023: Healthy Parenting When Your Child is At a Friend’s House

1 hour, 12 minutes
When I was growing up, my parents were pretty laid back about where and with whom we spent our time. That's probably why I took a pretty relaxed approach with our oldest when he started spending time at his friend's house. That is, until I went to pick him up one day and found that the environment he was in conflicted with some of our non-negotiable family values. As I went to walk him out of the house, a stream of curse words coming from the video game one of the older kids was playing, I was mortified. I felt frustrated, embarrassed, and guilty. What kind of parent was I to allow my child to be exposed to that?

I realized that I had an important role to play in protecting my child, but I also didn't want to go overboard and never let him spend time with his friends. I wanted to be respectful of others' values, because it's their home, but also still assert our families values because it's my child. I found myself asking, "How can I protect my child, but still allow him to experience an environment that is different from ours?"

In this episode, Rachel and I talk about the rights we as parents have when it comes to ensuring a safe environment for our children, and the opportunity we have, if we can be strategic about what we allow, to help our children develop their own sense of responsibility. We also talk about the value of making connections with people who are different from us and how we can use those connections to encourage all parties involved to work toward the goal of preserving our child's safety and well-being.

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When I was growing up, my parents were pretty laid back about where and with whom we spent our time. That’s probably why I took a pretty relaxed approach with our oldest when he started spending time at his friend’s house. That is, until I went to pick him up one day and found that the environment he was in conflicted with some of our non-negotiable family values. As I went to walk him out of the house, a stream of curse words coming from the video game one of the older kids was playing, I was mortified. I felt frustrated, embarrassed, and guilty. What kind of parent was I to allow my child to be exposed to that?

I realized that I had an important role to play in protecting my child, but I also didn’t want to go overboard and never let him spend time with his friends. I wanted to be respectful of others’ values, because it’s their home, but also still assert our families values because it’s my child. I found myself asking, “How can I protect my child, but still allow him to experience an environment that is different from ours?”

In this episode, Rachel and I talk about the rights we as parents have when it comes to ensuring a safe environment for our children, and the opportunity we have, if we can be strategic about what we allow, to help our children develop their own sense of responsibility. We also talk about the value of making connections with people who are different from us and how we can use those connections to encourage all parties involved to work toward the goal of preserving our child’s safety and well-being.

Highlights, Takeaways, & Quick Wins

Help your children experience the real consequences of their choices.
When your kids are over at a friend’s house, it’s an opportunity for them to experience values that are different from your own.
As parents, it’s good for us to make a distinction between what is non-negotiable and what is negotiable.
It’s important not to make assumptions about what your child can handle.
Get to know the other family, talk to them, and get to understand their values.
When you can see and accept the value of somebody who is different from you, it helps you solidify your own sense of value and worth.
When you’re talking to other parents, go out of your way to use language that helps them understand that you’re not imposing your values on them.
You don’t have to judge other families’ values to uphold your own family’s values.
Discipline is really just teaching.
Practice keeping the lines of communication open between you and your child.

Show Notes

03:38 Ben: I had a question on this topic from someone in the chat, and it got me thinking about an experience I had with our oldest son, Jadon. He was over at a friend’s house, and this is somebody who’s in our neighborhood, who’s parents I had met before. When I was growing up, my parents were extremely hands-off when it came to who’s house I was at or where I was spending time in the neighborhood. They didn’t know most of the time. The older you get, the more capable you are of having bad influences around you where you can really get into some serious trouble. As a kid, maybe they thought, “Ah, he’s just a kid. He’s not going to do anything.”
04:31 I kind of followed their lead in the sense that I didn’t really vet the places where our oldest Jadon was spending time. One day, I called over, and I said, “Hey, it’s time for him to come home.” For some reason, I ended up going over there. I walked in the house, and Jadon’s six or seven at this point, and they said, “He’s playing upstairs.” I walk through the living room, and someone’s playing a Dead Pool game. If you know the character for Dead Pool and the video game for that character, it’s pretty racy. It gets an adult rating because of how foul the language and the content is.
05:27 There was some other stuff, too. They had given him some treats and snacks that they didn’t tell us about. That was my first experience like that with other people. I knew this, but other people’s families are not like our family.
05:51 Rachel: Not that our family is better. That’s not what Ben is saying.

Other peoples’ families have different values from my family.

