Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
Freedom or Fear: Raising Resilient Kids in an Era of Mistrust
Trust has transformed for today's teenagers, with location sharing apps becoming a prerequisite for dating and relationship privacy increasingly sacrificed in the name of security.
• Location tracking apps like Life360 and Find My iPhone are now considered the first step in teen dating relationships
• Parents began the surveillance trend with driving monitors and smartphone tracking apps
• Teenagers always find creative workarounds to tracking, including "phone-sitting" and pausing location apps
• COVID-19 shattered teens' existential understanding of predictability and trust in the world
• Social media, fake news, AI-generated content, and online scams have created a generation with legitimate trust issues
• Teaching healthy trust involves accepting vulnerability, understanding that everyone has imperfections, and learning forgiveness
• The most empowering parental statement is "I trust that you can handle this"
• Trust requires giving up control and accepting anxiety to build deeper, more meaningful relationships
Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough.
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step-parent, adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages, preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, sidney Moreau. Today's topic I'm titling the Mistrusting Generation and how it Relates to Trust in Romantic Relationships, or the Avoidance of Trust, as we'll discover Now. My interest in this topic was sparked by a conversation I was having with a 17-year-old related to dating, and she explained to me how her and her boyfriend have each other on. They use Find my iPhone. There's also one app called Life 360, where you can constantly track your partner's location, and I'm like are you serious? When she told me, I'm like, oh my God, and she said, yeah, then if they're up to something sus, which means suspicious I learned the new lingo, sus I felt so young again that maybe they're doing things. And then that's apparently now among teens and, as we'll see, 20 andyear-olds the new standard in dating. And she explained to me that's the first step in a relationship. Then, as you progress a little farther, you request their passwords to their text or their social media apps so you can check if they've been unfaithful or talking with other people and all these sorts of things. And I was just absolutely blown away by the discussion and I wasn't sure is this just her Like? Is this a trend?
Speaker 2:And two days ago, on Tuesday, february 11th, the Wall Street Journal had a great article. The title is it's a sad article to me New Relationship Deal Breaker Tracking your Location. When one partner refuses to join a location sharing app, it can spell trouble. And it's all these interviews. They're all with young women. They didn't interview any men about how that's a non-negotiable you have to know where they are at all times.
Speaker 2:Now one psychologist made a comment and said Is location sharing about trust or about managing anxiety? She says it's both. It's both of those things, because to be in a trusting relationship means vulnerability. You're trusting them, you're vulnerable and vulnerability makes us anxious. But you can't have trust unless you have vulnerability and willing to accept the anxiety. So that got me thinking how, as a culture, did we get here, obsessed with proving trust and trying to avoid experiencing anxiety and the fear of mistrust?
Speaker 2:So I started thinking back and somewhere in the 2000s I don't remember exactly when, and I taught a class on this with my eighth grade students at the time I read an article and I had heard about, but read an article about how insurance companies auto insurance companies were with. I don't know if you had a fee or not. You just signed up and they would send you this tracking device for your car for when your teenager is driving, and it had a camera on it on it so it'd sit on the dashboard and it would film the driver if there were sudden braking, two quick turns, quick acceleration, so it was monitoring the driving of the teen and then that video footage would be fed to the parent's computer so they could see it. And I did have one young man who in Colorado there's a law once you get your license you can't take other teenagers with you unless they're a sibling for six months, so you can't have passengers that are under 18 for the first six months. He was on the lacrosse team and he took a bunch of his buddies out for lunch and the car was packed with the guys and apparently he made a pretty quick turn. The camera went on and his dad saw it with all these kids in the car and he was pissed. Now I'm happy to tell you that young man is now in finance and living the life in New York City. He's turned out just fine.
Speaker 2:But I remember talking with my students and I'm like I just find this wrong that, as a parent of a teenager myself at that time, do you really want or need to know where that car is at all times? To me, teen life is all about learning how to handle independence and enjoy your freedom, and that's what they love. And a car is a big one. You get a car now, you feel free, you're just feeling on top of the world, right. And they need to learn how to handle situations or experiencing difficulties and manage those without constant monitoring. And I just, ethically, was a poor of the idea. Obviously, I never got one for my son or my daughter.
