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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Parenting Podcast (formerly The Horsemanship Journey podcast). My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today.
Talking about horses and humans like we do, specifically teens today and teens and parents. And as far as that goes, what we want to talk about today, the subject is, is how to help your teens, how to help your kids make friends.
So, you know, I don't know if you know this, but if you've been a listener for long or not, but I, we got into The Horsemanship Journey into Stable Living Coaching and specifically coaching for teens and parents. And I'll tell you why, if you didn't know, and it's because as a teen myself, when I looked back, okay, as a teen, there are certain things that I did not know, that I did not understand, that I know were things that led to a tremendous amount of pain and suffering for a lot of people.
Okay? I created all that. Not only did I create this, leave behind this path of destruction for so long and negatively impact so many people and just have such a damaging effect as a result of my addiction to alcohol. And then as it went on, what I would do is that I would see what I was doing and it would feed the problem. It was just a terrible cycle.
My feelings of inadequacy, of feeling lesser than when, you know, you're drinking yourself to death, you don't really feel good about yourself and what you're doing. I'll say I didn't. Okay? And so, the things that all the trouble that I got into and the trouble that I caused was just feeding this idea that I had that I was less than, you know, that I was a second-rate citizen or, you know, a second class, that something was not—that I was deficient in some way. And this cycle in my life went on for a long time, a lot of years.
I had so much shame and guilt that when I finally got to the end of that path and finally was able to break the cycle, that I just lived with so much that I just don't care. You know, I didn't care.
The point that I was making here, I looked back at me, younger Shane, and I said, what might have made the difference?
What might've made the difference to be able to avoid some of that pain for other people and for myself? And so that's when we created Stable Living Coaching for teens and parents, because I said, if I was younger Shane again, here's what I want to know, right?
And I've been, you know, we've made a difference. You know, we've really made a difference. If it's just one little difference for one little person, does every person that comes into our coaching, do they totally transform and they'll never have, you know, anything happen? Absolutely not. But does it make a difference? Yes.
And we, I know that, you know, that we slowly over time are making a difference
to kids, I guess we'll call them kids, teenagers and their parents. So very happy about that.
Why, you know, I'm kind of, my role in this is not that I know better than parents. My role is not that, you know, I'm somehow smarter, more experienced or any of that. I am an expert in human behavior. I've studied it for decades.
But it's not that I can do a better job of telling you how to be a parent. What it is, a lot of, there's two things.
Number one, if you need some help, I can help you get through whatever it is that you need to go through. Number one.
And number two, you know, I serve as kind of as a mentor for teens. You know, my heroes were always cowboys and it turns out a lot of teenagers and young people and even adults still, um, you know, still have this, an idea that, uh, and then besides me being a mentor, we relate the principles to horses and then we kind of have magic. It's just magical the results that we can have.
So that's what Stable Living Coaching is all about today. Come on, let's get back to today's schedule so we can roll on with it here.
And that is, how do we teach our kids to have friends? Because we want them to have friends. I've found that just about all of us want our kids to have friends.
When they're not, it's not working out the way that we want, we—it bothers us.
Okay, so here's the deal. With horses, we have so much admiration and we love them and we just, we feel this need to connect with them. And we do it so much that we do things that, that, that we understand that show affection to the horse, right? So we can create this relationship and maintain it and strengthen it and have this connection, this partnership with horses.
So we, we, we want to feel like our horses like us. Right? And so what we do with horses a lot of times is we do things that they think they'll like so that they'll like us. We try to control what they think. So we give them treats. We show them lots of physical affection. And a lot of times the horse doesn't know what the hell we're even doing, right? Because they don't, they don't understand. That's not in their world. That's not their way of thinking. It's not their—the way that they can—the way that they communicate.
And so, like giving horses gifts and treats and giving them different physical touch, right? These are actually two of the love languages from the five love languages—gifts and physical touch. And this is an example of what we would—things that we do sometimes with horses in an effort to get them to try to like us. And a lot of times, since horses don't understand, they have their own love language, right, and it's not ours.
But like with treats, for example, horses view treats as food. It's a survival resource. And then that enters into—they believe a lot of times that they have to fight and be in charge of who the leaders of the food. And so that kind of wrecks this idea that if I give you a treat, they're just like, hmm, who's in charge? It doesn't work well. Right?
The thing that a lot of times that we have in mind that we're going to accomplish with a treat, the horse doesn't understand, so it doesn't work out well.
Then the other thing is this physical touch with horses. This a lot of times—it confuses horses, really, is what it does a lot of times, because that's not how they show affection to each other. It's not their love language. They don't understand. And then a lot of times the confusion for both of these examples can lead to dangerous interactions with people and potentially serious injury, and it's just—it doesn't work well.