06:02 Ben: I was really made aware of that. It changed my perspective on how I wanted to engage with our kids and the time they were spending with their friends in other people’s homes. How about you, Rachel? What was your experience growing up?
06:23 Rachel: I mostly grew up in a small town, so my parents pretty much knew everybody. We didn’t live in a neighborhood, it was out in the country. In order to get anywhere, my parents had to take me, so they knew all of my friend’s families and that kind of thing. I don’t think there was ever a time when I went to somebody’s house and my mom didn’t know what was going on, but she did have a hands-off approach, because she trusted us and she trusted our friends’ families because she knew them. She was the librarian at the local elementary school, so she knew all of the families. When you’re a teacher in the schools, you know which families are managing well and which ones aren’t.

Time, Place, & Community

07:29 Ben: It depends on where you live, too. Rachel grew up in a small town, and where I lived was a relatively small town. People knew each other a little bit more, but even in large cities or sub-divisions, there was more of a sense of community. People had a tendency to get to know one another. Even if there were differences in values, everyone saw themselves playing the role of raising and protecting these kids.
08:03 Rachel: We had more of a village mentality, especially being from a small town. All of the kids were everyone’s kids, and we don’t live in that reality anymore.
08:15 Ben: I feel a little ashamed to say that there are some of our neighbors who I didn’t meet until we had lived here for several years. I barely know our neighbors across the way, and our kids play with their kids all the time here in the cul-de-sac.
08:34 Rachel: To be fair, we’re usually outside in our cul-de-sac. It’s easy to meet us, too. We’re out there a lot. We play with their kids and our kids play with their kids.
08:45 Ben: You could stand on the sidewalk and say, “Well, we’re out here,” and still not take the initiative that you could.
08:55 Rachel: All that to say, we live in different times for our kids having friends, knowing each other, and that kind of thing.
09:04 Ben: I don’t want to make a blanket statement and say that it’s this way far and wide, but I’ve observed in our neighborhood that people tend to keep to themselves and be fairly private. We have a neighbor up the road that just moved here from Michigan, and the experience I’ve had with them so far has been very different. It’s been very much, “Let’s connect, our kids are playing together so we should know each other.” I don’t get the same sense of, “I’ll keep to myself, you keep to yourself.” Maybe it’s a regional thing, I don’t know. It’s interesting to me that the experience hasn’t been quite the same as what we experienced when we were growing up.
10:00 Maybe that’s part of why I’ve been not just hands-off, but keeping to myself as a default. I have to make an effort, and it doesn’t feel quite as natural for me to walk up to somebody’s door, knock on the door, introduce myself, and have a conversation. With practice, I think I’ll get a little bit better. It’s not just a personality thing.

As parents, we have rights and responsibilities that should embolden us.

10:47 Not in a way that’s confrontational, but in a way that helps us feel comfortable acting within our role. We’ll get into more of that.

Our Role As the Parent

11:08 We protect our children, and we also teach them. This is really general. We keep our children safe. We want them to survive into adulthood, and then we teach them what we know so that, when they become adults, they’re equipped with the things they need to take care of themselves, have healthy relationships, and that kind of thing. That’s really basic. The protection is physical, protecting them from physical harm. It’s emotional, protecting them from things that could affect them negatively emotionally. I don’t mean sadness or anger, protecting them from things that would trigger those emotions, but protecting them so we do not allow their spirits to be broken by something we really should have kept them from experiencing, like some form of abuse. Then, we protect them as they develop mentally from things that would hinder their development and keep them from gaining the kind of understanding they need to engage the world around them.
12:28 That’s the protection part. The teaching part, sometimes, is really hands-on, and it’s about coming alongside them in their experience and telling them, “This is what you experienced, and here’s what you need to know about that. Here’s what you can do in that situation.” Be about imparting your wisdom and your experience. There are also times when it’s appropriate to have a more hands-off approach, where you allow life to be the teacher, the experiences they go through and the consequences they experience from those things. Sometimes, even consequences that are somewhat harmful—that bring some pain or sadness—can be a healthy thing in the right context. That requires us, sometimes, to do something that’s uncomfortable as parents, which is to take a more hands-off approach and allow them to experience those things when it is within our power to keep them from experiencing them.
13:34 That’s a hard thing and I want to know what Rachel thinks about that. For example, if they are riding their scooters around and we tell them, “You have to wear a helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads,” and they say, “I don’t want to wear all that stuff,” part of what could be the hands-off approach would be to say, “Alright, you have to wear your helmet and your knee pads, but you can go without your elbow pads.” Let them choose, and if they fall down and scrape up their elbow, they’ve learned a really valuable lesson. They’re not going to die from getting a scraped up elbow, though it is painful.