Speaker 2:Now there is the counter argument which I totally understand, and that's safety. What if they're being unsafe? And I understand that working with teenagers and children and adults with ADHD, they really struggle with impulse control. In fact, the accidental death rate for ADHD children and teens is four times as high as neurotypical children and teens. Because they do impulsive things, including stepping on the gas for a race or driving, not being mindful while they're driving, or standing hiking in the mountains and finding a cliff to jump off with into the creek, and that's the kid that goes oh, there's plenty of water in there. And they do it and they end up paralyzed. So I'm not saying it wouldn't be applicable for some teens.
Speaker 2:So if your teen has a track record of impulsive, reckless behavior, then you might want to do something like that or do one of these location sharing apps. But if not, I would lean towards give them trust first until they prove that they're untrustworthy, and then you apply the brakes and whether that's the insurance thing or these data tracking apps, your location tracking apps, then you do it. But I always, as a parent, I want to trust my kids first. If they prove that they're not trustworthy, then I'm going to reel their freedom back in, and that's what I would recommend to all parents. And I do have a teen who's got massive ADHD and she's had her struggles with driving. We sold her first car after three fender benders. They're all mindless, but we just said you're not ready to drive and we sold the car. And, to be honest, if you're a parent of an exceptional student, not all kids are ready to drive at 16. Some might need to wait till they're 18. I was giving a lecture earlier last week and it was for parents whose children had ADHD or autism spectrum disorder and I said you really have to understand. They're about two years behind developmentally. So even though they're 18, they're really acting like a 16-year-old and that's pretty true across the board and most professionals would agree with that. So I think that was the first memory, was those insurance apps.
Speaker 2:Then came the smartphones and a new era of parent hyper-monitoring their children and teens with Life360. And it's basically hyper-anxious parents wanting to know where their teens are at all times and feeling more secure if they know, and avoiding the anxiety that comes. When you have teenagers and young adults and adults, your anxiety as a parent gets really high and you have to learn how to handle it and stay out of there. Don't be too intrusive and it continues into adulthood. We have three adult children and you're still anxious for them. You're always waiting for something to happen. You have to learn to control your own anxiety and let your teen and young adult out of the nest and not be so hypervigilant. The parents are constantly worried about that. So the other point to that is the teenagers always find a way around these various monitoring devices pieces.
Speaker 2:Several years ago my daughter told me that she was probably 16 at the time and she said oh, my friend so-and-so is coming by. I'm like, oh great, what are you girls going to do? And she said, oh, she's just dropping off her phone. I'm phone sitting for her. And I'm like, what's phone sitting? And she said she's going over to her boyfriend's house and she doesn't want her parents to know, so she'll leave her phone here. So they'll think she's here. And I'm like, oh my God, and they do that.
Speaker 2:And I had one, the same young woman who started this conversation. I explained that to her. She said, oh yeah, so one of my friends wanted me to watch her phone so she could go to this new guy that she'd never met. And I was like, no, you need a phone. Oh, you need a phone. What if this guy's creepy? You need to take your phone. But then she explained to me that now the teenagers know how to pause the track app. Apparently there's some settings they probably found it on Google. But you put it on pause and then your location stays. Let's say they're at their house. When they do it, it stays on the house and then they go running around having fun and they can take their phone with them and then they unpause it and refresh it. I don't understand any of that, but they somehow unpause it and refresh it and it looks like they've never left where you thought they were. So there's always ways around any monitoring device that a parent sets up or your boyfriend or girlfriend sets up. Needless to say, I didn't do the driving after my son and I've never done the live 360 or the I find my iPhone for our daughter. I just find that absurd and abhorrent because you have to again.
Speaker 2:For you parents out there, you have to learn to handle your anxiety and not being in control. You have to trust your children and it's tough. It is really hard because you're so used. When they're young, you're in control of everything and your job is to keep them alive. That's what you're doing, but every year they get older, you have to start letting go of that control and swallowing your anxiety and just trusting in your kids, trusting that the seeds you've planted are going to work out. Or, as I said to one parent last night your teenager's struggling. He's a bright guy. You're a very successful man. Your wife's very successful in her business. The apple's not going to fall far from the tree. Your kid's going to be fine. He's just a teenager learning how to wake up in the morning or make sure he gets assignments done, and he's going to be just fine Statistically. He's going to be just like his parents.
