Interview Your Kids

Speaker 1: What's up everybody This is Rad dad secrets, episode seven. Have you interviewed your kids 

Speaker 2: So the big question is this, how do regular dads like us who weren't given a playbook on parenting will only have 24 hours in a day to make it all happen How do we provide for our families in a way that will allow us to raise happy, successful children and have a thriving marriage while still being a man and doing the things we love That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. This is Rad dad secrets. 

Speaker 3: All right everybody. I'm here and I'm here with Eric Wagner and we were talking 

Speaker 1: a while ago about something that, that Eric does that I think is really cool. Then I'm going to implement it into my family. He basically. Well, you know what I'm going to let him explain what he does with his kids. Eric, go ahead. Take it away. All right, so. So here's, here's what I started doing and I had heard about it a while ago, but honestly started at the beginning of this year and it is literally one of the best things I have done as a dad. So one of the things that I'm noticing and everybody tells me is that your kids grow up really, really ridiculously fast, right And it's happening right before my eyes. I have a 13 year old, five years is going to be 18 and heading out of the house, you know, in our church, we typically serve missions between 18, 19 years old. 

Speaker 1: He's going to be gone just like that. So it's happening fast. And the problem is that as your kids get older, that you start to have this gap of communication, right And I'm starting to notice it with my team where it's getting a little bit more difficult to communicate. And there's moments where I'm like, okay, aliens have abducted my child and they left somebody else in his place because this is not the same kid. Um, he's definitely still in there, but the communication is getting a little bit more difficult. And the thing I started doing is a weekly interview now these interviews, it's not so much important exactly how I do it. I think as I explained this, I want you guys, everybody's listening. I want you to get your own style. I want you to get your own flavor. You're a personality mixed with your children and figure out this, this interview style that's going to be for you. 

Speaker 1: And I used the word interview, but I mean really it's a friendly chat session where where everything is safe. So I'll explain a little bit, but the purpose behind this, you want to start them young and if your kids are already old, you know what the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. When's the second best time Right now you're, you're, there's this gap, right And you want to bridge the gap of communication so that when they're teens, there is no gap. The communication is completely there. When you start doing these interviews, you're essentially, they learned that you're their friend, right And I know in the last we talked about being a parent first and you can never forget that, but it's super critical that you're also their friend and when you do these interviews, they're going to realize that you're, you're their friend, you're easy to talk to because kids don't think you're easy to talk to you. 

Speaker 1: I remember growing up thinking it was really hard to talk to my parents at times, but they're going to think you're easy to talk to. It builds trust and it shows them that you truly do care, and I'm going to tell you what these interviews are not, so this is not a time to discipline or criticize your children to sit there and point out their faults and you want to make sure that they're aware that no feelings and no thoughts are off limit. Everything's fair game right There's no judgments in that room. What happens in the interview stays in the interview to build that competence, one of the important things too is to make sure that they're&