Okay. So the more—here's the key—the more that we understand horses, the more that we can clearly communicate in their language, what they can understand, right? So that's the whole key.
So with our kids, just like with horses, with kids, we want certain things, okay? We want them to have certain things. We want them—most of us, like I said, most of us want our kids to have good friends, and lots of good friends, okay? Not just a few. I want my kids to have tons of good friends and be popular and be happy and feel good because everybody likes them or a lot of people like them, okay?
We think that this will help our kids feel good and be healthy for them. And so sometimes we do with our kids like other people do with their horses. And that is, in an effort to make them feel good, a lot of times we can go about it in a way that causes problems instead of solutions for our kids.
Such as one thing that I want to bring up to talk about it. And that is one of the things that a lot of times we do is be a friend for our kids. Okay. And I think if you think about it, we've all heard that, I'm not supposed to be necessarily a friend to my kids. What the hell you mean? You're not supposed to be a friend. I want to be a friend of my kid. Tell me what to be a friend to. It's my own kid. Yeah. I didn't want to listen to that.
And so, you know, really our goal, I think you would want your, parents, think what we really want, if we think, think it thoroughly and understand it is to be loving leaders. Okay? Not necessarily to be friends. And here's why.
I want to look at the definition of a friend. Okay. So I'm going to the American Psychological, the American Physiological Association defines friendship as a voluntary relationship between two or more people that is relatively long lasting and in which those involved are concerned in meeting the other's needs and interests as well as satisfying their own desires.
So, okay, parenting, however, okay, is not voluntary. It's not a voluntary. It's not I'm going to choose this relationship. If you have children, it's the choice has already been made basically, right?
The other part is, is I mentioned that a child, okay, really should not be concerned with meeting the parent's needs. Okay, so in the definition that, that they give for, for a friend, remember it's relatively long lasting and the people involved are interested in meeting each other's needs, okay, and fulfilling their own needs. And kids really shouldn't be concerned with meeting the needs of their parents. Okay, that's not the role. We can get that confused, it's problematic.
Here's the next thing, because friendship is conditional, okay? Because friendship is conditional, people in friendships can reject one another and they can end the relationship for any reason they want if they don't feel like their needs are getting met or whatever.
So for this reason, children, if they feel like they're in a friendship, they might avoid coming to their parents for help because they don't want to be rejected for doing something that their parents might perceive to be bad or wrong, so that they won't come and talk to their parents because they're afraid they'll be rejected in the end, the friendship will end or the relationship will end. And so that's not a good thing.
During adolescence, children's friendships can change a lot, okay? And they often worry about, you know, kids really often worry about not fitting in, about disappointing other people, about losing friends because we have this human desire, this human need to feel important, to feel connected, to feel loved, to feel appreciated, right? And so a lot of times we're gonna do whatever it takes to maintain.
It's really important as teens, as we begin to figure out who we are, our kids do, our own identity, that these relationships are, you know, they're really important and they're changing a lot. Okay, so if kids start to see their parents in the same category as their friends, they might not rely on their parents in the way that they need to. Okay, because they might not come to their parents for support.
So when children understand that parents belong to a completely different category, right? You're the confident leader, not the friend. Then if they know that they, we want our kids to know that we have loved them unconditionally. Okay. This isn't a conditioned friendship. This is an unconditional loving parent. If that's clear, then kids can know that they can come safely with whatever they have and be heard and not be at risk of losing the love. Really, that's what it comes down to, okay? Losing the connection and losing something that they deeply need. More so at this time than we all need, but more so as we're younger when we're younger.
So there are five things, okay, that we use in Stable Living that I have that you can help your teens, to help your teens make friends, okay, but there's five things that will improve how your kids get along with other kids and have them have more friends, okay, and have them not necessarily, I don't know if it's necessarily have more friends, but be a little bit less reliant on friends and be the kind of person that attracts good people, right? This is what we're kind of going for.
So number one is to know that connection is good mental health. Like I said, with humans and especially with teens. So if your kid is isolating, we've talked about this before, but if your kid is isolating for extended periods of times and if you don't know if it's too long, it's probably too long. And if you're wondering and you're hesitant and you don't really know for sure, I always say to get professional help and find out. Find out if there's an underlying serious problem that can happen because your kid is being by himself for too long and in isolation.
Okay, so number one is to know that connection is important and to monitor their level of connectivity with kids of the same age. Okay, get help if you're not sure.
Number two is you're going to see that this is what we can do to help, not what we're going to try to force them or control them todo. What I'm talking about today is what we can do to help them, what we can do to help them have better friends and to be a better friend.