Speaker 2:And there are always horror stories and that's the bottom line everyone in this world has to accept, including parents. You can't prevent everything. There's always some thing that comes out of the blue. Even though you've been dutifully prepared, you've done the reasonably prudent things you do, you can't prevent life from happening to yourself or your teens. There's no way around that. But for the teens, they've got to learn how to handle it and you often learn from your mistakes. You often learn from your own mistakes or your friend's mistakes. As they get older, they don't really listen to your mistakes anymore. They've heard the stories already. They blow you off. You give them all this advice and it doesn't really sink in. It might, as they get older, they'll remember it, but at that moment they just yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2:If my daughter, one day she came up with a new technique for being more organized and her friend told her and I bit my tongue but I'm like, oh my God, your mother and I have been telling you that like a hundred times, but because it came from a friend, it was novel. It's just like beating my head against the table Again, unless you have specific concerns. So if your child or your teen has had struggles, that makes sense sad struggles, that makes sense. Or I suppose if you're dating someone, you're a teen and you found out, or the person shared, that they had been unfaithful to their former partner, that's going to increase your anxiety and maybe, especially as a female meaning because they're more vulnerable to sexual assault or other things, abuse, violent relationships that it might make sense to require that if there's a pre-existing history of this. But otherwise we have to teach our teens how to trust others and be vulnerable.
Speaker 2:But again, if you look at the history of all this, after COVID and all the school shootings about a year ago I reported on this podcast how teens were wanting their parents to follow them on these apps in the event of a school shooting so that their parents would know they were. And one of the biggest objections right now to schools banning phones for middle school and high schoolers from the parents is what if there's an emergency? What if there's a school shooting? And the professionals that manage school shootings have basically said your kid might be more at risk having a phone because the shooter might hear him talking to you, or a ding on the phone when you're trying to hide so that perhaps could make them more unsafe Even more when you think about social medias. The kids know and they've learned that they there are creepy people out there. There's predators, catfishers, there's people that fake who they are. They're really not who they say they are.
Speaker 2:I had a kid. This was way before the social media apps. It was just online and he was convinced he was in love with this young woman in Canada and he was going to go fly up from Denver to Canada to see her. And he was going to go fly up from Denver to Canada to see her and the day before he was flying out, the person texted and said this is just a hoax, I'm really not this girl and made it all up. The poor kid was heartbroken, but they know that so much online is fake Fake pictures, fake posts, fake news, ai. All of those things are confusing, but they get it. So they have to be mistrusting the Hollywood sign burning that was generated by AI. The Hollywood sign didn't burn last month with the fires in California, president Biden saying how Hamas, on the day of that horrible attack, had been beheading babies because of some post with a picture. The White House had to retract that the next day because it was fake.
Speaker 2:And if the president of the United States can't figure out something's fake, and all his staff, how are these teenagers supposed to figure out? So they have to be on edge all the time, all the time. And because there is so much that's untrustworthy. But at the same time they have to learn how to trust others, their friends, their same-aged peers. They have to be able to manage that and form trusting relationships and risk the anxiety and the vulnerability of having someone be untrustworthy. If you don't, it isn't trust. You can't trust something you extend to someone else without proof up front. It's. I'm going to trust you and hope that you don't crush my heart. Now, the other piece to this with the social media, the smartphones, is it tends to perpetuate the teens from learning how to handle adversity and suffer the consequences. And all they know that if they forgot their lunch or they forgot the report that was due and it's on their desk at home, all they have to do is text you and say, oh my God, I forgot it. Can you bring it to me? And undoubtedly you're going to do that and you take it to them and all you've done is perpetuate their irresponsibility, because they need to learn from the consequences.
Speaker 2:Now I did have one with my 32-year-old son the other day and I went ahead and did it because what he was doing was so extraordinary that he called me and it was like I was leaving in an hour for a lecture I was giving. And he said, oh, I got invited to go to the Philippines on a surgical mission trip. So the top surgeon at the hospital invited him to go along and do surgeries in small villages in the Philippines. And I'm like that is awesome. I'm so proud of you. He's yeah, and I need to get the international calling on Verizon and he's on my account, my daughter's on my account, my stepdaughter's on my account, my wife's on my account. I got a lot of people on my account and I'm like he said could you set it up? I'm like, oh sure. I'm like when are you leaving? And he says tomorrow morning at 6 am. I'm like what you couldn't have told me a couple of weeks ago when you found out Really, and me trying to figure out how to set it up online through the chatbot did not work. I'm so frustrated. I just kept yelling representative, finally got somebody and about 15 minutes before I had to leave I got him set up. Now I could have denied that request, but I was so tickled of what he was doing that I thought I'm going to toss my bone on this one. But there's all those times with parents that you know you bail them out but you don't want to bail them out too much. Or you're setting them up Now the other thought, sending them up, now the other thought so that was all going on before.
