On today’s episode, we hear about: · A wife trying to help her husband learn to handle their kids on his own · A father unsure how to improve his relationship with his young daughter · A woman resentful of her dad’s hypocritical behavior Next Steps: 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John's Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch Connect With Our Sponsors: 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. 🔴 Get 15% off with code DELONY at Bon Charge. 🌿 Get up to 40% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth. 🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. 😇 Go to Hallow for a 90-day free trial. 💤 Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! 🥤 Get 20% off with code DELONY at Organifi. 💪 Get 25% off your order at Thorne. 🏋️ Go to Trainwell to get started! Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How can I help my husband better manage our kids?
How can I help my husband better manage our kids? He's not that awful with like the babies. But once they hit the toddler age.
He's not that awful. He's only medium. He's medium awful with the babies. He's full awful with them. What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, taking your calls on your relationships and your marriages and your mental and emotional health, whatever you got going on in your life, the good stuff, the challenging stuff, the dark stuff. Here's my promise.
I'll sit with you. For the last two decades plus, I've been sitting with hurting people trying to figure out what's the next right move, and I'll sit with you. I'd love to have you on the show, and the show goes out all over the world. We've got gajillions and gajillions of listeners and watchers. I'd love to have you. That sounds gross. I'm a watcher.
People who view the show, who listen to the show, consume the show. I'd love to have you on the show. Sometimes just a moment of bravery, reach out, ends up helping a whole lot of people. Go to John Deloney, D-E-L-O-N-Y, johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K, and fill out the form, and it will go to Kelly and Taylor, and they'll see if they can pick you for the show.
All right, let's go out to Kansas City, Mo, and talk to Kate. Hey, Kate, what's up, lady?
Hi, Dr. John.
How we doing?
I'm all right. How are you?
I am doing good, doing good. Recovering, but I'm coming back.
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Chapter 2: What are common challenges dads face with toddlers?
Now we're getting into like adult grownup temper tantrum me kind of world. Tell me about that. Let me say this. So I have a ton of compassion for mom or dad. Like, I need a break for a second. I got to go outside because my nerves are fried. I get that. I get that. And I also get the other side of it. Like, hey, one of us doesn't get a break, right?
One of us has to be here for the screaming human being. I get that. But tell me about the three, two, three, four, five-year-old.
I don't know. Like she is very independent and likes to do her own thing. And she doesn't listen to him because I feel like he like just starts yelling and like puffs and puffs whenever she's like reacting to anything. And like, I am able to like talk to her and like validate her feelings and like work her through it and kind of use it as like a teaching moment. But he just kind of freaks out.
So then now she doesn't listen to him. And then I think he like is scared that he doesn't want to cause a tantrum by like getting her to follow through with like non-negotiable things like brushing your hair after the bath. Because he doesn't want her to cry because he doesn't know how to handle it and then stresses him out.
Gosh, this is the most like, dude, you're like talking about every house USA right now. I guess this is as direct as I would put this. The stake of his relationship with his daughter and his wife are on the line right now.
Yes.
And if this was not about relationships, but this was about feeding his family at work, hey, we are no longer writing things on paper and putting them in an envelope. We have this new thing called email. You learn how to do it or you're fired. You know what everybody did? They learned how to do email. And so I know we can do it, but we have to step over our egos. And by the way, it's a big step.
And this is the pot talking to the kettle here. When you look in your tool bag to help solve a problem with your kids and there's no tools in there, or there's just one, yell, or just another tool, just hide, or another tool, just shut down and play video games. It's scary. So I get that. But he has got to
put on his big boy pants and decide I'm going to learn how to connect with my daughter and do this right because the stakes are way too high. Yeah. If you approach him as a skills issue, at least in my house, I will tell you it's one of the greatest gifts my wife gave me.
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Chapter 3: How can couples align on parenting strategies?
