The Ranches Podcast

Managing Your Emotions – Podcast Episode 42

Narcissistic Behavior – Podcast Episode 41

How Did We Get Here – Podcast Episode 40

Redemption – Podcast Episode 39

Shopping for Clothes – Podcast Episode 38

Peer Pressure – Podcast Episode 37

A lot of the drama in our lives comes from the drama triangle. In that triangle, there is a persecutor, a victim and a rescuer. We have to be honest about those roles and look at how we contribute to that drama. Kids often feel like they are the victims of their persecutor parents. They then look for a parent or relative to rescue them from that perceived persecution. 

There’s Something About Them That I Hate About Myself Some of our biggest struggles with our kids happen when we see things in them that we know are present in ourselves. We pass along characteristics and behaviors to our kids and, when we aren’t proud of what we’ve passed along, have a negative reaction.  One of these in my kids is competitiveness. My wife and I are both competitive. While my wife is competitive at board and card games, I am competitive across a wide range of things...like merging into traffic. When my kids display those characteristics, I have to recognize that I passed that along to them.

I am amazed at how often I hear this from kids and adults today. When I was growing up, kids were expected to be what their parents, teachers, loved ones and caretakers expected them to be. We were seen by adults as in the process of becoming who we are. They were the guides and it was a journey they chose to take with us because they wanted to contribute. Then along came “Be Yourself” and “Be You” as a strategy for helping others. While I understand the origin and the motivation to encourage others to “be themselves”, I think that the origin story has been lost. Many kids and adults and minority groups and marginalized people faced an incredible amount of pressure to meet expectation and “fit in” in ways that were harmful and damaging. Being expressive and challenging authority or long held social norms were met with less than compassionate resistance from families and authority figures. Those who were different than expected; those like me; were often made to feel like they had to sacrifice who they were in order to belong and to maintain relationships with people that they genuinely cared about and who, however misguidedly, cared about and for them. When they reached their limit for the ultimatums of their loved ones, they had to choose between being who they were and who they wanted to be, or they set about suppressing their feelings, thoughts and expressions of thought and feelings for the benefit of someone who neither cared to understand who they were nor could handle something about them. In those days, being yourself was achieved when you were willing to accept the consequences of being yourself. That was just how it was until the “Just who I am” approach to dealing with criticism and feedback became the default approach to helping others.
 The things is; it has become all encompassing. Some (NOT ALL) have weaponized “just who I am” against anyone who is ever hurt by them or dares to challenge them in any meaningful way. “I cannot adapt, grow or change because who I am is, ‘just who I am”. I’m sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Michael Jordan was not born as THE Michael Jordan. He was born as an athletic kid with good genes and even better work ethic. He was born with a determination to be the best version of himself; to grow, adapt and change for the benefit of himself, his teammates and his goals. He worked hard, added skills, failed, got back up, got better and eventually found incredible success as the best version and expression of his athleticism, intelligence and work ethic. The best version of himself. To say otherwise attempts to diminish how hard he worked to become THE Michael Jordan. Imagine if we approached relationships this way. No one is born honest, or a leader, or tough, or a hard worker, or comfortable with conflict, or a good communicator, or a writer. Those are all skills that we can achieve when we are dedicated to being the best version of ourselves. I was not born with the ability to put my thoughts and feelings into words. I wasn’t even born with the ability to read. I developed those skills on purpose. It still isn’t who I am as much as a skillset that I have worked to add. Kids are born with genetic predispositions and the potential for talent. Great adults teach us to cultivate those predispositions into skills and talent; usually by example. We learn, grow, adapt, fail, get up, work harder, and find success. We do this because we find the reasons to embark on the difficult journey of growth, self discovery and self awareness. And the process is hard and painful. It is, however, worth it. Those that throw their hands up and say “that’s just who I am”, marginalize and minimize all of those who have decided that they can take whatever they were born with and build up skills and talent that allow them to...