Speaker 2:And then COVID came and COVID didn't help this generation feel trusting anymore. The kids and the teens had their lives absolutely blown away and I remember my school was the first in Denver that had to. My school was the first in Denver that had to evacuate because it was a Friday morning before we all shut down. About a week before we all shut down and we had a parent who had COVID was on a trip, was tested positive for COVID hadn't been on campus but his child was there. So they sent the child home and the Department of Health said clear the school on a Friday afternoon at 12 o'clock and we did.
Speaker 2:And I remember this one eighth grader. She was so hysterical and she said we're not going to get to go on our Washington DC trip, which was like in a month. We're not going to get to have graduation. And she's bawling and I'm like, okay, slow down, slow down. We don't know that yet. We don't do this one day at a time. We don't know what's going to happen, yet that all happened Missed graduations, missed sports, missed proms, missed everything. Everything's changed.
Speaker 2:And so existentially and existentialism the easiest way to explain it's understanding yourself in the community around you, in the world around you, and trusting in this pattern of life that certain things are going to happen at certain points. So if I turn on a light switch, I'm expecting the light to go on. Sometimes it doesn't and you're like what the heck? The light didn't go on. Oh, I guess I need to change a bulb. We would not call that an existential crisis, but COVID was. It blew away every concept they ever had on what normal life was and it was gone. And it was very similar to the young woman I saw on the night of shooting at Columbine High School and meeting with a group of hundreds of teens, and she spoke up and she shared how her Spanish teacher. They heard shooting. Her Spanish teacher said everybody, stay in the room. I'm going to go check it out and I'll come back for you. And I'll never forget the look on that young woman's face when she said she never came back, like her whole life of what to expect and trusting just was shattered.
Speaker 2:Our divided political environment doesn't help either, because every side claims the other side's news is fake. Who knows what's real, what's fake? You throw in the school shootings, climate change. The kids are overwhelmed and really are suspicious and mistrustful of the adults in their life. Who's telling the truth? Who do you really count on? And plus all the fake stuff that's on there, as well as algorithms that you're on social media. I did one of this a couple of years ago on the podcast how one young woman was looking up healthy eating habits and of course, there was something on dieting and within a couple of days she was looking at pro-anus websites that were promoting anorexia and how to hide it for your parents and joining contests to lose weight. So the algorithms take over and take your kids to all sorts of people.
Speaker 2:Now, in terms of relationships, there's a lot of those apps where you can hook up with somebody. Tinder is a real popular one, and I've known a few friends of my son who found their life partner on there and they're still married and happy. I'm not saying it's all bogus, but I'm sure any user of those apps has found that somebody they thought who they were really wasn't that person. Their profile was a scam or it was made up, or they faked, made themselves look all much better than they actually were. So our teens and young adults are surrounded by mistrusting intrusions all the time. Thankfully, there's been an explosion in scam calls and my Verizon picks them up and I must get eight to 10 a day of scam calls. And then the emails they're constantly coming in with all these little cute things about oh, come here and do this, do that.
Speaker 2:I got swindled out of $8,000 last year because I thought someone was one of my employees and I switched his bank account for him that he requested. It turns out it wasn't from him. So I learned one on that one. That was an expensive mistake and I've learned not to trust everything that's coming my way. And that's what you have to think. Do I trust what's coming to me with all these different things? And we've promoted this kind of culture of mistrust. Now we don't know what's real and what's not.
Speaker 2:Also, I do have to work in general parenting, because their philosophy is you never have discord with your child or show your upset emotions, or heaven forbid that your child ever felt mistrust in you. Now, is that really possible? It's not. Think about real life. So let's say you tell your kids, okay, we're going to do this after school today, or I'll be at your game this weekend, and then something comes up at work, or one of your siblings is sick and they're throwing up right away and you can't go to their activity, or you can't take them to go somewhere, and then they feel hurt or they're not. You broke their trust. That happens. That's called real life and kids need to learn that. Yeah, most people you can trust most of the time. Sometimes they won't be able to live up to your trust. That's normal, and you forgive them and you move on and you maintain a trusting relationship. Now, as part of that, then I have to go. Okay, so what do we do? How do we help our kids?
