Why Is My Teen So Difficult To Connect With?

did you know that I had poison oak? I was actually suffering badly, And they're like, you said it on your podcast last week, so thank you. Sometimes I forget what I say. It means the world that you guys listen and care and come back a week after week. Uh, put the poison ivy or oak, I should say, is better. It's now it's all on my arm four under my right arm, and that's new. It was all over my

side on my left ribcage and horrible. Actually, never I've been in the woods my whole life, I've never had poison oak until now, and it was it crushed me. I cut some seater and it had a little bit of I remember seeing it. It was really bright and vivid, and I remember seeing that vine inside the seater that I cut, and I remember thinking, oh, that's it's actually

really pretty. The leaves were really red and pretty, and it got me and my brother Parker had poison ivy ironically earlier this year, and so he had a prescription cream. That's the only thing that's gotten to be better. So anyway, thank you guys. I mentioned it last podcast, and it was kind of shocked that I went to Pennsylvania and people remember that. I love that you guys listen and come back each week. If you want to ask me a question, email podcast at grangersmith dot com. Podcast at

grangersmith dot com. It does not have to be any kind of certain subject. It seems like the past probably six to eight months, there's a lot of these theological questions and it doesn't have to be that. So if you if you tun tune into this podcast and you say Granger answers all these theological God questions, Hey, I'm just answering questions that you send, so we could talk about whatever you want and we'll walk through it. We've

been doing this now, y'all going on eight years. Can you believe that in this podcast going on eight years? I can't even believe that. I can't that I can't believe that we could even see the horizon of a decade. That's crazy to me. The first question comes from James as we get into this, and I like to say, James, I want you guys to ask a question like we're just sitting in the cab of a truck and something

comes up because something's on your mind. We got the windows down and you say, hey, man, could I kind of run something by it? That's that's the format of this podcast. James says, Hi, Grande, I work a full time job. I coach my son's Little league team. My wife and I are trying to start a small business on the side. I feel like I'm constantly running from one thing to the next, and I don't have time to breathe. How do you balance work, family, personal time

without feeling like you're always dropping the ball. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again for being a good role model, James, James, thank you, brother. Appreciate the email and the trust with a question like this, and certainly, man, it's it's everyone listening thinks to themselves. Yeah, busy. It's funny in the most hectic days of touring with the

band would be a city after city after city. You kind of start every every city just starts to look the same, especially in the summers when we do these fairs,

and every fair ground starts to look the same. So you're like in Ohio, and then you're you're in Michigan, and then you're in Illinois, and then you're in Indiana, and it's they all it's like a a some kind of dirt track and grandstands and ferris wheels and everything behind that, and you could smell the same foods, and it starts to all blend in together, and you a lot of times would be playing with these other bands and the buses would pull in in the night time

and we would all be sleeping, and you wake up the next morning and catering would have breakfast and we would come out of the bus and you know, you're looking for coffee, and then the right across, you know, in the parking spot next to you is another bus and that door is opening and a guy's coming off looking for coffee, and and you haven't seen him in you know, eight months or since whenever last show you played,

and hey, how's it going right there? Right there there's this moment how's it going when the other guy would say busy, and then he looks at you and he goes, how about you guys, and you go busy? And I thought about that so much. Always laughed to myself because I thought, I thought, what if my answer was I'm not that busy. Because if it is, what you're communicating is work is not going good. Things are not going well in the music business. That's what that answer would communicate,

not that busy. So we associate busy with work is good because you usually would say something like it's busy, you know, but it's good. But man, just crazy right now? Crazy, And then you'd say, yeah, but us too, Man, how about you guys? Us to say, where'd you guys come from? Dude, I don't even remember Detroit? Maybe how about you Springfield? I think, yeah, oh, crazy, crazy, busy. So it's just like this badge of honor. Maybe this is an American thing.