Assimilation – Podcast Episode 33

Are you a good listener? I am not. While I am good at processing and storing the information that someone is trying to communicate with me, I often have trouble listening the the person and accurately identifying and validating the emotions behind, and delicately interwoven, into what the other person is saying. This is an area of struggle for me - a blindspot. I simply process the world “out loud” and often have an intensity to my messages that I am, at times, less than aware of. To compound matters, I have been known to have a fairly firm grasp on the use of words in an effort to elicit a response. While I am stubbornly proud of my use of words, I am quite ashamed of my inability to listen well. I also struggle to know how to deal with people who respond to the intensity of my words without understanding me as a person. In short, I am a better communicator than I am a listener. The obvious response to this, by most people, is to either try and match my intensity or simply shut down and struggle to find any words to respond to me at all. While the easy way out is to make blanket statements about listening or communicating better, those are emotionally and intellectually lazy arguments. In truth, I hate being ignored; whether by silence or just emotionally. Being ignored, based on my experiences, means that I am unimportant and have little or no value to the person ignoring me. My response is often to get louder or cut deeper with the words that I am so fond of stringing together. My main boundary in life is “don’t ignore me” and, if you are going to ignore me, don’t try to ever convince me or pretend that I am important to you. Ever. Yes, I am part of the problem. So, how does one go about becoming a better listener? I am working on it. The best way to say what I am working on is to compare listening to people to listening to music. There are lyrics - words and rhyme - that someone has turned into a poetic message. conversely, there is music that accompanies the words by adding emotion. Reading the lyrics or only listening to instrumental music is how most people listen. Both miss half the message. I am working to hear all of the other parts of the song; and I suck at it. Sadly, a lot of people do. They don’t look for the pain when the anger is too easy to see...and to ignore. They don’t see the fear, because the panic is too obvious, too easy to ignore and too simply and ineffectively placated by, “it’ll be ok.” On the other end of the spectrum, the hardest part for me are always the people who cannot listen to me without making the exchange about themselves. Often, instead of listening, hurting people will hear a statement based in pain, and turn that into an indictment against what they’ve done. Or worse, take a statement about self esteem or awareness and compassion, and make themselves more heroic or more noble or more valid because they’ve “obviously” done what they are hearing the other person do in a far better way; better than me. We all need different things and we all could be better listeners. Maybe if we took the time to understand the person we’re listening to, commit to their importance to us before they even speak, and make sure that we never stop listening to them, in order to make their story about us, we could all benefit. We might even start having pockets of people who feel heard and feel that they can now hear others. Eventually, we might even have a generation of young people who are better listeners, better communicators and better people.

Coaching The Kids – Podcast Episode 31

Change...the little things...like making the bed! I work with a lot of kids and families and all of them bring up the same thing; the need for change. “He won’t do his chores.”“She won’t listen.”“They just walk away. What am I supposes to do.”“She’s throwing away her future.”“He doesn’t listen to me.”“I can’t live like this anymore. It’s killing me.” While all of these are criticisms and complaints, if you listen to what they mean instead of what is actually said, you realize that they are calls to change. To parents, they are demands for respect, but to kids that seem like demands to change. And change causes conflict; both internal and external. Change also creates a loss and loss always come with grief. Unfortunately, most people generalize these calls and criticisms as meaning that they need to massively change who they are as people; that they are all bad and, in most cases, only loved conditionally. The criticism may start off as a mole hill, but is emotionally transformed into a mountain; one that they cannot see themselves climbing or even wanting to attempt to climb. But what if we break it down into the little things. For years, I have not made my bed. My apologies to the OCD amongst you. It seemed like a pointless thing to do as I was just going to get back in it later that day. To my wife, however, it was less pointless. Like all couples, her and I see the world very differently. Neither of us are bad people, but we are very different. About six months ago, due to some rather difficult issues that I was facing, I felt that I had to change who I was in order to be accepted. Acceptance for who I wasn’t seemed antithetical to who I have always been. So, I started to look at change as a function of my deep and unwavering love for her. Oddly enough, the first thing that I had to do was accept that she loved me for who I was, but that there were things that I did, things that I am, that are difficult for her to deal with. I am not bad, just different from her in difficult ways. So I started making the bed; every day. It was a small thing and only took a few minutes a day. To her, though, it made a huge difference. It meant that she mattered to me enough that I was willing to make a change; a small change, but one that only mattered to her. Due to this one simple act, the mountain again became a mole hill. She looked at this small, simple act as a sign that I appreciated what mattered to her. In return, she has made some changes that seem small, but were indeed huge for me. And the relationship grew as a result of very small changes on both our parts. So, are you willing to work to change small things to make a huge difference? I was and I am. Hopefully, the kids that I care for and the families that I work with can start to see change as a series of doing little things differently in order to make huge differences in their lives. Sometimes, you just need to make the bed. Really though, it’s just a matter of listening, really listening to what loved ones mean, and that makes all the difference. We don’t have to change who we are, but we do need to grow, adapt and listen. Hopefully, when we do, we can make some small changes that remind our loved ones that they really matter to us...by doing something different like making the bed. I’m still me and she’s still her, but the bed is made and we remind each other that we matter to each other; every day.