Allow your children to experience the results of their choices that won’t kill them or leave them scarred for life, but that help them experience the real consequences of their choices.

15:00 Rachel: Our boys don’t even wear helmets. The natural consequence thing is good, but it needs to be a case by case situation.
15:25 Ben: I’m not going to be able to throw out specific examples and say, “In this scenario, use the hands-off approach.” You really do have to understand your child. It depends on their age and the level of responsibility they have, because something that a three year old who is emotionally mature for their age could handle is different from what a physically mature, emotionally immature seven year old can handle.
15:59 Rachel: In the example of when our son went to this person’s house and somebody was playing a violent video game, that would be a case where I would definitely step in and say, “We’re going to hold off on going to this person’s house for a while, because you’re not quite ready to handle the emotional maturity that comes with seeing something like that and processing it.”
16:23 Ben: I agree with that, but I also want to get into a different approach. There’s a step before that step of saying, “You can’t come over here anymore.” Between protecting our child and teaching them or allowing them to have experiences, there’s a balance we want to strike. When they’re over at a friend’s house, it’s an opportunity for them to experience values that are different from our own, to experience how other people live, the way they talk, and the way they behave with one another. That’s really valuable. It’s good for them to have experiences outside their own home and the set of values they’re familiar with.
17:24 At the same time, it is within our rights, and it’s something we should do as parents, when there are non-negotiables that we do not bend, those expectations need to be held even if those values are different from values of their friends that they are spending time with. It’s good for us to make a distinction between what is truly a non-negotiable and what is something that can be negotiable because we’re okay with them having experiences outside of what they’re familiar with in our family. As an example for us, a non-negotiable would be something like if one of our kids had a food allergy. There’s no way we’re going to allow them to have that food, and we’re going to go over the top making sure that the parents understand that this is something they absolutely cannot have.
18:25 Rachel: Or maybe something like child diabetes. I just had a friend post the other day about her son going to a friend’s house, and he was fed a bunch of sugar, and he has diabetes, so he can go into shock because of that. That’s a non-negotiable. You need to know my child’s health concerns.
18:46 Ben: If this is the kid I’m thinking of, this is actually an older child who really does know better. You can’t assume anything about the age and level of responsibility of your child in those situations, because this child is old enough to understand and have a comprehensive knowledge of the effect this could have on his body, but there’s this thing when we’re young where we feel invincible. We assume that it’s going to be fine. That’s an emotional maturity thing more than a mental maturity thing—it’s understanding your own humanness and how the things that happen to you don’t just affect you, but they affect the people who care about you. It’s a level of empathy.

It’s important not to make assumptions about what your child can handle.

19:52 If you have a close enough relationship with your child, those are some things you should be able to detect, that this really isn’t something they’re responsible enough to take care of on their own, to assert themselves. I need to make sure that I communicate with the other parents and let them know what’s going on. The age and responsibility thing really is all about knowing your child, knowing what level of responsibility they have, and knowing how to compensate for that in the way you communicate with the other parents. Going back to having these experiences outside of our own family, a word I would use to describe that is “community.”

