Welcome to this episode of, I don't know Jack about parenting, where I'm going to tell you why your kids don't listen to a word you say.

I'm just going to use an extreme scenario

Welcome back to this episode of, I don't know, Jack, about parenting, where I'm going to tell you why your kids don't listen to a word you say unless you're actions are in alignment with the words that you say. You know, there was a long time ago where parents would say, do what I say because I said to do it, or it was don't do is I do do, as I say in children are really good at observing and watching what we're doing and good and bad. So if, and I'm just going to use an extreme scenario here, uh, and maybe it's not so extreme because there's people on that are going to listen to this podcast who are smokers. I don't happen to be a smoker, but you know, we know that this is not good for us. Most people when they become parents, they're focus is who are smokers.

A lot of times they'll be like, hey, I want to quit smoking or quit smoking for my kids. I want to be a better example, but we know that is such a tough, um, addiction to overcome that have a, of nicotine. But kids will at some point and be like, well, why do you do it? And you could explain to them that, uh, you know, it, it's been difficult and you wanted to quit and you didn't want to get started. But their natural curiosity maybe to try to smoke. They may steal a pack of cigarettes one day or at least one cigarette and they're gonna try to do it because kids mimic what we do. One of the things that I'm not so proud of, I think most parents are not perfect, although I wish I was right, but we're just not perfect. One of the things that I'm the person closest to us typically is the person I could get under our skin the quickest.

That's not the way we treat each other

The person I love most on this planet is my wife, but she is the quickest to get under my skin and sometimes, uh, I will have a short fuse and I will respond back. I don't like to think I'm a yeller or a screamer, but maybe I shoot back really fast and not the best way am I catch my son, my seven year old son doing the same thing to me and to his mom. And I look at it and I'm like, that's my behavior. If it bothers me, I need to change my behavior and it's hard for me to reprimand him. Why? Because I know he got it from me. So I will say to him, listen, that's not the way we treat each other in his house. And I know you may have seen daddy do that to mommy or even to you at times, but I apologize for that. That's not the behavior that I want you to mimic so they don't listen to us, especially if we're telling them to do things that we don't do ourselves. So it's in our best interest as parents to be very conscious of what we're doing. Now this comes on a good level two. I want to share with you two stories, one from each child.

Again, you guys know I have a seven year old and at this point a 16 month old. The seven year old has been working on a book, and if you don't know by now or this is the first time, listen to my podcast. I am the bestselling author of the book. Be The dad you wish you had. Now he's watched me promote this book. You've watched me talk about this book. He's watched me sell this book. He, he's, he's seen me give this book away to large masses of people and he's impressed by the fact that daddy has created a book and Daddy's making money. Off The book, he thinks this is like the most awesome thing, so unbeknownst to me for a few chapters, my son was writing a book and he was writing a book with his best friend. I thought I was going to bring the book here so I can show, but it's called Cristian and Jackson and their adventures written by Cristian and Jackson.

I want to sell it

Now the cool thing about this is he's the author. My son's the author, Cristian and his friend Jackson is the illustrator and Cristian would write the page and Jackson would get the page and he would get to depict whatever Cristian rope. Now they got 10 levels, not chapters because they both liked video games and then he came to me when it was all complete, super proud. This is guys, just so you know, I mean a kid writing a 10 page book at eight Slash Seven is quite the chore. They got together a couple times outside of the school just to work on the book and it took them several weeks to complete this and he says, Dad, we need to make copies. I want to sell it. I said, how much are you selling the book for? He says, $10. I said, fantastic. Good thing you got to grandmothers. That's 20 bucks right there, but they wrote this book and I, after we got it and we kind of stapled it and made it look more like a book and sense, I've made more copies for himself. I said, well, what was it that prompted you to write a book? He said, dad, you wrote a book. I wanted to write a book to see they mimic what we do, so if you want your kids to be entrepreneurial, you know they want to be like us. 

They want to be like their parents. They want to do what their parents do. They love us unconditionally for quite awhile. I, I hope always, but they love us so much. They want to be like us and the only thing they knew no is what we introduced them to. So if you want them to be something, introduced them to it, but introduce it to them in a way that they want to receive it and that is with joy. He knew how much I enjoyed writing the book. He kept saying, why are you writing a book? I said, you know, that he didn't have a dad growing up and he had to work. Really? He has to work really hard to try and make sure that I'm doing a good job so that you don't miss out on things that I missed out on, that he works really hard at trying to be a good daddy, so I think I've done a pretty good job so far and I want to share with other dads so that other kids have awesome dads themselves.