I don't think I've talked to too many people worldwide about this, but I feel like it's probably an American thing. We just take so much pride in being busy and there's almost no way out of it. In fact, you have to really fight to find space, and if you do find space, you're gonna fill it with something like James says here with if you have time. For instance, this is what James is thinking, putting words in his mouth.

He's thinking that I have extra time, I should coach my son's little league team, and then there goes the time. And then if you have a little time because you're not coaching, you say, hey, we should start this small business thing, and then there goes that time. So, like he says, I'm constantly running from one thing to the next, and I don't have time to breathe. He's James coming out of the tour bus looking for coffee, saying busy.

And he's not necessairly complaining. But that's why. I mean, everyone's listening right now going yeah, I got it, especially this time of year. If you're listening to this podcast in real time, it is December, and this time of year, everyone is just busy. In fact, dear brother of mine, his son has a piano recital tonight and he's been asking me to go, and I'm like, I really want to go, because especially if he asked me multiple times, I know it's important to him. And so it's that therefore,

it's important to me to be there. And yet Lincoln has a basketball game tonight, and so I'm texting him like, Hey, if we go to this basketball game and still make it, can we make it to your house at eight even though the recital starts at seven fifteen? Would anyone still be there? And he replies and goes, bro, I understand everyone's busy this time of year, and he knows it's not just this time of year, it's all the time.

That's what we do. So the question from James is how do you balance work, family, and personal time without feeling like you're always dropping the ball. It's actually interesting that he uses that analogy. I've heard it said before like this, that life and managing time could be looked at as juggling. So you're juggling these balls, right, But what we have to understand is that there has to be priority in the balls that we're juggling. So in

order to establish that priority, think of that. Think of these juggling balls as some of them are rubber and some of them are glass. You don't want to drop the glass ones the rubber ones. It's okay, it's okay. To drop them, they will bounce, nothing breaks. It's okay. For instance, this piano recital, my friend's piano recital. Although it's important, it's a rubber ball that if I drop it, it's going to bounce. He's not going to get his feelings hurt and we're going to be okay as a family.

That doesn't mean it's not important. You know why it's important because I'm juggling it. It's in the balls that I'm juggling. If it wasn't important, if it didn't matter to me, it wouldn't be in the five or six things that I'm thinking about doing today tonight as I record this podcast right now, there's five or six things I need to get done today tonight, so that that includes the rubber balls that are still important. Don't get

me wrong. It's it's important. It's important to him, and it's important to me that we come to his son's piano recital because I'm his brother and he's my brother in Christ, he's a member at our church. So differentiating the glass balls and the rubber ones, that's what you

got to do. So making sure that if my daughter is going through something and she's not right now by the way, but if she was going through some kind of drama at school, there's something happened or something happened in her friend group and it really hurt her spirit and she needs her dad. That is a ball that

I'm juggling, that is glass. If I trade that glass one for a rubber one and say the rubber one is a friend is having to get together for a Christmas party at his house, This is hypothetical, and it's about a thirty minute drive and there's a lot of people going and it'd be kind of fun. But it's a rubber ball. The glass one is London who's having the problem. I cannot drop that one that hurts the family, that could actually do damage dropping the rubber one that bounces.

It's fine. No one thinks about it. We need to know the difference when we're juggling, and once again, everything we're juggling is important. So I can't answer for you specifically, James, but you get the full time job, you're coaching your son's little league, your wife and I are trying to start a small business on the side. It's up to you to figure out what is glass and what is rubber.

And I'm assuming that the full time job is what is supporting everything else in this little circle right here. So because of the full time job, your son needs to play in a little league team and you get to coach him. Because of the full time job, you get to take time to start this small business with your wife. If you take the small time, the small the full time job out of the juggling, all the other balls drop, regardless of rubber or glass. So recognize

that too. Recognize that if there's seven balls you're juggling, which one of those, If you took it out, all the balls drop. That's an important thing. So these are things that you're gonna have to figure out, and you're gonna have to figure out what gives How do you balance work, family, personal time without feeling like you're always dropping a ball? Recognize if you did drop a ball, if more of them drop, and then recognize if you drop this one and it's rubber, all the other ones

that keep on juggling and nothing changes. Start to recognize those, right, So think through these things. Thankfully you didn't give me a scenario like I'm trying to work through a full time job and a small business and sharing a family meal together, or attending church together. You're like, you didn't give me that, or I would go, man, you gotta you gotta find a way to have these family meals together.