Raising Children in Community

20:38 Community is people that may have similar values, but are unique family units in and of themselves, and there’s tremendous value in not just being raised in the bubble of your own family unit and set of values. It’s about being raised and being exposed to the way other people view things. That’s why we’ve talked about how good it is for our children to have experiences outside of our own country, where the customs, languages, and all of those things are completely different.
21:19 Rachel: We just had a conversation around the dinner table and our six year old came home, and he said something about a student in his class who was weird. I said, “You know, weird is not a very kind way to describe somebody.” He said, “Well, but he’s just really different from us. He goes out of our class and he slobbers a lot.” I understood from that that this kid is probably a special needs child, and we had a great conversation about people being different from us, and different doesn’t mean bad. It just means different. Sometimes, people are born with these things that they’re unable to do, but they still have something of value to offer to the world. It doesn’t matter if they’re different. It doesn’t matter if they can’t keep their slobber in their mouth.
22:18 Those little handicaps don’t mean that they have nothing to offer to the world. It’s good for our kids to be in community with these people, because they get to understand ways they can help and ways that can shape their own values. His friends were talking about this little boy and how he’s weird, and I said, “You know, one of the things that we can do is we can be brave, and we can say, ‘You know what, it’s not a kind thing to be talking about him like this.'” I want to teach my boys to be brave like that, because that’s not okay.
23:00 Ben: I have this tendency to try and see the good in everybody and give people the benefit of the doubt. I imagine for five and six year olds, they don’t really understand what they’re saying or grasp the meaning of that word. The conversation Rachel was having was right on. Here’s what it boils down to with community and being exposed to people who are different—when you can see and accept the value of somebody who is different from you, it helps you solidify your own sense of value and worth. We’ve talked about how important it is to feel secure in your sense of self worth. The more you’re exposed to people who are different and you see that you can have a relationship and get value from them, even though they aren’t the same as you, it benefits everybody.
24:02 Rachel: I think Ben even told me at the dinner table, “Hey, simmer down.” Our poor little boy is thinking, “I didn’t mean anything by it!” He wasn’t in trouble. I just had to chat with him.
24:26 Ben: I’m an extrovert, but I also feel a little bit timid in some ways. I have my own life, my own way of doing things, and unless it’s somebody I feel a connection with already, I don’t naturally feel the need to reach out and introduce myself. When it comes to our kids, it goes back to that first role of protecting.

It’s within our rights as parents to understand the environment where our kids are spending time.

25:09 As they get older, as they take on more responsibility, they take on more of that role of making the decisions and distinctions that keep them safe. We do that in partnership with them. When they’re younger, we carry most if not all of the weight of that responsibility. I led with that story of Jadon and these folks, and it wasn’t one of those things where these are bad people and he shouldn’t be spending time there. What I could do in that situation is actually get to know that other family, talk to them, and get to understand their values. That’s easier for me because I’m an outgoing person, but that can be pretty scary for some folks. This is a way that you keep your child safe and understand where your child is spending time, and most of the time, if not 99% of the time, when you get to know somebody, you break down your assumptions and it takes away that fear factor. Most folks are just folks.
26:48 Rachel: In doing that, we also get to model to our kids what it looks like to have healthy relationships and to meet new people.
27:00 Ben: It takes some time and practice, but eventually, you can get to a place where you feel pretty comfortable doing this. It becomes your normal mode, and some of our really good friendships have come out of meeting friends of our kids and getting to know their parents. There’s really a lot of great benefit to be had there. It’s within your rights as a parent to meet the parents or the guardians of the people your who’s house your children is going to be in. It’s within your rights to come in and understand the environment they’re going to be spending time in. You also have a right to establish boundaries and expectations, going back to those things that are non-negotiable.
27:48 Saying, “It’s okay for my kid to do this, this, and this, but these are things we don’t bend on.” There was a great question I want to bring in here from Charla. She was asking this question from the standpoint of these other parents being friends of theirs. She says, “When we’re at someone’s house and the kids are playing with friends, I have a hard time figuring out how to remind my kids of our rules without making it look like I’m passive-aggressively telling my kids their friends should behave the same way. How can I remind my kids of what our values are without worrying about putting our friends on the defensive?” The best thing you can do is to focus on the relationship and connection with those other parents. When you talk about your values, talk about it in terms of “This is our family.”

When you’re talking to other parents, go out of your way to use language that helps them understand that you’re not imposing your values on them.

