EP24 – And My Wife Doesn’t Know Jack Either

Welcome to this episode of, I don't know Jack about parenting, where today I'm going to talk about how my wife doesn't know jack either.

Don't talk about the wife

So welcome back to this episode of I don't know, Jack, about parenting, where I am going to be talking about how my wife doesn't know Jack about parenting either and as a listener, if you're a man, you're going to be like, whoa, that's crazy you're not going there, my friend. Don't talk about the wife and ladies. You're probably going to be saying, oh my goodness, I need to listen because what is this man about to say about his wife? So I'm going to tell you to perspective. Listen, none of us know really, our kids do not come with manuals. That's one thing I learned at the beginning and as I've shared with you in the past like I've asked a lot of people's advice, I've read a lot of books, I've listened to the podcasts like this, and some of it made sense and the things that didn't make sense, I just got to throw away.

Here's the deal. I do not get to throw away my wife's perspective. Why? Because she has every right to empower her children as much as I have the right to empower my children. Here's what I got to say. We must respect the parenting skills of our spouses regardless of how we feel about them. So there are things that my wife and I disagree on when it comes to raising our boys a lot. And why is this it's because we come from different backgrounds. I've shared this with other people. I don't know that I've ever shared it with my wife. So babe, if you've listened this, this is the, the aspect of it. It's not right, it's not wrong. It's the reality of our experience. Um, I was raised by a mom. I'm the baby of essentially 10 children. That's a whole other story. I am the baby of 10 children that my mother gave birth to or helped raise.

She had the knowledge of raising 10 other children

I often like to joke and say that she had nine other kids to make mistakes with before she got to me. So I got this wealth of amazing parenting, like I've been there, done that. This is the right thing to say. I said the wrong thing this time. This is how I empower him. This is how I build him up. Although I was abandoned by my father, I had a mom who was extremely loving. And did the absolute best she could with the knowledge that she had. She had the knowledge of raising 10 other children before me and getting a mini little break in there because between my brother, uh, my closest brother, myself and I are seven and a half years apart. So she actually got a chance to have perspective right? When we back from something for a while, we actually gained perspective and clarity and I like to think that that time in that space and that clarity allowed her to look at me and say how well, how can I best impact him in a positive way? Now my wife on the other hand, yeah.

Is the first child of a young mother, right? So she got a lot of support from, , the grandparents, my wife's of Latin descent. Therefore in their culture, the grandparents are always around and because of that, her mom may not have always been as hands on or being a young mom herself. I think she was 20 when she had a, my wife, she probably had some growing pains to go through. So where my mom had all of this knowledge, if, if you had to learn from someone not right or wrong or indifferent, but if you had to choose, do you want someone who has experienced with nine other children to raise you? Or do you want the one that's going in it all new with no manual and trying to figure it out and is in his young. Right? So as a new parent, myself and my wife and I, we had our children when we were 35 plus.

It wasn't a huge celebration

We have some life experience in that we could go off of, but we typically go off the experience that we know, right? We only know what we have experienced. So what happens with my wife and I, uh, I'm just going to use the holidays and birthdays as an example in my home growing up the birthday was kinda like, hey, we had some cake. We throw on a little blower and a blew out some candles in it. It wasn't a huge celebration. I never had big elaborate birthday parties or anything as a child. My wife did birthdays. Where were, you got a 10, 15 toys. Everybody came around and gave you a toy, this, that and the other. And it was a big deal. So guess what she likes to do for my son's birthday, she makes it this big, huge elaborate thing. On the other hand, for me, the holidays, Christmas in particular, but the, the holidays that were really celebrated for us, my mom and love, love, love Halloween and going around the kids' faces and Halloween and all the costumes and then we always did a big huge thanksgiving celebration in a big Christmas with all the decorations and tons of toys.

And my wife, uh, her experience at Christmas is when they got like one or two Christmas presents from Santa and then they will go over to her aunt's house and they get like one or two presents there and now that was kind of it. I mean we did caroling in, in, in. My mom would get behind the piano and we would sing Christmas songs all throughout the Christmas season. Uh, so my, my wife's experiences like, why? Why do you want to get all these toys? Why do you want to get all of this? Because that was my experience, but I need to respect where she's at. I allow her to have her big birthday bashes. Although I'm like, this is like a little bit of overkill. She allows me to do all the things I want to do at Christmas, although she may not want to partake as much.

Discipline in our house is love and logic

She's like, she thinks it's overkill, but we need to meet somewhere in the middle and enjoy our kids together. On a more serious note. And I don't even know where I'm going to go with this yet, but on a more serious note... There comes disciplines. How were you disciplined as a child? Uh, are both her and I, uh, I think for the most part we're good children's. So, uh, there wasn't a lot. First of all, discipline in our house is love and logic. We need to lovingly talk to our kids and explain to them what right from wrong is a, there is no demeaning.

There's not a lot of yelling. We're not perfect. There is no massive punishment. As a matter of fact, we believe in empowering our kids by rewarding them for the behavior that we desire. Right? So instead of saying, Oh, you don't get this, if you do this, it's Kinda like you get the reward because you behave this way because you are such a good boy. You guys are such good kids. You actually get that. And that's a chapter of my book. Be The ad you wish you had. See, I don't know Jack about parenting, but I do know this.

Your kids will have a sense of stability in their lives

I know that if you, for men out there, you love on your wives and women out there, if you love on your husbands or if it's partners will use that politically correct term. If you love each other and you come to a compromise, your kids will have a sense of stability in their lives. Why? Because their family dynamic there, their parents are stable.

And if even though you have differences because of your upbringing is so different, even though you fell in love, your upbringing is so different. Your idea of being a good parent may be different because you think you had good and I think I had good parents and what they did, I turned out great. I turned out so good you fell in love with me and, and, and vice versa, but the way that comes across in the parenting realm is you need to really compromise, um, knowing that both of us, both of you have the best interest of your children in mind and you're doing the best you can.

We're just coming from our own experiences

So I don't know Jack about parenting and she doesn't, but if we recognize that we have our differences in those things that we are doing or what we think are best in the moment for our children, that's what matters most. And then we just have to meet somewhere in the middle. I'm not right. She's not wrong. She's not right. I'm not wrong. We're just coming from our own experiences. So I hope that makes a lot of sense to you.

Please like, comment, share, do it you need to do to make this grow or get these messages out there. Because I want to impact a lot of people I want to impact a lot of people going forward and I can't do that on my own. I can do this. I can put it on YouTube. I could put it on a podcast. I could put it on Facebook, I can put it in a million rooms, but if those of you who this resonates with it, don't share it out so that it could hit more and more people, then then it's going to stay in a small community and I think this stuff needs to get out further. That's why I'm sharing it, so thank you and we'll see you in the next episode.