Welcome to better today with your Marriage Counselor Edmond host Shawn Maguire, and with over 25 years of counseling experience, this is the podcast. It inspires you to create both an amazing family and marriage. This is the podcast that helps you to navigate the challenges of modern life. In this podcast, you will be given the same tools, techniques, and stories that Sean and his team have used to help thousands of people to transform their lives. If you’re ready to make real progress, that will change your marriage, your family, and your Marriage Counselor Edmond life. Then get ready because better today starts now.
Hi, and welcome back. I am so glad that you are here again because we are in part four of different parenting styles and with men and women and what to do about them. You know, it’s so hard. I see so many people come in to counseling and you know, I’m reminded this one guy came in to counseling and he was just super hardcore. I mean, I don’t even know that he was aware of how bad his actions, uh, we’re habit. You know, what effect they were having on his spouse. His words were extremely harsh, his content wasn’t wrong. But the way that he said it was really harsh and people in his family were just devastated. And this guy had no idea at the impact his words were having on his family. And one of the first things we jumped into is when he disagrees with his wife how they need to talk about it.
And that’s one of the things I’m going to talk about today in parenting. You know, I’ve gone over the last three part one, two, three different ways to talk to Mann and elements of you know, you need to include with man about team and about thinking about the way men thing logically. Now when I talked to the men about how to be kind and gentle and considerate of your wives and when you approach him relating to parenting. And then we go over some practical steps that you can take in dealing with your kids when you have differences of opinion and really the framework to start from that will help you be successful. So, oh and then lastly, you don’t want to forget this. Talk about what do you do if they don’t want to change? Have you gone through all of this and you’ve made efforts what to do next?
You’re not going to want to watch or miss that. That’ll be at the very end. So think about this. Women are created different, I know this is a shock. It’s a big time shock. Their skin is typically softer, their hair is softer, they don’t smell as much. They have less hair on their arms, on their chest, on their legs. Hopefully if you’re in America, you always shave your Marriage Counselor Edmond legs and they speak more soft. They speak more gentle or more gently. There are ways that they communicate and that are less rough and tough as a standard rule. And so I think if we’re going to consider the way we should approach our wives and women in general is we should come from a place that considers who they are. And we should move related to that. So if I have a very gentle wife, which I personally do, and a lot of the men that I see, their wives are softer.
Now, some men that I see, their wives are not softer, they are softer, but that also you need to consider who you’re married to. So women are typically softer and kinder and when you’re going to approach them with a disagreement about parenting, your Marriage Counselor Edmond best moves are not started with being really rough and tough. But to be gracious and kind and even thinking about what you’re going to say in advance, man will really help you think about the past. Think about a situation right now when you’ve tried to bring something up with your wife in the moment when you’re parenting and how that went over. I think I just heard a bomb go off and now think about what would happen if you took a step back and you thought about who your wife is, the way that God uniquely created her and does she like you to be give you give a few words and be kind and sweet and build her up most likely.
So I think if you think in terms of validating who she is first, being aware that she’s with the kids. Most of the Dane has a lot of the burdens of their lives and responsibilities upon her and that for those of you who have wives that stay home and or homeschool moms, man, they are at it full throttle all day, every day and they don’t get an off. They don’t get an end date. They don’t get, Hey, this project is completed. That project is called childhood. That goes throughout life in some capacity and if we realize this, we are going to be different in the way that we approach. We’re going to say, all right, so my wife is being lenient and she just let my son get up out of bed for the seventh time. Probably when my son is out of bed is not the best time to say, Hey, get to you get to bed and honey, what are you thinking?
Why are you letting him up? We’re supposed to be watching this romantic movie or going over a couple of devotional or we’re having a glass of tea together at night relaxing and talking about our day. That’s probably the wrong move. A better move would be when your son goes back to bed to say, hey honey, I noticed that he get up seven times. Man That’s frustrating. And then let her talk, let her talk and then you can say, you know, what do you think would be a good move for us to deal with that so that we can put a stop to it and we can be proactive and talk about it now and you talk about that and and put it out there and then stop talking. Yep. I know this is really hard for a lot of us to do to ask a question and then actually let somebody have the space to answer it.