28:53 You understand that every family does things differently, and that’s absolutely okay. Their set of values is not more or less valid than your set of values. At the same time, you can’t feel like you have to tiptoe around that every time you feel like you need to re-establish those things. If they do get on the defensive, you re-establish the connection, and you help them understand, by being consistent with them, that your relationship with them is more important than whether their values match your values. I’ve had this approach with other things before, too. If you have a belief, say something, do something, or you don’t like the way someone is treating you and you have to put your foot down, if the relationship really is important to you, you have the freedom to assert yourself, put your foot down, and draw the boundary.
29:54 They may react negatively to that. If you’re consistent with them in the way that you show them that, they see that the relationship you have with them is important. With other parents, the relationship you have with them, on some level, whether your acquaintances or really good friends, there’s a connection there that you want to maintain. Consistency is what’s going to trump negative reactions when you put your foot down and establish those boundaries.
30:33 Rachel: I probably feel this more than Ben does. When we go have dinner with somebody else, and we’re saying, “Hey, this isn’t really how we do things.” I feel like, because we’re at somebody else’s house, it’s not my place to do that, but it really does boil down to which values you’re not willing to skimp on.
31:02 Ben: It may be that you have some things that really should be in the negotiable category in that scenario, but you’re treating them like they’re non-negotiables. It can be complex, too, if you’re over there and you don’t fully understand the values of the family you’re spending time with and you’re concerned that your kid is acting outside of their values. This is where I have the “highest line.” It may be that something is allowed in your home and it’s absolutely okay, but the family where they’re spending time has a rule about that that is more strict. In that case, it should be the stricter rule that is adhered to. There’s a level of respect you get to teach your children in that situation where they understand that, even though this is something they can do at their house, this is a different environment and that’s not allowed.
32:14 We need to be respectful of that, because that’s this family’s value, and we’re in their home. Also, if something is allowed in their home but it’s a non-negotiable for you, then that should be adhered to, even though in that environment it may be allowed. Again, we’re talking about the non-negotiable things. I want to make sure that we leave enough room for our children to experience the negotiable things, so that they can get the value out of being around other sets of values.
32:59 Rachel: Sometimes, our kids go over to a friend’s house and you’re not there at all. We have a relationship with a couple of our kids’ friends’ parents where, if they want to give them a snack or something, they’ll text us before they do and say, “Hey, I was going to give them this, is that okay?” Sometimes, it’s too close to dinner and we don’t want them to give the kids a snack, or we just want them to come home.

It’s really helpful to have a high level of communication with your kids’ friends’ parents.

33:29 Ben: I wonder if we’re talking about the same friends, but I feel like there are some friends that don’t text us. I go to pick them up, and they say, “Oh, he had five Gogurts and a bag of Cheetos.” Alright. I had to put that stuff in the negotiable category.
33:53 Rachel: Sometimes you will when you get experience with a lot of different friends. At first, we had this idea that our kids’ friends would always come to our house. They do come to our house a lot, but our kids also want the experience of being in somebody else’s house. We’ve had to let that be. When they’re teenagers, I’m sure we’ll be shipping them off to somebody else’s house.
34:37 Ben: I always wonder if our desire to be the cool parents, where all the kids decide to come and hang out, had more to do with our egos. It’s good for our kids to have both. It’s good for their friends to come over and be in a different environment. People behave differently just a little bit, they curate themselves based on what environment they’re in. When they’re in an environment that’s not their home, they get to see how that affects them. I think that’s really interesting.
35:14 Rachel: For me, it was more about protection. I wanted to protect them from the things I couldn’t. I guess it boils down to control, really. I wanted to control what they were exposed to.
35:27 Ben: There are definitely things that you should protect your children from, but that goes back to striking that balance. What can you allow your child to experience? If Hosea goes over to his friend’s house and he has five Gogurts and then he is in a really terrible mood, we get the consequences of that, too. He gets a sugar high and then the crash that comes from that. We can also tell him, “You know what, you had a lot of sugar. The reason you’re having a hard time right now is, in part, because of how much sugar you consumed.” He’s five, so he probably doesn’t care.

Establish a Team Mentality

36:16 This is the best thing you can do when establishing this connection with the other parents and everyone involved—it’s a team mentality. It’s not, “I have my house, you have your house, and they’re in your house but they’re my kid.” It really is, “Hey, we’re all on the same team here.” For example, if it’s Jadon, I would say to the parents, “All of us are on the same team, team Jadon. Our goal as the team is a common goal, and that is Jadon’s safety and well-being. I have my set of values and you have your set of values, and there’s some back and forth that goes with that. Ultimately, as the parents of Jadon, we’re the captains of team Jadon, but we’re all on the same team.”
37:20 I love that mentality because it takes away that barrier of us-against-them and our values vs. their values. It really has us working toward a common goal. I will draw the line and say, “No, you can’t go over to that house anymore,” when the parents will not or cannot fulfill their role as a part of that team. The goal of the team is the safety and well-being of my child. If you cannot or will not fulfill that role, I can’t in good conscience allow my child to be in that environment. That’s hard.
38:08 Amber asked this question yesterday, “My nine year old’s best friend has parents that I don’t trust, to put it bluntly, but I don’t want to punish her or her friend, so I’m not really sure how to handle it. Is that someone I should try to explain to her at such a young age?” It’s difficult being the responsible one. It doesn’t really matter the age. Sometimes it’s really difficult for our children to get outside of themselves and understand all of the things that are going on in that situation, even when they’re older and they have the ability to understand those things. It’s their friend, and they just want to go over to their house.