Speaker 2:So I was explaining this to a 17-year-old the other night that in my second grade class I would do a class on trusting your friends and freedom in friendships, and so we'd start now and every second grader has experienced by that time and maybe sometimes earlier than that. But they'll come talk to me and they're like Mr Nippenberg. I told my friend who I had a crush on my best friend and they promised they wouldn't tell anybody. And they told somebody and now everyone knows and I talked to the kids and I said, oh, I know what that's like. That's very difficult to handle, but you have to give them a break because people are social beings, we're social creatures and humans love to gossip and rumors and when they hear something so tempting and exciting, it's impossible to keep it to yourself and that's normal and I said so with this friend. Give him a couple breaks. If they tell another one, forgive them. If they start to three or four times, then get a new friend and that's good advice for a romantic relationship. They're going to break your trust once or twice. Fine, forgive them, move on. After that, get a new boyfriend or girlfriend and then along with that and if you want to have trust, it is a risk and you have to put yourself out there and the analogy I use with the second graders and I call it freedom and friendship and it is the most darling activity I've ever done. I've taken a couple pictures of it over the years as memories.
Speaker 2:I have 22 kids in the class and I said okay, let's pretend you're outside and you find a baby bird that fell out of a nest. And I want you to pretend you're picking it up and all the children. They're standing and they bend down and they scoop up the little imaginary baby bird in their open palms. And I said, yes, you're treating it, you're going to nurture it, you're going to love it. But let's say that little bird then all of a sudden wants to fly away and it's ready to fly. You don't want to smush it. You're not going to cover it up and smush that bird. If the bird wants freedom, you should let it have freedom. So what do you do? And every time I say that the children spontaneously raise their arms in the air and pretending to let the bird fly free. And I said that's what you do with your friends. They may want to play with you one day, or you're playing a lot, and then they want to play with somebody else and you give them freedom and say great, have fun, go play with those kids. If you want to come back, I'll be here Don't smush the bird and trust in your friends and learning that sometimes those things happen.
Speaker 2:Now it's also important to teach your children that we all have holes. Every human being on the person has a hole or two or three or maybe more. We're all Swiss cheese. We all have areas of our life where it's not our moral best, so we base relationships with others on the cheese part of them, the moral values, the quality of the person has, the trusting, loving, caring person that you get to know. That's their cheese. But no one is cheddar. We all have holes and whether that's a friend or someone you're dating or getting engaged to, you discover they have holes too and sometimes for different reasons, people might lie or sneak around about it.
Speaker 2:Now, on a neurological level, I can tell you that the most primitive wiring in your brain is where your dopamine goes from the midbrain and it cuts through your novelty and desire centers in your emotional brain. Humans love desires. We want to follow our desires and we love new things. We're always looking for new and it's how we've survived as a species. We're finding new foods or new ways to do things to make ourselves safer for building whatever it is, food production. We follow those things and if those two things bring you pleasure in whatever you're doing, that dopamine system lights up. So it's no different than when your kid eats that cookie and they just love that cookie and you say no more, we don't want to spoil our dinner, and 15 minutes later you find him trying to snitch a cookie out of the cookie jar because they can't resist that dopamine juice on that pathway and they just have to have another one.
Speaker 2:Now we know that's how video games are designed. They're designed to hijack that system. Pretty much everything is Gambling is designed around that. Social media apps are designed on that system. Alcohol and drugs work on that system. Humans just get, we get taken advantage of all the time because of that system. And it's so hard to stick to your health plan or stick to cutting. It was January, it was alcohol free month around the country. It's hard to stick with that. It's hard to stick with not eating the sweets. It's hard to stick with exercising. It's hard to stick with avoiding gambling or getting off the Instagram or getting off the computer game, because that system's in there.
Speaker 2:And we do know in the research that four-year-olds lie one time every day. No, I'm sorry, every two hours. Preschoolers lie once every two hours and the gentle parents would say, oh, that's because they don't know how to express themselves and I'm like, no, that's bullshit. They don't like you saying no and they want to get what they want to get. Whatever lights up their dopamine system, they want it and they'll tell a lie to get it. Six-year-olds get better at it. They lie once every hour, so they just get more creative in how to get what they want. And for us adults, the average adult lies once to one to two times a day and some of those might be to save face or save somebody's feelings or just social graces. But we do and we hide sometimes. And you have to know that people have holes. And when somebody violates your trust, if the person admits it they admit they have a hole, they're apologetic and they work on filling it up then you extend grace and you forgive them. If they don't, you find another partner. They're not trustworthy at that point. If they're not willing to be insightful enough to know they have a problem and take care of that problem, then it's time to move on.