Can we put that on the table? And you can look at him and say, now that I'm a mom, here's what I wish I'd had. And then here's a real fun exercise. Let's say your daughter's name is Julie. What do we want Julie, who do we want Julie to be the night she walks across that graduation stage in high school? We want her to be a person of character. We want her to be hilarious. We want her to be strong.
We want her to be independent. We want her to be able to follow instructions, like all those things. Write all those down and let's distill those all the way back to, okay, then as of right now, she's got to know that we love her no matter what. As for our house, no more yelling. As for our house, no more disappearing. And let's put some of those things on paper. Because I think both of you are.
Have you heard me talk about pictures and words?
Yes.
Okay. I think you have a picture of what you want him to be like. And he's got a picture of what he wants his kids to be like. And y'all are talking past each other. So let's go paint those pictures really clearly. Yeah. And then he's going to have to just be a grown man and get some new skills because he doesn't have a skill set.
And you're going to have to be a grown woman and get some skills on communicating directly and clearly and go from there. Does that make sense? I don't know if this is helpful or not, but... No, yeah, that makes sense. I ache for him. It's like I want to hug him and also be like, bro, it's time. Yeah, like hug him and shake him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's shake and then pat pat and then shake and then pat pat. Because I've been him. I've been him. And I want him to know what it's like on the other side of this. When your nine-year-old daughter brings you this hilarious story that she's written in a secret card that says, I love you, daddy. You're my favorite.
And curls up next to you on the couch when you're sick and says, I want to watch whatever show you want to watch. I want them to know what it feels like to be at peace with your kids. And that means you're at peace with yourself. I want them to know what that feels like. And you can't. You just got to tell somebody, trust me, walk through that gauntlet. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What role does a father’s upbringing play in parenting?
I told my wife two years ago in January and we've been on the recovery journey. She's been through a lot of intensive counseling. So have I like, and we separated for two months in 2023, then separated for six months last year because we were just bandaid fixing and not actually fixing the root issues. Um, we got back together summer of last year and, um,
realizing like my daughters and my relationship is like, it's okay. It's good. But like, there are times where it's like, I'm getting frustrated with her. She wants mom more than me. She wants like, she won't listen to anything I say, even if I'm saying it calmly and kindly, she won't listen to me until my wife says, Hey, what did dad say? And listen to dad. And then she'll listen.
Um, so I don't know if like totally development. Okay. There's nothing wrong with your daughter. Okay. So that's not like, I haven't really screwed her up with the separation.
No. Okay. Your daughter's being three. My bigger concern is that you're at a place, you're at a fragile emotional state to such a degree that a three-year-old is threatening the access upon which your world spins. Let me put it another way. That sounded really dramatic. You're giving a three-year-old a vote. Like, a three-year-old doesn't get a vote. They're three.
Like, I'm not going to give a three-year-old my bad day. I'm not going to give you my feel like you're three. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, there's a reason they can't vote. They don't have – a three-year-old does not have the – they can be manipulative, and a three-year-old can, like – I don't want to get through all Piaget and all that.
Three-year-olds are smart and they can be manipulative, but they are not as cognitively complex as adults put upon them. Okay. And so she just wants to check in with her mom. That means you and your wife need to be connected there. Or you and your wife need to come up with, she doesn't check in with mom. Okay. But that will go away over time.
What won't go away is she will very quickly, if she has... I guarantee she already has. She knows how to control dad. I can get dad to leave the room if I push one inch past this one line. He'll leave. I can finally get him to give me that candy if I just push past this one line. Or... I'm uncomfortable because daddy's uncomfortable and he'll, I can do this one thing. He'll get mad.
He'll spank me. He'll yell at me and then I can cry and then I'll feel better. But what she's learning is it's her job to make sure dad's emotionally okay. And dude, that cannot be your daughter's job. Right. That was alcohol's job. That was your affairs job. And now you've given it to your daughter. That can't be her job. That has to be your job. Okay. Is that fair?
Yeah, very. Um, yeah, there's been other stressors that I've been like really letting affect me. And my wife has noticed like, Hey, you're really stressed about work and it's affecting our home. So like it was very clear work is just really stressful. Um, getting pulled 30 different directions to do everyone's job and covering incompetency from lack of effort from where I work.
