expectations down a couple notches with what I'm going to get done for the day and really the challenge to reprioritize. I think about James Clear, the writer of Atomic Habits. When he became a dad, his thing was like oh, the biggest skill you have to learn as a dad is to start to be more flexible with your plans. Like this is the Atomic Habits guy that had his whole environment set up, all the plans for each day set up and how he was going to hit his goals, and when he became a dad he realized that that stuff is not as attainable or realistic, and I think that's really true. This isn't what the podcast is about, so I'll get to what the podcast is about, but I think it's really true for dads. Like morning routines Before I had kids, my morning routine was freaking dialed, so was my sleep schedule, and that's changed. So being flexible but still keeping your priorities, whether it's a morning routine or it's bedtime, those are the top two things on my mind these days. So, that said, we're going to move into today's topic, and today's topic we're going to talk about being on our kids, about stuff nagging our kids, and this kind of came up because I was having a conversation with a buddy last week and he said well, I have college age kids, so it's a little different, but they're both in college and they live at home still and we're just trying to figure out how to like give them more responsibility and to take a little more responsibility while they're still living at home.
Speaker 1:And when Brendan and I were kind of reflecting this conversation before we did this podcast, I kind of started to realize that I dropped into advice mode and I don't like doing that. I like staying curious and in more of like not coach necessarily, but just curious, and that's kind of just as a side note. That's, I think, what a lot of our conversations are as guys. Right, we'll tell other people what they should do, we'll give them advice, or we'll commiserate with them and just tell them, yeah, that sucks, man, and really just continue to go down that hole and you know, that's that's the difference between a coaching conversation and kind of just a normal relationship where we are just giving advice. So that's just a side note.
Speaker 1:But one thing he said in the conversation that he just wants his boys to be decent humans, just wants his boys to be decent human beings. And that like rang true in me right away. Like, yeah, I just want my daughter to be a decent human being, I want her to go in the world and the definition of a decent human being is going to be different for everybody, but it is this like desire that I think we have for all of our kids that they're going to be successful, that they're going to be good humans. So it lit up something in me and it also brought me back to a lot of the coaching sessions that I have with guys and conversations about being on their kids about messy rooms and consistently nagging them about their homework and getting ahead of their homework or what they're wearing. My dad was always on me about pulling up my pants. So what do you nag your kids about? What are you always on top of them about? One friend put it as anytime I see my kid doing something that needs to be corrected, it's my job to help them. It's my job to correct whatever they're doing.
Speaker 1:But in reality, if we're on our kids all the time, we're really not having a positive impact on them. And I don't know if you can hear my 18 month old in the background that stayed home sick today, but she's yelling and yeah, that's part of today. For us is the little one running around. When we can let stuff go, we can create a a more positive impact on our kids because we can then focus on whatever matters the most in that moment or in that period of their life. If we're nagging them on all these different things, our voice loses impact. It's kind of like in one ear out the other that Muppets adult. That's just like meh, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh from the show. That's what we become if we're nagging them on everything. So we want to kind of pick our battles here. We want to start letting some of the smaller things go and we get to decide what we want to let go, what we want to focus on.
Speaker 1:But it's easier said than done. Letting shit go is hard because our brain's always picking out things that our kid could be doing better, like, our daughter uses way too much toilet paper every time she goes to the bathroom. When she brushes her teeth she does not brush them as thoroughly as I think is correct. She didn't even eat dinner last night. She just kind of sat there and didn't eat her dinner. I want her to eat some healthy night. She just kind of sat there and didn't eat her dinner. I want her to eat some healthy food because that's what a decent human does. A decent human takes care of their teeth, brushes their teeth really well so they don't get cavities. A decent human doesn't waste toilet paper. They don't waste things in the world. They use just what they need. These are all my values in my head, and when I see her not living up to them I want to be on her about it. And there's also this like if I let it slide, then I'm letting her get away with it and I'm not doing my job as a dad. But when we're doing this, what I've learned is that it's knocking down their confidence. We're not letting them decide, we're not letting them mess up here and there and learn how to fail, and it degrades our relationship with them. There's a lot less mutual respect. There's not as much trust between you and your kid if you're constantly riding them.
Speaker 1:One client put himself in his kid's shoes. If he was at work and someone was walking by his office all the time pointing out something that he was doing wrong and how he needed to get on top of that project and they did it over and over. That would be fucking annoying. No one likes someone on their ass about stuff. And he's working on changing this relationship with his son. His son has a messy room all the time. He's a teenager, there's clothes everywhere all the time and he said he just felt like a dictator, always barking orders, and he doesn't want to be that way anymore. So he's building a new relationship with his kid and he's letting go of his son having a messy room. And the other day he walked by. He noticed he really wanted to say something, but he just kept walking.
Speaker 1:So kind of recap this first part when we're on our kids about everything that's happening, we're trying to be a good dad, we're trying to raise a decent human being, but when we're on them all the time, it starts to degrade the relationship and it starts to knock down their confidence. So what I'm going to suggest you try to do instead is pull back. Pull back and you ask yourself this question what does my kid need right now? This question is something that we don't really consider. When a coach asked me this for the first time what does your daughter really need right now? I was kind of blank. I really had to give it some time to mull over, to think on what does she need right now for the next week? And when I ask guys this, it's the same thing. It's a question that you need to mull over a little bit to really think about what your kid's going through and what they need from you, what they need from you as a dad. So pick one kid and ask yourself what does my kid need right now? And when I asked a guy this question a couple weeks ago, he was talking about his daughter and went through a few things that had happened recently with her and he was spending a lot of time with her two brothers, with sports and everything, and he decided that she needed one-on-one time with him.
Speaker 1:You might be listening to this podcast and realizing oh, I need to stop nagging on my kids, I need to stop being on top of them about everything. I need to back off. Maybe that's what our kid needs a little less pressure from dad. When I got this question asked to me for the first time, it was winter and I remember like I don't know what my kid needs and there's no right or wrong answer. But what this question does is pulls you into the present. Instead of focusing on a decent human being 5, 10, 20 years from now.
Speaker 1:You're looking at your kid through the lens of whatever age they are right now, whatever season of life they're going through sports, education, friends and you're asking what they need. When I answered it, it was February and the mornings were tough for all of us and it was really dark in the morning and what I decided Nell needed was a slower morning, so to wake up a little bit earlier, so we weren't rushing to get out of the house and to get enough time to bundle up and be outside for a few minutes to get some fresh air. I realize she hasn't been getting a lot of fresh air because she leaves the house and goes right to school and then she comes right home and it's dark out all the time, so we're not going outside as much. Let's do some more outside time in the morning, all right. So pick one kid. What do they need right now? And it might be helpful to remind yourself that they're going to be a decent human being In the future. They will find success, they're going to be okay.
Speaker 1:I remember my mom walking into my dorm freshman year after a couple months of dropping me off and she kind of walked in and froze and she said I didn't know, you knew how to clean. And I don't remember exactly what she said after that, but it was something along the lines of like I could have saved myself a lot of mental anguish and arguments if I had known that one day you would be able to clean. You would be okay. So we all figure it out, trust that your kid is going to be a decent, successful human being and see if that lets go of the tension a little bit inside of you. To correct everything and to let some of the little things go.
Speaker 1:So, instead of focusing too far into the future, ask yourself what does your kid need right now? And then, what role do I play as dad to giving them what they need to support them? All right, that's what I got for you guys this week. Try that out this week. Pause this podcast, don't listen to anything else after this for just a couple minutes, and decide what that one kid needs from you as a dad. All right, have an awesome one, and I'll catch you next time.