If it's starting the small business interferes with that every single time, then you have to push that to the side. You have to kick that can down the road a little bit. On the son's little league team. This is this is something we all of us need to constantly be thinking through kid's hobbies because most people that are my age are older can think back and go, man, I had some hobbies as a kid, but if I did, mom and dad just dropped me off and said pick

you up at seven. You know, it's not like that. Today. Today, our kids, our kids hobbies become the adults hobbies. And it's never been like that in history. The kid's hobbies have never been also the adult hobbies. Meaning whatever the kid's doing, the parents are now suddenly that's that, that's their whole world. Notice I didn't say that we shouldn't care about our kids, or love what our kids love,

or be involved. I don't mean that. I just mean I remember when I had a little league team, Dad would just pick me up when it was, and so were all the other All the other boys would just get picked up when it was time to get picked up. So sometimes, to finish this whole thought, sometimes we have to learn how to say no, because, like aunt Man said on this podcast several months ago, every time you say yes to something, you are always saying no to

something else. Learn how to say no from the beginning. Next question comes from anonymous. Hey Granger, I'm eighteen, still in high school. I'm a Christian. What are your thoughts on dating someone from a different religion? I am currently a little bit puzzled on this. You have a great day, all right, Anonymous, thanks for the question, buddy, your thoughts. He's asking my thoughts on dating someone from a different religion.

I would first, I would say, if you weren't asking me, if you're just asking in general, I would say that wholly depends on what your idea of religion is, right, Because if if your idea of religion is an NFL team that you just really you're really into it, and you're thinking about dating a girl that loves the New York Giants and you love the Dallas Cowboys, I would say you're gonna be okay. You're gonna have a lot of rivalry in your family, but you're gonna be okay.

But if you're asking me and my thoughts on what I know you're talking about, and you're talking about Christianity versus then I would say the unpopular answer then that is it would be absolutely devastating if you were a Christian and believed in the Bible, then it would be absolutely incompatible to be married to someone that didn't believe that. And to date is to be preparing for marriage or to be getting ready to marry. You're you're dating to marry.

You should say that way. You're dating someone so that you could find someone to marry. I wouldn't believe or advocate for like sport dating or just dating for the fun of it, or just dating as a social habit or something. I would say you would be dating to find a spouse. I think most people would agree with that. You would only really date, otherwise you would just be single. We wouldn't put up with the hassle of just dating knowing that it was always going to be temporary. So

you're dating for the permanent conclusion of marriage. And if that's the case and the person was a different religion and you were a Christian, it would be totally incompatible with your faith, and it would just make a nightmare of problems in the future of I attend church and she doesn't, and the kid you know is raised with this faith and she doesn't agree, and then eventually he

wants to get baptized or she doesn't want that. It's an endless nightmare, especially when you're talking about kids coming

into the picture. So I would say, I would say, yeah, my thoughts are absolutely not and I would double down on what I've said many times on this podcast, and that is that this idea we get stuck in our heads that there is one person and one person only, and that person's our soulmate, and we find them and although they have these certain flaws that could be huge problems, very incompatible with with a married couple, we say that doesn't matter, no flaw matters, because this person's my soulmate.