If you’re trying to establish a team mentality and the other parents are not cooperating, you’re not in the wrong to protect your child from that situation.

39:22 I want to give you that freedom. It is delicate. You may have to have a conversation with your child, and they won’t understand. They’ll feel like it’s unfair and they’ll be really frustrated with you, and that’s just part of being a parent. We have to make those decisions sometimes that make it feel like our child hates us and feels like we are trying to be mean and do something they don’t like, something that’s unfair. They don’t understand it.
39:58 Rachel: One of the things I try to remember is that the kids that my kids are hanging out with, who their parents are and whether or not we agree with them, it isn’t those kids’ fault.
40:09 Ben: Absolutely not. That’s something I want to be really aware of when talking to my child. I’m not saying that you cut off that kid and that relationship. They can still spend time together, but they can’t spend time together in that environment because their parents are not on the same team.

Discipline At Other Peoples’ Homes

40:33 Rachel: The solution to that would be to find a different place to spend time together, like going to a public park or having the kid over to your house. This doesn’t have to do with kids going to friends’ houses, but our boys spend a lot of time with our parents. They do discipline differently than we do, so we were very vocal about the way that we discipline our children. We don’t use shame or punishment, but we use natural consequences. Trying to get our parents to understand that was really difficult. When one of our kid’s friend’s parents uses those different kinds of discipline formats, that becomes eggshell land, like a mine.
41:48 It’s really hard to talk about those things with other parents because it’s very personal. If we tell other people how we’re doing things, it seems like we’re saying the way they’re doing things is wrong. I’ve tried to remember that when my kids spend a weekend with my parents or when they go to a home where discipline is different than we discipline, they always get to come back to us. Anything they may feel in those places, if they are shamed or punished in a different way that makes them feel like they are bad people instead of that their decisions are bad, they get to come back to us, and we get to speak life into them again. We get to tell them that one bad choice doesn’t make you a bad person—15 bad choices don’t make you a bad person, and you have nothing to be ashamed of, because who you are is good enough. I try to remember that when I think about sending our kids into places that do things differently than we do.
43:11 Ben: I would guess that the discipline issue is less pertinent in the conversation we’re having about friends, because the most discipline I might have for friends of our kids that come over is telling them, “That’s not something that we do,” being firm about it but not threatening to call their parents. It’s never gotten to that point. There are some things that are non-negotiable, like we don’t spank. If that’s a non-negotiable, it is okay to create that boundary. We don’t shame, and you might have to define that a little bit. This isn’t you asserting your values and saying that others need to have your values, too. This is you saying, “We’re all on the same team, and because I’m the team captain, I get to decide which values are most important to uphold for my child even when they’re not in my environment.”

You don’t have to judge other families’ values to uphold your own family’s values.

44:36 If the relationship you establish with the other parents becomes a friendship or if it’s an existing friendship and you have kids growing up at the same time, don’t assume that all of your values are the same because you have a pre-existing relationship. You can actually assume the opposite, that your values, as similar as they may be in some ways, are unique. It’s good to have healthy, purposeful conversation around the difference in those values. The great freedom you have in a friendship relationship is that there’s a connection already established, so you can talk about values without coming from a place of judgement.
45:32 You can build in that mutual understanding of each of you being unique families with unique values. It’s good to be purposeful about having that conversation and not to assume that all things are the same. Ultimately, as much as you can, reinforce that team mentality regardless of your level of relationship, because that’s going to be the thing that glues all of it together.