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Chapter 5: How can parents communicate and develop new skills together?
Not lately. We just moved, but definitely need to get back into that. Okay.
Not as a place to escape, but a place to channel some of this energy. And kudos to you, my brother, for getting a group of friends. That's awesome. That is amazing. Thanks. Often I hear in these situations, wives just become trash bins for their whole day because they're the only person their husband has, right? Yeah. Tell me about your addiction. What were you struggling with?
It was pornography.
Okay. Yeah. That even tells me more. Yeah.
Yeah.
Searching for somebody out there to tell you, to help you feel alive.
Yeah.
Where's that come from, man?
Um, that's the house I grew up in, um, and worked really hard with my counselor to kind of address some of that. Um, but no, it was like, I was homeschooled for all 12 years. And so it's like more of a student teacher relationship than a parent relationship. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How much of my past should I share with my child?
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah. Can I just like, I don't know if you've ever come across this, but this is just something crazy in my life. I got a letter grade for how I cleaned a bathroom.
Doesn't surprise me. Okay. Doesn't surprise me.
Wow. I can't imagine that much would at this point, but like.
Yeah. Well, and I'm just trying to quickly reverse engineer it as a parent. Like, all right, great. Like, you don't need to know about chlorophyll, borophyll, but you do need to know about how to clean the bathroom. So I'm going to shift grades to – I can see the logic there, but then I can also see a kid being like, dude, I'm seven. I just got C in bathroom. Like, what are we doing? Right?
I can see that too. Right? Yeah. And so it's like one of those things that like as you get older, you'll start to get compassionate because your parents are probably trying to do the best they could. And they were reading a lot of internet and they were like, yeah, we're going to do it different. And then they ended up giving their kid a grade on bathroom counter cleaning. Right.
So it's like one of those like, oh, gosh, this is insane. And also I've been dead in my own skin for 12 years. And now I'm finally free. And – then all of a sudden the world hands me this box with every act of depravity known to, you know, in human history. And now I'm married. Now I got a kid that won't listen to me. Now I got people at work that won't do it. And it just kind of unspools.
So what if I flipped it all over, dude, and said this? Are you still fighting on a day-to-day basis to put away pornography?
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Chapter 7: What are effective ways to handle stress and frustration as a parent?
We can't really avoid the internet, but we can make our personal data personal again with Delete.me. Get protected with Delete.me today and get 20% off all Delete.me plans. That comes out to less than nine bucks a month. Go to join, J-O-I-N, joindeleteme.com slash deloney right now. That's joindeleteme.com slash deloney and save. Alright, we are back.
Hey, don't forget to subscribe, like, and review the show with all the stars you can punch into the internet boxes. That was my, uh... Was that a good song, Kelly? You don't think you'll like that song?
No, I don't think I'll be downloading that one on my playlist anytime soon.
Well, fine. Alright, let's go out to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and talk to Turn the Page. Hey, Page, what's up?
Hi, how are you doing?
I'm doing great. How about you?
You know, sitting on the floor throwing treats at my dogs to try to keep them quiet.
Yeah.
So what's happening?
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Chapter 8: How does overcoming addiction impact parenting and relationships?
Um, but the thing is, is he's a, he's an amazing therapist. So it's kind of like there's, there's like confusion on my side too on how those don't connect.
Okay. Let me ask you this. Is he your therapist?
Okay.
So let's, let's hold him accountable to the role with which he's assigned in your life.
Okay.
Forget what he does for a living.
Okay.
What are you mad at that he did or didn't do for you as your dad?
Um, well, I, I probably just say like, he, he wasn't always a therapist. He became a therapist within the, like the last eight years. Um, but he, he kind of like self-diagnoses himself as a workaholic and he, he knows it. Um, so like as a kid, I just kind of always felt abandoned by him. Um, But a lot of what my anger comes from is recent stuff between him and my mom.
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