And then we we end up with these huge problems and the reality is there is no soulmate. This is this is kind of just a romantic, made up idea when in reality, you find someone that you're you're widely attracted to, and you have a healthy amount in common, and I would say a healthy amount not in common. And you have the fundamentals right, like you worship the

same God. And then at that point you make a decision, you say, I'm gonna I decide that I'm going to commit to her, and I'm going to do it forever. I'm gonna well, as long as I'm on this earth, as long as I'm breathing oxygen, I'm going to commit to her. That's that's really what it is. And it sounds so old timey and and it sounds kind of like a crude system because we believe in this, you know,

fairy dust soulmate thing, and it's not true. So if you find someone that doesn't, that doesn't meet the fundamental fundamental characteristics that you need, like worshiping a god that you worship, then you would break this idea of soulmate and go. Even though I am attracted, I do have a lot of things in common, I'm not going to pursue this any further. That's it. When you think about brands that are doing really well like All Birds Skims, Sure,

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upgrade your selling today shopify dot com slash granger. And if you want to get a hold of me or have me make you a video message from my phone, as I always say every podcast, go to cameo dot com slash dranger Smith cameo dot com slash granger Smith. I will make you a video message custom to however you want me to say it. This is great for

the holiday season. You got someone that you need a gift for, or maybe you don't know what to get them, or it's just too late, go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith and I'll make you a personal video message to them, say Merry Christmas or happy Birthday, whatever it might be, and a little message from me. It's super easy. Go to cameo dot com slash Grangersmith. Okay, once again, if you want to email me a question, email podcast at grangersmith dot com. A man, We'll take

your question. Put it into the cue. The next one is Melissa, and Melissa asked this. My fourteen year old daughter has been really distant lately and I don't know how to connect with her. She's moody, spends all of her time on her phone. She doesn't want to talk to me like she used to. Do you have any advice for a parent trying to navigate the teen years. I don't want to push her away further, but I also don't want to just give up on having a

relationship with her. Thanks for your insight, Melissa. Hey, thanks Melissa, A great question. I think a lot of people could be interested in something like this, including myself. Navigating a teen is something It requires a lot of thought and a lot of effort, and that goes against kind of our natural state that we kind of just want things to operate without really interfering too much. We want things to be easy for us because everything else is hard.

You know, work is hard, the bills are coming in, relationships with everyone else, it's hard. Friendships are hard, relationships with our spouse can be hard. All these things weigh in on us, and we just think, could our kids just be easy? But in fact our kids end up being the most difficult thing out of all of these scenarios.

And so we have a tendency, in my mind, a wrong tendency to kind of just pacify our relationship with our kids in ways that kind of shuts them up and makes it go away with the little ones that could be giving them a screen. Okay, you're driving me crazy right now. Just let me type in a YouTube thing for you and you just watch on loop. You just watch YouTube videos endlessly because I know that's probably

not good for your little brain. But at least you just shut up and stop bothering me, because I've got all these other things going on, and with a specifically a fourteen year old daughter that's not necessarily you typing is something in YouTube and letting her go that's more more so you just let her do her thing. So and once again you're thinking, I don't think this is probably not wise of me to just let her do

whatever she wants to do. But when I just let her go, she's quiet, she doesn't need anything, there's no drama. I don't hear from her, and I could actually relax after a hard day of work, or I don't have to think about, you know, finding something for her to do, or finding a chore for her to do, or entertaining her or cultivating some kind of thing that she needs to be working on. Instead, I just let her go. So that's kind of a default for parents. The default

is let the team go. But here's what happens. They disappear, they come. Once they become distant, they only become more and more distant. They don't on their own, they don't become distant and then slowly start coming back in on their own and when the distance happens, the connection is lost. So that's what Melissa is saying. I don't know how to connect with her, and that's a product of the distance,

and then another product. Then furthermore, she's moody, spends all her time on her phone, doesn't want to talk to me. So that just continues to grow. So let her go, let her do her own thing. The connection's lost. When the connection's lost, she doesn't want to talk because it's awkward. At that point, there's no more connection, and then it kind of spins out of control, and once again the easiest part of the pattern for the parent and the team,

the easiest thing is just let it go. Hopefully she'll just come back one day and we'll find some things that we don't have anything in common right now. Maybe one day will regain some ground, but right now she's kind of gone. So you know all this because this is what you're living. But you're asking for advice to not push her away further, but reconnect and not give up on having a relationship. So first of all, this