Number one is to take the, excuse me, two is to take, just take the time, right? Take the time to listen to how they feel. When you know how they feel, when you just take the time to listen and zip it for a minute and listen, then that helps them increase their, the way that, that makes them feel more important. Okay? This is a very important key for so many things, but to maintain, like I talked about earlier, to maintain the confident, loving leader status. Okay. Which means that we actually take the time on a consistent basis to listen, to actively listen to what's going on with them.
Three is to, is just, hey, be the example man. Model being a good friend with your own friends. So what does that mean? That means that when your kid sees a friendship, they see your own friendship, they see how you relate with other people, you don't have a lot of negative chatter about other people when they're not there and so on and so forth. They see that you do have friends. They see that you're active with friends. They see that the benefit that these relationships can have and they actually see the difficult times and how you manage those difficult times.
And this doesn't mean that you handle everything perfectly, right? Let's just say that something happens and boom. It was like a dynamite stick went off in your, you know, as soon as you hung up the phone and you're, and you had a little moment of getting your emotions out about what really was going on inside. And your kid witnessed this, this is my example. You were negatively talking, calling names or doing something. Just, you kind of blew up after you hung up with somebody on the phone, and they saw it. Okay.
It's not that anything like that never happens. That's not what I'm talking about. It's what you do with it after, right? It's how you handle it. I like to say that I handle everything perfectly, and people say the hell you do. Nobody does.
What I mean by that is, is I, okay, first of all, I don't handle everything perfectly. I handle very few things perfectly, but what I dodo a high percentage of damn near all the time is I try to go back and make it as good as I can. So therefore I handle most things as good as perfectly. That's what I call it. It's not perfect, but as well as I can.
Point is, is not that you don't make mistakes and not that you don't do things that you just that are that you regret and that you feel bad for and all of that as parents. The point is, is that you, hopefully we're all limiting those times, right, as we go on that we're more proud of what we do, and we have less and less times that we truly regret.
But when we do do that, and we're going to, okay, that we come back and we just show them how to make things well. We show them what good communication is. We show them what the inner strength looks like from human beings that have the ability to admit that they're wrong and that we forgive ourselves, and then we ask for forgiveness, stuff like that. That's be the example. That's a really good.
This is, um, this is key. I mean, it's not what you think of when you think a lot of times when we think, how am I going to get that kid to have more friends? It doesn't do anything. He's just wrapped up in his screen or, you know, he doesn't seem like he's very physically active and blah, blah, all the things, right?
It's like, I'm going to sign him up for this. Now I'm not saying don't sign him up for that. What I'm saying is these are the foundational things that if you do sign him up for—or her—you're going to have a better odds of it working. Okay? And all these tactics to try to push them out there and take away a screen and all of that. A lot of times you don't need to if you address the foundation. That's what I'm talking about. This is the foundation of having a good friend is being a good friend. And our deal is to model it as parents.
Where are we at? Number one, two, three. We're on four. Model and teach good communication skills. Kind of talked about that with the one before, which is model being a good friend, but actually teach good communication skills.
It is so interesting to see the way that we communicate change over time, okay? Because of the amount of text, because of the lack or lesser amounts of time spent face to face with words back and forth in a conversation, right? In an upfront, close, one-on-one or whatever, in-person communication. In-person communications are fewer and fewer over time as we utilize technology to have these communications.
And so what it's done is it's had an impact on how we communicate—not only how we communicate upfront when we are in person, face-to-face with another human being—but it also has changed how we communicate with how we text and how we write emails, and how we do selfie videos and all of this and that and the other. It has to do with everything. It's changed, okay?
So if we model and teach communication skills—communication skills are—know, Stephen Covey said that communication is the most important skill that you can develop in your lifetime. I believe it's the most important skill. I believe that communication is this massive, it's a huge subject, right? And if we can, and kids don't know, you know, all they know is what they know. And so there's so much to learn.
So if we are modeling and actually teaching skills, a lot of times kids I see, they don't know that they need to. And then there's little—there's a lot that we can do as parents to teach communication skills.
One skill I'll give you—I'm going to give you one example. Okay. And that is in the horse world, what we call this is a re-ride. Okay. Re-ride is when a rodeo rider of an event—a lot of times we think of rough stock events, riding broncs and bulls—and if something happens in their ride where the animal, the horse or the bull or the equipment fails, or basically they didn't have a fair shot to make it, they can be given a re-ride.
Okay, you didn't have a fair shot to compete. We couldn't give you a valid score because something went wrong that was beyond your control. So we're gonna give you a re-ride.
What I call a re-ride in Stable Living. Okay. What I calla re-ride in communication is I automatically give a re-ride. So here's how this goes. Here's what I'm talking about.