That’s a really big deal. You will get to know your wife so much better if you ask questions that are not in dunning. Like the question you don’t want to ask when you come home from work is, Hey, what’d you do all day? I’ve been working. What? What did you do all day? Because what that really says is, hey, you’ve probably been sitting on the couch eating ice cream. You probably have had food delivered cause you’re too lazy to go get it. You and the kids have probably been watching TV, eating the food, spending money on Amazon while I’m out working yet. So that’s not the, I know that’s not your Marriage Counselor Edmond goal. So be very aware of the questions you ask and in the ways and tone in what you asked him. Also you could say something like if you see that she’s getting upset and she just has a flip out moment on the kids and you could come back later when the kids are not around or when they’re without not able to hear you and you could say, Hey hon, I noticed that when a jade and asked for some more chips that you just exploded.
What’s going on? That’s one way. Now I don’t know your wife, I’ve never met her. And you have to take into consideration who she is when I’m giving these suggestions because timing is a lot and who your spouse is isn’t everything. So you could also say same exact scenario. Hey honey, I noticed that when Jaden come out and ask for some more tips. You got really upset, is there something I can do to help you in those situations? There’s something I can do in advance and then be quiet. Don’t say anything else. Let her talk. And she may go talk about her friend that day, how her friend called her up and then that took 30 minutes longer and then the kids had a spill and it went everywhere in the store and she was humiliated and embarrassed cause then Jaden started crying. And really what is she asking for?
She’s just asking for you to listen to hear cause she’s had a tough day and she was acting out of the issues that have happened earlier that day. And you just saw the end result. And I think that’s a start to a deeper level of green and parenting and moving towards solutions that will work not just for the moment, but that will work in building your Marriage Counselor Edmond marriage. And when you build a great marriage, you start to build an opportunity to be great parents together. And you say Sean, but you don’t know my wife. I agree. It’s called New Vision counseling that live nuvision counseling, that Liv, that’s a counseling practice and please call us up if you want us to get to know you individually and walk you through this. We have a team of counselor that would love to do that, but for now try some of these approaches and I think as long as you’re a student and you learn what works and you remember that, yeah, let’s do that again.
What doesn’t work? Ooh, that went really bad. Not at all how I planned. What can I do differently next time you’ll get better and better and better and better and better and better each time. So coming up with scripts that you can say in advance that value who your wife is. You know, most women evaluate who they are based on the report card kids now, I just don’t mean what they get from school. I mean the way their kids act in public, the way they do in Sunday school, the way they act around their friends, where they act around your family, all of that is the report card that most women evaluate their mothering by. So if their kids are doing great, then they get an a. If they’re doing terrible, they get an F and they fail. And no mother ever wants to fail at being a parent.
No Way. So value, they are then validate. You know, one of the things I’ve noticed my wife really likes and it’s so simple, but I have to be very intentional to remind myself, well there I put a cute in my phone, I read a book, one of my patients say I need something to help me remember that she is amazing and that she’s sacrificing and giving her life every day. You See, I married a brilliant woman who I would never marry anybody as good as me. I had to marry somebody better, better, better than me. And so if she worked, we’d probably be multimillionaires and we’d have an amazing house and our kids would get, the less, the less, uh, amazing dad they would get an inferior mom. Cause I can’t be ever as good as a mom as she is. She’s got me defeated in that category soundly.
So I know that she is sacrificing all these dreams because she loves, loves, loves our kids and she’s home. And when I use my words and my behaviors together, then I’m able to s I remember to really have a deep impact on bringing her to place of feeling valued, feeling like she mattered no matter what kind of day she had. If I come home and I noticed dinner and I said, man, it smells amazing in here. Thank you so much. I see that there’s Broccoli in with the chicken. Thank you for cooking Broccoli. Thank you for like taking the time to do that. I know that seasoning it and cutting in and spending the time to actually make these meals and not just buy them takes a lot out of your Marriage Counselor Edmond day. And I just want you to know, babe, that means so much to me as a, as a man who’s working, then I’ve got a wife.
You see my point, I can go on and on about this. And when I do that in front of the kids, not in a, I’m indicting you kids because you’re so in grateful way, but in a payment really value you and have value your contribution. And I see your Marriage Counselor Edmond sacrifice. Any ways that you can do that, you will reap a progressively deep and amazing reward. And the benefactors of that are your kids. And he said, Sean, what does this have to do with different parenting styles? I don’t get, why are we talking about my wife? I don’t understand. She’s the one with all the problems. Great question. And I would say when you value somebody and they feel like you’re care, they see that they matter in your eyes. You value their opinions, you value their efforts, you will have so much more equity to spend and a disagreement.