kind of goes back to the juggling. The juggling question It's interesting how that kind of relates exactly to this question with Melissa. This is a glass ball. Your daughter, your fourteen year old daughter is a glass ball. You're juggling a lot of things, and there's rubber balls and glass balls, and she is a glass ball. Do not drop her. It shatters and when it shatters, it is

near impossible to put it back together. So what I've learned and what I've seen, not only with our team but in talking with other parents, some things have been really helpful. Ambernized journey and one of those was sometimes we have to recognize when a team kind of disappears and becomes distant. Sometimes that just has to do with something that's not it's not personal. It just has to

do with the current rhythm that they're in. And it would be the equivalent I guess of if someone came to my house every day about First of all, I'm an early I'm a morning guy. I'm not an I'm not an evening guy. So someone came to my house every day about ten thirty PM and they left at eleven, they would probably after a couple weeks of seeing me, they would be like, man Granger is just I don't know. He seems kind of off. He seems kind of distant. He seems kind of quick with his answers. He's not

he doesn't seem as compassionate. I don't know if I don't know if he's eating very much. I haven't seen him eat. He seems tired. I don't think he's getting enough sleep. And if you think about it, how silly that is. The reality is, that's just the end of my day. You know, ten thirty to eleven, I don't function very well. I'm just barely getting by, And so you would make that assumption if that's all you saw. So sometimes that's what's happening with the teen they're just

on a different rhythm. A good friend of ours had a great solution to this, and she said, with her teen son, she said, he seemed distant, he seemed to be kind of in his own world, and we were losing connection. He wasn't eating, and I missed the conversations that I had when he was a little boy. Even ten, eleven, twelve years old is so different in the conversations you could have with a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year old like

a different planet. But what she realized was he was on a different rhythm, and so she had to make an effort to change her rhythm. So she started staying up later, even though she didn't want to and it didn't work well with her schedule. In order to not drop the glass ball, she started staying up later with him and noticing that he would come alive about ten thirty at night, eleven o'clock at night, when she was just exhausted. That's when he would start to come to life.

That's when he would have conversations. That's when he would open up. That's when he would talk about his day, talk about his relationships, the friends he had, the girls

he might have been interested in. And then she learned she could cook him a meal at eleven o'clock at night, which sounds crazy, but she learned that because of the rhythm, the difference in the rhythm, that she could like make him a grilled cheese sandwich and come in there with him and they would sit together and have these discussions and he would eat the grill cheese sandwich, and because of that, the connection came back and it started to grow,

and the distance started to close. She just recognized he was just going through a season obviously a short season. People don't. Teens are different. They're different creatures, you know, and they don't stay like that forever. They will eventually go back to a normal rhythm. But she realized and I see the same thing with London, and I have to fight that because she comes home from school and she has her her routine, you know, sure she's got her homework routine and the things that she that she

needs to get done. She does the chores around around a little farm here, and she kind of she doesn't eat a lot of dinner, and she might have some kind of you know, volleyball or something. And then at about nine o'clock, I'm like wrapping up the day. I'm by nine o'clock, I'm wrapping up my day. I'm I'm I'm getting ready to get rid of the kids. And this is me and Ambers time. But now this is when London is like coming alive. So she goes in her room and she does her reading, or she likes

to take a long bath. I mean, I don't know how she where she gets that from, but she'll take an hour long bath and just sitting there like listen to a podcast, and she's alive. At ten o'clock at night, and I've noticed that if I go, then, if I pursue her, then during this time she'll tell me every