Speaker 2:Now the next one for teaching your kids is being a role model in your parenting of your children and teens, not hypervigilating over them, monitoring everything. The best thing you can say to your child and especially your teenagers. One of the best things you can say to them is I trust that you can handle this. That's empowering. You're saying I know you've got a problem, I know you're coming to me to bail you out, or you're wanting more freedoms, you're wanting to take the car out at night, or you're wanting to slumber parties, or it's prom night and you want to stay out all night and you just have to say I trust you can handle it. If they can't handle it, then reel them back in and then you work on helping them understand why they did what they did and what are they going to do about it next time. Also really important talk to your kids about respecting their gut feelings. If you're uncomfortable in a situation, whatever it is, get away. Whether that you're in a car with somebody that seems to be drunk driving, you're on a date and the person feels really creepy to you, you're at a party where things seem to be getting out of control, you want to get away and really respecting your gun.
Speaker 2:The other thing on this one I'd say this is the part view as a parent, and it's also for your teens and young adults is to get into romantic relationships, and we want to have control. Humans hate not having control, we hate being anxious, and then we want to protect our vulnerability and do something to be in control. Do something to be in control. As I say at my lectures, the idea of parental control meaning you have control over your kids is an oxymoron, and so is relationship control. That's the whole point of trust. You don't have control and you're giving it up, and you don't have control anyway. Even if you are using one of those apps you don't have control are using one of those apps, you don't have control. And after all, trusting relationships is a much deeper, meaningful relationship and if you're in one now, you know the joy of that. It's incredible.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing my, I believe, flying out tonight to go up to northern Idaho to see my best friends since age four and there's been a couple of times when he and I have not been trustworthy to each other, but we're as close as could be. And when I see him tonight he lives in Berlin. I don't get to see him, but every two years it'll be just like we were best friends since we've been age four and it's just a delightful, vulnerable, trusting. It's probably the most vulnerable male relationship I have in my life and it is a joy to have that. And you can't get it if you're always trying to control someone or know where they're at or if they're acting suspicious. Okay, legit parenting award based on a lecture last week.
Speaker 2:This one's for teachers. Teachers have a very difficult job and they have to put up with a lot, and I saw a comic strip. The comic's called Baby Blues. I saw it the other day and I thought, god, this is for teachers and how hard it is and what they have to put up with. And Baby Blues is a family of four. There's a little boy, a girl, then they got a baby and mom and dad and the son, who's like the old Dennis the Menace, if you're old enough to remember, dennis the Menace comes into his mother in the kitchen and said I gave my oral report on the solar system today and his mom says how did it go? And the boy says there are 15 boys my age in the classroom and mom said so. Uranus got a big reaction. And he says the teacher didn't get us under control until lunchtime. That's what your kids' teachers are dealing with every day and I just have known so many incredible teachers that they get the job done. They're legit teachers. They get those kids to behave better, to be respectful, to have good social skills, to be sweet and creative and learn and excel in academics and grow socially, emotionally and behaviorally in a very in-the-trenches sort of way. In a very in-the-trenches sort of way. And then, finally, for things of beauty, make me cry.
Speaker 2:I wanted to share a couple quotes from former President Jimmy Carter, who died recently. I watched his funeral. What an amazing individual. I've always enjoyed him very much and I wanted to share a couple of those. The first one of his quotes I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have, to try and make a difference. He's talking about making the lives of people better, which he did in Africa. He did in this country with all his volunteer works and building homes for people, and all his charitable works were for others, to make their life better. It wasn't self-serving, it wasn't about him and making more money. It was serving humankind, and I just love that quote. And if everyone had that in their heart and in their motivation, this world would be completely different. And sadly it's not the case, and that's why we need people like Jimmy Carter to keep up the fight.
Speaker 2:The other quote I read a long time ago and this was before social media.
Speaker 2:He said it, but now it applies more than ever.
Speaker 2:He said the two and again he's coming from a Christian faith base, so you don't have to have that to enjoy this quote. But he said the two greatest loves at any time in your life should be God and the person sitting right across from you. You're with that person, you're talking, you're communicating, you're engaged. You should treat them as divinity that they are so special and everything in your life is in that moment, is related to them. But how do you do that? When you're on your phone and you're texting, or you're scrolling social media, when you're hanging out with your friends, you don't really give them, you don't honor them and really truly enjoy and appreciate what you're experiencing, and I just love that. So to Jimmy Carter, rest in peace. He was quite an individual, all right, thank you for joining in today. Hope you enjoyed the show. You're always welcome to send feedback and until next time, just relax. As a parent, you only have to be this side of good enough, and your kids are going to be who they are. Thank you.