Then if you go into a disagreement where you don’t value her, you’re not seeing her the way that God sees her. And therefore she’s not gonna respond to you in a way that is best for your family and her kids. You’re going to react instead of respond. And usually you can react out of hurt, anger, bitterness, resentment because of the way that they’ve been treated by you. And then offer practical help. When you walk in and there’s dishes everywhere, it smells like something caught on fire in the kitchen. You’re here, your wife’s hair is all over the place, no makeup, wearing your pajamas, you’re your first best move is not to say what in the happened near today. No Way. That’s not your first move. You say, Babe, what can I do to help drop it? That’s it. What can I do to help? Now, if you have a really sensitive wife, she says, what do you mean I don’t need help?
I don’t need help. Say, all right honey, I love you. Go give her a hug and a kiss. Say, but if you need help, just let me know. I’ll be right over here. And that’s what you do that. So you have a mentality of helping, loving, validating. And when you do that, especially in front of the kids, you’re, you’re modeling for them the behavior that you want to see. And you’re also giving equity to your relationship, which when you disagree, when you disagree, there’ll be a lot more grace for you to work through situations and focus on the problem instead of the person because that’s where the, that’s where the focus has been capped. Now, how can you as a woman start to deal with these issues if you’re struggling through them? Well, in parenting, one is find a community of people that you can get around and as a, as a man, you can also find a community of people that have kids or have raised kids and bring them into your Marriage Counselor Edmond life in whatever capacity will, there’s church group dinners on Fridays and Saturday nights, maybe you do breakfast, things like that really help.
And then every woman needs time daily to recharge and she needs you, you, you to be very direct in saint honey, I’ve got the kids today. I want you to go get your nails done. I want you to go to breakfast, pick a friend, any friend, and go to breakfast with them. Go on a walk, go whatever your wife likes to do, make sure this happens. Make sure this happens because an unhealthy, exhausted, depleted wife. Think about that. That’s what she’s giving from to your kids. That’s what she has to give to you. That’s what she has left in the tank and it’s not much. So the more you can encourage your loving, sacrificial wife to step into the game of taking care of herself, taking care of yourself, and I’m repeating it because so many women I see in counseling, this is the last person they think of.
And that’s unfortunate because when they’re not healthy, they are not parenting the air, not parenting from a healthy position. And that means their kids are going to get the leftovers instead of the best. And then you don’t want that. And I know your wife doesn’t want that. So encourage them to rejuvenate and do those activities that help them rejuvenate. So some very practical steps when you disagree. If you’re, you know, in parenting too, to back up and look at God’s best, his call to you is unity, unity, unity, unity. Look up all the scriptures in the Bible on unity. There’s tons of them. And remember that you are on the same team, so quit shooting the baskets and different goals and scoring against each other. Also, remember, build each other up. Commit to building each other up in front of the kids. Now that looks like, Hey, you’re doing great.
That doesn’t mean you have to lie, but that does mean you don’t want to take somebody’s legs out in the middle of a conflict that you’re having because then they’re not going to respect both of you, and this plays out really clearly in politics. Think about it. The Democrats hate the Republicans. The Republicans hate the Democrats and they vilify each other. They vilified. I can’t imagine we have that many bad people in the world. Maybe we do, but man, politics is out of control and guess what? We as the American public do. I don’t trust either side. Now when I was young, I did, I trusted. But now that I’m an adult and I see all the, and not the attacks, both sides attacking each other, I don’t trust either of them without going back and checking the facts of what the truth is because of how much they’ve just denigrated the offices.
And we don’t want to do that to the office of parenting to this, this really prestigious blessing. We have his parents to love and raise up a generation that loves God and will change the world they live in. We want to take it as sacred, as a sacred calling. And we want to make sure that we have many of our conflicts and disagreements behind closed doors. Now there are times we need to have them in front of the kids or they’ll never learn how to deal with conflict if we don’t. But we have to be careful because the kids will typically pick sides and then the play us against each other. So it’s kind of like showing your Marriage Counselor Edmond battle strategy to your enemy. Not that your kids are your enemy, but it’s like that. And then they have that to play against you and you don’t want to do that.