She'll me, she'll talk about her whole day. She'll she'll unpack all the problems of the world, and she'll tell me the things she's interested in, and the things she likes, and the things she wants in her future, the hobbies that she's into, or the problem she's having with a friend at school, or all these things. And I get she comes alive then, and I'm thinking, my flash is saying, I'm so tired, I just want to go to bed,

you know. But I'm also learning, especially with her, that I'm not going to fix her problems at ten o'clock at night, and she doesn't want me to. Instead, she wants me to just listen. There was this moment I had with London a while back, six months ago or so, and she was having this issue with a friend, this drama with a friend, and I'm telling her, I said, well, let's don't be friends with her anymore. She's like, no, Daddy,

and I'm like, we'll avoid her at school. No, that's not I'm like, okay, then let's call her right now, let's try to reconcile some of these problems. No, I don't want to do that. So I learned she doesn't want me to fix it. She doesn't want me to give her a suggestion on how this gets resolved. She

just wants me to listen to her. So I kind of got into this pattern with her starting that night, and I think I really unlocked something, but I instead I just laid there and you know, right next to her on the couch, and I was like, how does that make you feel? And she'd be like, it makes me feel terrible, and you know, all this stuff. She would unpack this stuff and I would say, it's got to be really tough. She would say, yes, it is. It is really tough because I'm dealing with this and

I'm trying to figure out this. And then I would say tell me more, and she said, well, there is there is something else and blah blah blah. And I would say, how does that make you feel? So I just kind of repeated those the little mantra, how does that make you feel? That's got to be tough, tell me more in whatever order. I would say those three things, and somehow we got this connection and the next day she was like, Daddy, thanks for last night. That was

I really feel a lot better about everything. And I'm thinking, in my mind, I'm thinking I didn't do anything, we didn't fix anything, nothing's resolved. But in her mind, that's what she wanted. She just wanted to talk it through. That's something that literally in my mind as I was on the couch and I was saying these things, I'm I'm thinking, I'm so tired right now, and in my mind, I'm thinking I don't care about this petty problem, and

what a what a horrible thing for me to think. Now, I'm not going to not deny that that was happening to me. I was thinking, I'm tired, I don't care. This is the stupid problem. We could solve it with one phone call or just avoid this person. Well, that's that wouldn't be a good father, and that's not what she wanted, and that wouldn't have been helpful. So I have to I have to deny that part of me. I say, I have to put that part of me to rest and go out of my comfort zone in

order to pursue her. So Melissa, that's I don't know what you can get out of that. But you have to be creative. You have to deny your own sensibilities and go out of your comfort zone to bring her back in, and that connection will come back and the distance will close. Let's go to another question. Another anonymous actually says, Hey, Granger, I prefer to stay anonymous. I've been listening for a couple of years now, and I always look forward to hearing your perspective and your advice.

I'm seeking advice now on how to handle a family member who is short and quick to anger with my very young children. They are an in law, quote with no blood relation to my husband or me. They state that they are a believer. They are generally irritable and quick to anger if things don't go according to their plan. I feel as though I should confront their behavior, especially in regards to my children, but honestly, I don't know

how to do so lovingly. I know it's better to suffer for doing what is right than to suffer for what is wrong. But I'm seeking advice on how Thanks all right, Anonymous, A good question, and thank you so

much for opening up with this. Here's what's interesting. I don't want to take anything out of context, especially in the Bible, And so I don't want us to think that the Bible is saying it's better to suffer for what is right and then suffer for doing wrong, and that includes watching our children get berated by this family member. Like that's not that would be way out of context, and that would be way outside of what we should be thinking. So I don't know the scenario of what

short and quick to anger is with your children. Being short with your children no problem, but being angry with your children, that's an interesting thing. I would want to know more about why this family member is angry with your children. And maybe that's not what you meant, but that's kind of what it sounds like. I'm seeking advice on how to handle a family member who was short and quick to anger with my very young children, Anonymous says,

And they're in law with no blood relation. I don't think that matters as much no blood relation to your husband. If they're in the family by marriage. I know it's difficult, but I wouldn't prioritize if they were blood it would be different, you know, I wouldn't say that. So I think we're kind of okay either way there. And then the fact that they say they're a believer. I think you mean they're a Christian. I don't think that matters either.