Dealing With Conflicting Values

46:12 This question was from Cory Miller, “Is it better to be preventative when it comes to handling issues that may arise at a friend’s house, or is it better to educate by experience?” Do you sit down and have a conversation with your child beforehand, or do you wait, let them experience things, and have a conversation with them after the fact? I would say the answer is both. You definitely cover the non-negotiables. There may be some things attached to the non-negotiables that are actually negotiable. If it has to do with food, for example, you can say, “Yes, it’s okay to eat processed food at your friend’s house if they offer you something to eat. No, it’s not okay for you to eat 10 candy bars.” It’s good for you to have those conversations ahead of time, and hopefully you’re having those conversations with the other parents and establishing the non-negotiable things so that they don’t become issues.
47:27 After the fact, if they do go overboard and they eat too much sugar and get sick, you can use that as an opportunity to say, “This is the consequence you’re experiencing from the choice you made.” Tie those things together. Cory asked another question, “How can we prepare our family for when we’re on the other side? When our children have friends coming over, how can we maintain our own values while being respectful of our kids’ friends and their family’s values?” It’s the same thing, that team mentality, it’s just the reverse. You’re on team whatever the kid’s name is, who is your child’s friend, but their parents are the team captains.
48:15 If you are the one that has the stricter rules, our approach in this situation is to respect the stricter rules of the home where you’re going as long as it doesn’t come into conflict with a non-negotiable. They may not extend the same thing to you and allow you to operate your environment in that way, so it’s really about trying to be on the same team.
48:53 Rachel: I like the team mentality. I see it more as the village thing, where we’re raising our children, but we’re in a village, so those children don’t just belong to us—they belong to everybody. The friends of our kids that come over to our house don’t just belong to their parents, but they belong to us as well. At the very least, we need to be speaking life into those kids. Sometimes, they come from very different backgrounds, and speaking life may look different in each of those situations. I have a hard time disciplining kids in different ways, I guess because of the definition we have for discipline.

Discipline is really just teaching—when other kids come to our house, the way we discipline is just by teaching.

49:57 There was a kid who came over not too long ago and was playing, and he didn’t want our twins, who are annoying three year olds, to play. He made a mean face and said, “Get away!” It was my job as the caretaker of this child for however long I was taking care of him to say, “You know, that’s not the kindest way that we can say it. Can we use our words to communicate what we want in a kinder way?” There are little things we can do here and there that can help them learn how to do something better without doing things like shaming. If we are a village, then yes, it is my job to teach them those things.
51:05 Ben: I think the team metaphor works in this case because the goal is the well-being and safety of the child, and you have your own definitions for what that looks like. The child’s parents’ definitions of safety and well-being trumps yours because they’re the parents, the team leaders for that child’s team. Because you have your own definitions, you have some freedom to operate within those as well. It might be a situation where there’s such a conflict between their values and yours that were you to try to uphold their values in your own home, it would come into conflict with things that are non-negotiable. In that case, you might have to say, “I can’t be part of this team, if this is what you want me to do and how you want me to deal with your child.”
52:07 It’s absolutely okay to do that. I would hope that, most of the time, your experience would be that there are some clear boundaries of things you are okay to uphold and there’s this intersecting gray area where there are some things that are negotiable that may not be allowed in their home but are okay in your home or visa versa.

Foster Honest Communication About Scary Things

52:37 I really like this question from Megan, “How do you empower your kids to tell you if a scary, uncomfortable, dangerous thing happened at their friend’s house without making your child feel as if they’re the one in trouble?” Sometimes, because they’re in somebody else’s home and there are adults who give them permission to do something, it can be confusing for a child, even if you talked with them beforehand. The adults who are present are saying this is okay, and the only thing they know how to do as children in that situation is to agree with the adults, because they should be in charge and have the kid’s best interest at heart.
53:27 There is something in the back of their mind where they know, “This isn’t okay at home.” If it’s caused them harm in some way or made them feel uncomfortable, they may feel like, “I can’t tell my parents about it, because I broke a rule and they’ll be mad about that.” It’s not just about that situation, but it’s really about the communication style you have with your child. I’m really trying to get to a place where I don’t have a visible emotional reaction to information my children provide about things that they’ve done in accordance with or against the rules of our house. I try to be as matter-of-fact and objective as I can, and it’s so hard. Sometimes I do a face palm because I feel like we’ve gone over this a million times, or it’s something that’s really inconvenient for me, and there are consequences I have to deal with because of their decision, and I feel frustrated about that.
54:42 The more we can keep the lines of communication open, the better. When we have a scowl on our faces and we’re visibly angry about something, that puts up a wall. That’s not to make you feel bad, because it’s absolutely okay to feel angry and frustrated, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The fact is, though, that when we express that outwardly in response to something that we’ve learned, that puts up a wall and disables communication between us and our child.

Practice keeping the lines of communication open between you and your child.