Somebody says something to you. Okay, we, a lot of us know this skill, I've just renamed it. Somebody says something to you. Okay. You get them a chance to finish. You zip it. You listen. Okay. You take it in and then you say something to the effect of, let me make sure I understand what you just said.
Then you repeat it back to them. Okay? In your own words, in your own understanding, what it meant to you—to clarify that you're hearing and understanding their meaning behind their words. Okay. Super important skill.
I call that a re-ride. You're redoing what they gave you to make sure that you're picking up what they're putting down. Okay. Super, I mean, little skill, I mean, but super important, right, if you want to be clear on understanding. Little things like this. Okay?
Because here's the thing with kids—just that one little skill like that. Do you know how many misunderstandings and hurt feelings and, I mean, overreactions and ended relationships and all kinds of mini traumas can happen just because of communication errors? And it happens to us as adults.
So at the height of all this feeling and development, we got the same thing going on. Four is to model and teach good communication skills. Okay. We do this—all kinds of skills—we go over in Stable Living.
So five, last one for today, is to model—this is the big one, okay—model and teach your kids, your teens, the skill of generating self-confidence. Okay? Teach your kids how to generate their own self-confidence, because it's not coming from somewhere else.
So self-confidence is the key because when we feel better about ourselves, okay, we have the capacity—we've opened up the highway, we've opened the gate, if you will—to be concerned about it, to be able to have the capacity to give to other people, which is how we get and maintain—it's how we obtain and maintain—friendships. Okay?
So teach them what confidence is and what it isn't. Okay?
For example, a lot of times people say overconfident. Overconfident is not even a thing. It doesn't even exist. Usually what people mean when they say overconfident is arrogant, right? Or it's an expectation thing where you expect things were going a certain way and you didn't plan correctly. And so you say, was too confident. Too confident?
So what confidence is, confidence is the willingness to feel any emotion. Okay? And what that—so if I have the willingness to feel any emotion, knowing as I set out into the world that the worst thing that can happen is how I'm gonna feel, and if I know that and I'm willing to feel that way, self-confidence is showing up saying:
“Hey, I might fail. I might look stupid. I might fall down. This might not go well. If I exercise some courage and reach out there and try to make a friend and they're not having it, it'll be painful, then I'm willing to do it.”
It is the emotion that propels us to progress, okay? Confidence. That's self-confidence.
A lot of times we get confidence and self-confidence confused. Confidence is based on the past. Confidence says, I am proficient and I'm capable of doing a certain thing and I've done it so much that I can look to my past and say, you want me to do something in the future? Hold on a minute. Yeah, I've done this for years. I can do this and I feel good. And now I come to it with a feeling of, “Hey, I got this,” because it's based on the past.
Self-confidence, not based on the past. If we're asked to move forward and exercise courage and do things that we haven't done before, if we don't have the past to look for—and this is something that we want to do it to, in order to make progress—we have to rely on our own feeling of self-confidence to be able to do it.
Okay, so just teaching kids about confidence and helping them develop the skill of generating your own self-confidence.
You know, along with this, to me, this is one of the biggest things that life is about, because it influences all of our results in everything that we do, and that's the developing beliefs that we hold true to be about ourselves—the things that we believe to be true about ourselves. Help our kids understand how that they create our identity and that they can choose to be and decide to believe about themselves whatever they want to.
I mean, this is life-changing, altering stuff. And guess what? Collateral—or just as a side benefit, right? As a perk—you’re going to increase your ability to have more friends, to obtain and maintain friendships, the more that you become skilled at self-confidence.
So friends are important to teens, and learning how to interact with groups and individuals—it's an important skill to become an adult. Right? These are the things that are going to stick with us throughout our lifetime.
The teenage years, these are the critical times. Okay? This is the time when lifetime habits are formed. Okay? And this is the time that I brought up earlier where I did not thrive, and it took a long time for me to clean this up. And there was a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. And so I'm about you having less than what happened over here. Okay?
So what can we do?
If we're checking in and we're keeping up with how our kids are feeling by taking the time to stay connected, okay, we've got a great start. Then we can model how to be a good friend by being a good friend with our friends—not with our kids. We're gonna be the loving, confident leaders.
And we can be aware of and continually model good communication skills. And finally, to be confident leaders, okay, to be confident leaders and then teach the skill of developing and having the courage to exercise self-confidence.
Okay, um, just like all the parenting, “Hey, Shane sounds great. A little bit hell of a lot harder done than said.” Okay? So, uh, just know these are things that we deal with on a daily basis at Stable Living Coaching.
So if you want help with this or any other parenting challenges, just know that Stable Living Coaching is here to support you in being the best human being and the best parent possible. You can find out more at stablelivingcoaching.com (formerly thehorsemanshipjourney.com).
And remember this: You cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasin' It.