Your kids aren’t the enemy, but the devil who is the enemy will convince them to try to manipulate you. This is the way it goes to get their way to get what they want. They’re not thinking about the consequences to your marriage, to their family. They just thinking about, man, I want those brownies or may not want to. I know I got in trouble but I want to go out with my friends tonight. So that’s what they’re thinking about. The third practical step is to our fourth practical step is to model what you want to see, model what you want to see. So if you don’t want to see your kids and yelling at you and each other, then you most likely are gonna need to take a step back and evaluate how you’re speaking to them. Because if you get angry and you start throwing profanities out and you start elevating your voice and that’s your move, well then you should have no other expectation.
Then your kids are going to model your behavior. If you like to smoke a bunch of cigarettes or today, I guess in Oklahoma you can smoke weed. If you have a license, which anybody can get a license, it’s like a driver’s license, then they’re going to, you should have no other expectation than your kid’s gonna smoke weed because you modeled that and it, you should only expect them to do what you do. Now, I do think you should call your kids to something better than where you’re at. That if you want your kids to be as good as you, then you’re limiting what God can do because I want my kids to dominate me at every age of life, so they’re their ages now at 11 and 12 man, I want them to dominate. My kids are superior to me in almost every way at this age and I want them to keep doing that and I want them to be more in tuned adults, more adults that live authentically, more adults that are able to deal with fights and arguments in healthy and productive waves because they develop coping skills outside of fighting or yelling and screaming at each other.
And you are the model for that. You are the model for that. And I believe in you. I know you can do it. These are not my words. These are God’s. God gave you your kids. I didn’t. And so God gave you your kids because he knows when you turn to him, he will give you the skills and resources to be successful in parenting them in loving ways. Now there’s somebody out there. I know, I know you’re listening and you’re saying, yeah, this is all great, and if I had a parent or a s a spouse that was sane, then this would all be fantastic and it would work, Sean, it would totally work. The only problem is neither of those are true. My spouse, Mike, my husband doesn’t care about my kids or my wife is a lazy mom. She sits on the couch all day while I work.
I have both of these people in therapy, guys, it’s, it’s real. I do, and maybe you’re out there and you’re not in therapy and you’re in this kind of marriage and you’ve tried a lot of these techniques or maybe you’ve been to counseling. Now you’re not and you’re just frustrated. You quit because your spouse isn’t following through. Well without seeing you in person. I’m going to give you some pearls to put into your marriage that may start to sparkle eventually. Maybe these are become some diamonds that would be amazing. The first is pray. Prayer is the baseline. It’s a foundation of every move you need to make. You start with inviting God into the situation because he can change the heart of a man in the heart of a woman in a way that my words and your words and our actions and your actions never could, never can, never will.
So we pray, we invite him in. We do that specifically. We write down our prayers. Then we have prayers also that we just pray throughout the day. We invite other people to agree with this. We show them our list of what we’re praying for. Don’t make it 10 pages, make it something that is short enough to read in a minute or two. And now, I mean there’s variance, right? But I’m just, I don’t want you to feel burdened that you have to have this 4,800 list prayer that you can have at something that requires like one to two minutes and you go over that. In addition to praying throughout the day and invite somebody in with that list and you guys agree and then ask for their list. It’s great to have parents around, you know, moms hooking up with moms, dads hooking up with dads, connecting over how we can be the best parents for our children, for our families, for the generations that follow us.
It’s amazing what happens when you connect with other people that are going the same direction. Another one is ask if they’ll do devotionals with you. Ask if they’ll take a walk, ask if they’ll go to church, maybe join a community group or life group. Maybe you can join a church group Bible, study a class, take something about communication, find a way to connect through a hobby. And he’d say, what does this have to do with parenting? Go back to when you build relational equity. Then you have a lot more to spend when you disagree and people care about those that they have intimate connections with. And then remember your example. You can’t, I can’t, I can’t say enough about how powerful your example is. And I think that one of the ways that we lead by example is we, we show the behavior that we want to see in our spouse.