55:28 I feel like maybe 75% of the time, I wear my heart on my sleeve and they know exactly how I feel about something. It’s okay, but I would rather be able to address the information and walk them through that and then talk to them about how I feel about that situation, so that they understand that the more important thing for me is for them to learn from those situations, the reason behind the rules that we have, and the potential consequences than for me to tell them how I feel and for them to understand my feelings about it.
56:17 Rachel: There was someone who was very important to me as a kid. I’m not sharing this story to scare parents, but I’m trying to figure out what would be a good way to handle this as a parent. This person I was close to was at a friend’s house and the friend’s grandfather was there, and they decided to play hide and seek. The grandfather hid in a closet with this girl who was important to me, and he molested her. The truth of that did not come out until this girl was 25 years old. As a parent, I don’t have daughters, but that reality is something that could still happen to our boys. I don’t know how I would approach a situation like that. How would you talk to your kid about, “Hey, did anything bad happen at this person’s house?” How would you get them to talk? Kids are confused when this happens. This girl who was only six years old when it happened.
57:51 Ben: There’s great power in establishing a relationship with the people where they’re spending time. I would even go so far as to say that if your child is going over to a friend’s house and they have somebody else over one day, I need to know who the adults are who are in charge that have any influence in that situation. If somebody comes over, you need to let me know, and I need to be able to meet them. I can’t in good conscience allow my child to be in a situation with an adult I don’t know anything about.
58:45 Rachel: It boils down to communication. If your child feels comfortable sharing something like that and asking questions about it, then you can open those lines of communication.
58:59 Ben: There’s an after-the-fact. If you sense that something is off, which isn’t always the case because it’s very internal, you can ask them questions. It’s good very consistently to remind your child, and you don’t want to do this in a way that’s too serious, “If anything ever makes you feel uncomfortable, sad, or scared, I’m here to talk about those things. I want to know because I want to protect you. I want to keep you safe.” Continue to reinforce that as much as possible, keep those lines of communication open.
59:54 When you are the parent who says, “I’m going to come over and introduce myself,” and you don’t feel shy about it at all, that can be really off-putting to somebody who has bad intentions. They’ll think, “Wow, this person is all up in my business. I should probably be on my best behavior.” Sometimes, that doesn’t stop people at all, so I don’t want you to rest on that and think that’s sufficient.

Directness can be really powerful when talking to other parents, so use that to your advantage.

1:00:29 I like what Michelle said, “Letting your child know that sharing something scary is brave is important, too. Let them know that it takes courage, and you’re proud that they were brave in telling you something.” Sometimes your child shares something inconsequential, but they don’t feel comfortable sharing it because they don’t know how you’re going to react or respond to this. Any opportunity you have to commend your child for being brave and sharing something, any time you can tell that they were scared to share it with you, reinforcing that behavior is a great way to keep those lines of communication open. When they are in a situation where something is truly scary and makes them uncomfortable or hurts them, they don’t have as much of a barrier blocking them from sharing that information with you.
1:01:34 They know that you encourage that kind of openness. Matt asks, “At what age do you think you can start having those conversations with your kids? I’m tempted to start now, but I don’t know if my boys are ready.” There isn’t a specific age, but how you talk to your kids will differ based on their age and understanding. You may have to use very basic language and just reinforce the fact that you want to protect them and your job is to keep them safe. Put it in really simple terms. As they get older and they understand more, you can go more in-depth with them, but I don’t think it’s ever too early to establish those lines of communication with your kids. Even if they don’t understand, you’re building a foundation for the kind of communication you want to have.
1:02:38 Rachel: In talking to kids about the scary things, like molestation, early on we established a practice where we would ask the boys, “Has anybody ever touched you here?” We showed them the boundaries, saying, “You should never touch someone here, and if anybody ever touches you here, we need to know about it.” Even at a young age, we can help clarify those boundaries for kids, and I feel like that’s helpful to kids. Not to make them scared, but just to educate them, because kids don’t really know. Our boys took baths together until they were five, and some of them still do at six. They don’t have any clue about that kind of thing, so open that conversation in a non-scary way.
1:03:41 Ben: You want to be careful not to let it be a weird, uncomfortable, or awkward thing. It’s really matter of fact. There’s this shamefulness, especially in this culture, when you’re talking about that kind of thing. We can present those things in a matter of fact way, not in a way that seems timid or nervous. I like the fact that our boys feel comfortable saying the word “penis.” In the right context, it’s appropriate. There isn’t this stigma about it, it’s really just you having an open, straightforward conversation about what these things are. Our kids pick up when we feel uncomfortable or shameful about something, and they feel like they need to feel that way about it, too. Be careful about your own feelings about those things when you’re communicating them to your kids.