So he wrote his own book

Don't you want that to help other dads or other kids have dads that are awesome. He's like, yeah, doesn't everybody have an awesome dad? Unfortunately, no. We don't all know how to be dads. It didn't come with a manual, so daddy's created the best thing. So he wrote his own book with his friend and it's out for distribution. If anybody's interested, just go to www dot... Just kidding. It may be out for distribution by the time this hits.

So here's the thing. I also have a 16 month old and I have been on a fairly strict diet for the better part of the last seven months and I'm on a strict diet in children. Babies in particular can't eat a lot of the processed foods that we have and I'm not eating any of those process foods. My little one pretty much could eat anything off of my plate. It does he ever, but here's the thing. He eats all of these crazy vegetables. He eats Broccoli, spinach, squash, Zucchini. When I make oatmeal in the morning with fresh berries, no sugar, a fresh berries, maybe bananas, a, maybe a little bit of cinnamon in there, apples, pears, whatever. I decided to put my old mail.

I'm thinking to myself

He gets to eat it and he loves all of it. I made a dish the other day called doll. It's an Indian dish and it's basically lentils with a ton of vegetables. Again, tomatoes, spinach, elegance, a little bit of seasoning with cumin and Tumeric, but any vegetables in there. I ended up putting some, some against some garlic mushrooms, so and then it turns into almost like a porridge. So I'm thinking to myself, I don't know if he's going to like this, he wouldn't stop eating it out of my plate and somebody will say to me two or three or four years from now, like how do you get him to eat his vegetables and what I'm going to say to people is, you know, we've always eaten vegetables in the house.

He's been eating vegetables off of my plate since he was six months old. So. But if there are no vegetables in the house and he was never introduced to vegetables and your kids are never introduced the vegetables and then they go off to school one day and they're like, what's that green stuff on here? I already eat green stuff. Don't be shocked when you have some resistance. One last thing I'll share in regards to this particular thing, kids mimicking you, like I don't know anything about parenting guys. I know Jack about it. That's why I'm making this. But I, I, I do understand some human behaviors. I do understand that kids are going to mimic what we do. You mimicked what your parents did. I mimic what my parents did and you hopefully want to behave in a way that your kids will mimic your behavior. It make you proud, and if they're not doing that, we have to look inward and say, how can my behavior change so that my child can mimic it?

You can answer the question

So I went to the dentist to the other day, a seven year old, his two front teeth are a completely in, but yet one of them was loose. Huge concern for us. Right. How can your adult teeth that you've had for less than six months being the one loose already? Did he knock it? Did he this, did that. One of the questions as he's going through, he's about to get a cleaning and all this other stuff. While he's there, the dentist starts asking questions and he's like, you know, when you want something to drink, what do you drink? And he looks and he says water. She says, what else? He's like, milk, and he like looks at me. I said, you can answer the question. She's like, well, when you really want something, what do you want? And he looks at her and he says, water. And I said to her, just so you know, that's pretty much the Goto I'll let you know because you're the dentist and he's maybe had a total of one soda his entire life because every time he asked for when he takes a sip, it's too sweet, but I don't want to deny it to him so I continue to let him try it.

But he typically says, can I have a water tis choice Gatorade, the occasional Gatorade. He maybe have one or two in the winter, but in the summer if he's out playing soccer and doing things, we will get them a Gatorade or powerade some for that. But for the most part it is water. She like looked at me, she's like, so what do you like to snack on? What are your favorite snacks? And he's like, ah, like cheese. She's like, yeah, but you know, some more kid likes snacks. And she's like, do you like potato chips? He's like, no. Do you like pretzels? No, we don't have these things in abundance in the house. Where I did answer him an answer for him. I said, listen, he is a kid. He's a well behaved kid after dinner every night he does get dessert. What do you like for dessert? He's like, oh, I like little bites, little plug here for Edmund's little bites,but uh, uh, my son loves him.

We like to bake at least once a week

He likes chocolate chip ones or the Brownie ones and hence the only other two things he really goes towards a for dessert is homemade brownies or homemade cookies. We like to bake at least once a week and that's it. He'll have a cookie. He's done satisfy a sweet tooth.

He mimics the behavior. My wife doesn't have a sweet tooth. I do, but I don't go overboard as I've tended to my diet. He actually offered the other day, dad, hey, do you want the rest of my Brownie? I don't feel like it. And I said, no, he's, Oh, you're on your diet right now. I'm sorry dad. No problem. Cristian, I appreciate you wanting to share with me number one. And more importantly, I appreciate you recognize that daddy is being strict on his diet here for the first few weeks of the year. They're going to mimic the behavior that you have. So make sure you're behaving the way you want them to behave. We'll see in the next episode,