There’s a scripture, it’s first Peter Three. I’m going to skip to half of it. It says, um, in the same way you wives be submissive to your own husbands. Now before you flip out, if you go back and read another verse, it says, husbands, lay your lives down for your wives. Like Christ laid his life down for the church. I don’t like to really quote either of those scriptures without quoting both of those scriptures and it says submit yourselves one to another. That is another scripture. So I just want to throw all those scriptures in so we have context. So it says first Peter Three one and the same way you wives be submissive to your own husbands, that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won over without a word, by the behavior of their wives as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.
Boom, God is with you. He wants you to model the behavior that you want to see. He wants you to model the respect, the honor and the value. Now I would say don’t ignore and pretend your husband is better than he is that can get you in dangerous and bad situations. I’m not saying that at all. I am saying pray for him. If husbands pray for your wives. If she disagrees and she’s not following God and she’s, you know, going outside of bounds and she’s not serving your kids. You know, I have a dad right now that he has to take his kids to everything cause his wife’s tuned out. She doesn’t, she says she cares and she has the words, but our actions are absent and she’s always looking for the next pill. She’s always looking for the next thing. And from therapist to therapist to therapist.
And this dad’s taken him everywhere and he says, Sean, what do I do? I’ve done it all. I look at this guy and guys, it’s really rare for me to ever see a dude that is this connected to his kids, this connected to God and is really living it. And he’s not just talking it. And he is. And so what he’s done is he has developed a friendship network. He’s developed, he’s coaching his kid’s sports, he’s tuned into their lives, he’s taking them to church. And so whether she goes or not to the games, to the church, he is involved and he has full throttle in and God is blessing him. And his current of his house is so strong that she’s got a fight. She has to fight to not go to games. Now she has to fight to not go to church just because she’s fighting against God and a lot of it’s by his behavior and some of it’s by the boundaries that he’s verbally setting of, you know, I see that you’re getting upset, Da, that’s, I don’t really see that’s mine, but I love you and I care about you.
And so there’s a lot of scripts that we would add to this as well. If I were to see you in person, and then you may be at a place right now where you need to get outside help, you’ve gone too far too long. Things have gone too far off the rails and you’re in a situation where you need to go. You’ve talked to your pastor, you’ve talked to your friends, you’ve talked to your family, which often is not the right move, but sometimes it is and you’re not moving anywhere. You even read books. You’re listening to a podcast right now about parenting, but you’re the one that needs to go and you need to call therapists and get help. Here’s the great news. You can go see us New Vision counseling that live. We have a team of counselors that marry biblical principles with cutting edge counseling techniques to join you in your story and we would love to help you and serve you, but the step is yours to take.
Don’t wait guys, gals, look, your kids, your marriage, your families are too far too important to let these disagreements continue to hurt your marriage and your kids. They’re too costly. They’re too costly. I could tell you if you are in my chair for a day and you heard the tragedy of what happens when parents constantly fight or have big fights in front of their kids or don’t agree when the kids are in the middle being pulled in various directions, it’s very costly to your kids. Well, I’m glad that you listened. I hope this was really helpful because on this four part series we talked about parenting difference between men and women and what to do about it, how to value each other through our parenting. We talked about how we all need to take care of ourselves so we can give our kids our best in our spouse, our best in parenting.
We need to do that partially through knowing who we are, what we need, and then getting to know our spouse for who they are, how we need to talk to them, appreciating differences, the differences in valuing the differences that we have in our parenting styles. Whether you’re strict, whether you’re grace failed, whether the whatever that may be authoritative or not, that you’re going to appreciate and learn to value the spouse that God gave you and the one that is the parent to your kids as well. And remember, move towards becoming God’s best for tomorrow. So make the goal in unity, not victory over your spouse because it’ll be defeat with your family. So instead of making the goal victory over your spouse, that creates defeat in your family. Make the goal victory. And unity in your marriage, which creates a family that’s blessed by God.
This I hope was amazingly helpful to you. I love talking about parenting. I could talk about it. So many different topics related to it because I just love and adore my kids and my family and I’m sure that you do too. That’s why you’re listening, because you want to do better and give you a way to reach out. New Vision, counseling.live. That’s division counseling, that L. I. V e, and it really means a lot to me. If you could rate us on iTunes, that gets the word out of what we’re doing and how you don’t have to just stay the way you are, that God wants to change you. God wants to change you and he can and he will. All they need to do is reach out. You could be reaching out and calling us. He was in counseling dot. L. I. V. E. And or it could be reaching out to a friend, but do that today because remember your life gets better when you make one good decision at a time.