Nick Freitas

And I said, no, I think arbitrary rules invite rebellion.

So if I just give my kids rules without explaining why they're there, yeah, of course they're going to rebel.

In fact, if I give my kids rules and all I tell them is it's to make them safe, they might still rebel because they want to see if it's really that dangerous.

Interesting.

But if you give your kids sound direction, if you're giving your kids a path to get what they want,

Dude, if you give me a rule and you don't tell me the reason why, I want to break it.

If you give me a rule and you say, well, this will keep you safe, I'm like, dude, I can handle myself.

I don't need your advice.

But if you say, hey, Nick, if you follow these directions, it'll get you to where you want to go.

Well, now I'm paying attention.

I don't want to stray off the path because it's going to get me to where I want to go.

And so what I found is with our kids is when we had built that trust with them and we exposed them to age-appropriate challenges and we let them fail and get back up,

And then when we provided direction for mom and dad, they looked at like, well, mom and dad love each other and mom and dad love us.

And mom and dad seem to be having their crap together.

If mom and dad tell us, hey, follow this, it'll get you what you want.

I'm going to follow that.

So no, none of that.

It doesn't have to be the rebellious years.

It's the it's the years that they're preparing to be on their own.

And if you set them up for success that they believe you're setting up for success, they listen.