I get where you're going. You're saying that a Christian should have fruit of this by being slow to anger and quick to listen. I know you're thinking that, but this is probably not a time. Doesn't sound like you guys have the kind of a relationship where this is something you're going to discuss in detail. So you say they are genuinely irritable and quick to anger if things don't go according to their plan. All this is fine, All this is normal. I would take out the context

of suffering for doing what's right. I don't think you're being persecuted, and that's what that text would mean, that you're going to suffer for what's right. And this doesn't sound like persecution by any means that we would ever know in the life of the church over the years or in the world. So I don't want to overdramatize.

I think we could sometimes over dramatize things by using biblical terms and saying things like, you know, I've got this family member that's kind of like gets really irritated if they don't get their way, but you know, I'm just gonna suffer through this because you know, it's better to suffer for what is right. It's like, ah, don't you're not a martyr, Like you're not like the government's

not about to chop off your head. So I think that really, if we don't mention love in this answer, love is at the core of all this, and the best thing you can do is love them and the action that you're wanting from them, give that to them. So if you're wanting someone to be slow to listen and or quick to listen and slow to anger, if

that's what you're wanting, then do that to them. Make sure that you're looking at yourself first and acting that way towards them, And that might not just change them right away, but but it certainly puts you in the right heart position so that you're not playing defense, you're playing offense here. But what I also want to address is, don't it wouldn't be okay if someone was angry with your young children and you're just letting it go and passing it off as this is. You know, I'm just

going to suffer for this because they're family. It's totally fine. Absolutely fine to be during a time of good terms. You know, like you wouldn't want to just like you wouldn't want to discipline a child when you're angry. You wouldn't want to correct someone when you're you know, you're in the heat of the moment. So instead, not in the heat of the moment, wait till you have cooled your jets. And I think there's nothing wrong with pulling

this person aside. At some point, you're taking a walk, you're you're both sitting in the backyard, You're both you know, in a lawn chair watching you know, the sprinklers, and you say, you mind if I tell you something? Yeah, yeah, what's up? Man? I don't want to. I don't want to cause a rift between us. But sometimes I see you get angry with my children, and I worry about that, not because I think you're gonna do any harm to them, but I kind of worry if if that's communicated wrong

to them. And I want I want them to see you as the uncle, uh that they love, that they love being around. And sometimes when you're you're you snap at them and you're they don't understand. They're just they're two and four. They they don't always understand uh you you want things a certain way, and so I I feel like when you snap at them like that, it kind of gives them the wrong impression of the uncle that they love. Is there anything I could be doing that?

Is there is there behavior things with them that that I could be working on just to make this a little bit better when when we're together as a family. I don't think there's if you presented that, especially if you said is there anything I could be doing? I don't think there's there's much of an argument that they could make by saying that they demanding that you discipline your your children differently, or I think it's either going

to go one or two ways. Either gonna go They're gonna say, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm just not good with children. I'm better with teenagers, or I'm better with adults, but I'm not good with young children. It's it irritates me, and that's that's on me. I'm sorry, I'm gonna work

on that. They could go that way, or it could it could go the opposite, and they could they could say, look, I just I think your kids are are not well mannered, or I don't think your kids are disciplined enough, or you know, it could go that way too, but either way, at least the conversation is now on the table, and I promise you they're going to think about it the

next time and don't answer them in anger. But it would be wrong, I think if you didn't at least bring it up, especially if they were angry with your children, and if they got to the point where they're yelling or any or especially if they touched them physically and grabbed them, you know, grab their arms or something. By all means, at that point you step in and you hey, uncle,

I love you, but I will discipline the kids. Okay, let me let me handle this, and you go back to your you know, mahito, and I'll deal with the kids. I hope that provides enough of an answer, Anonymous, because I don't know enough about the scenario to give you any more. But I think the core of the answer is love. It's love, in fact, that's the core of this. Ending this conclusion, I love you guys. Thanks for emailing, and we'll see you next podcast. Thanks for joining me

on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Hit that little like button and notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video. YI