I am a husband, a brother, a son and also a father to three amazing girls. But none of that qualifies me to speak on other people’s issues or beliefs in such a way as to lead anyone to believe that they must see the world through my lens. While I can come across this way at times, passionate people, who are also stubborn and effusive, tend to be seen as opinionated and demanding. Yet no one is forced to agree or even read...but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing to say. I hope all will keep that in mind if you choose to keep reading. I have now worked for 20 years with at risk kids. I work with kids who are typically from the lower end of the economic spectrum and who’ve struggled to fit in or even comply at times. In that 20 years, I’ve worked with roughly an equal amount of boys and girls and they haven’t changed all that much in that time. What has changed is the messages that are directed towards them based on their gender. When I began, we tended to love our sons and raise our daughters. “Boys will be boys” and “girls must know their place and role and never be seen as difficult or, heaven forbid, bitchy.” Having three daughters, I can tell you that the message needed editing; thoughtful and careful editing. Sadly, the messaging has been edited ad nauseam and with little regard for how the new messages would be perceived by the most vulnerable. Masculinity became toxic and something that everyone got to weigh in on as to how it could be lost. Meanwhile, femininity became something that girls were allowed and even expected to define for themselves; as long as empowerment was a part of the definition. I am thankful for this as my girls have options that seem limitless and unbelievable. But as a result, the boys that I work with are truly struggling. They tend to be timid, insecure, risk and conflict avoidant and, in many cases, defeated. Every one of them is struggling to know how to become a man and has far too much experience with being told that they, for one reason or another, simply aren’t enough or good enough to be a man. Well, they got the message. Meanwhile, the girls that I work with tend to be bolder, more risk oriented, sometimes fearless and often aggressive; much like the boys of yesteryear. They got the message too. Boys in the back seat, because girls deserve to be in the front. Never mind that there are plenty of front seats available. As a father of three girls, I am thrilled that the shackles of days gone by have been removed. As a man that works to help boys to become men, I’ve never been more concerned for their futures. So I teach and persist in helping the kids I work with to be more comfortable with themselves and less at risk. I try to show them masculinity that isn’t toxic. For me, masculinity is about protecting those that need it most and those that I am fortunate enough to love. The first thing I protected my children from was the lies that some fathers tell. I chose to be honest because my masculinity demands that my children be able to trust me. In addition, sometimes I protect loved ones from being hurt by others and sometimes I protect them from my negative emotions and my pain; not because they can’t handle it, but because they shouldn’t have to. I tend to protect my loved ones most from my hurt, my sadness and my struggle with what I cannot control. I don’t spend as much energy protecting them from my anger as allowing myself to be ok with anger serves to remind them that I can protect them from the scariest and worst people that may try to hurt them. Sometimes my drive to protect them serves to limit their ability to see my most human characteristics but it also insures that, whenever possible,

Do these jeans make me look... With daughters and working with young people, I have a fair amount of experience with the negative side effects of body image issues; particularly in girls. While the shaming conversation on a grand scale is progress, I think all parents, especially moms with daughters and dads with sons, could help a lot by getting their body language in check while shopping. Sideways glances, sighs, chuckles and frowns have a lasting impact. And for the love of all things Holy, please stop preemptively worrying about how others, including family and friends, MIGHT react or respond to THOSE jeans because they’re a size bigger (for girls) or a size smaller (for boys) than some insensitive relative’s expectation for them. That’s your and your circle of adults’ issue and not your child’s. You can be honest while being gracious, supportive and caring. They wear the size they wear. It’ll matter less to them if it matters less to you. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin. Every kid I’ve ever known is a little more sensitive than they let on when it comes to the opinions of their parents. They work hard to make it seem that they don’t care...but they are paying attention and do care. I wish adults would recognize that and act accordingly...especially when shopping with a kid who is naturally struggling with how the world sees and judges them.