Eps 164: Jeremy Schneider, MFT Talks About Navigating our Partner’s Parenting Journey

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hey everybody. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the conscious parenting journey. I am Casey awardee, positive discipline trainer, parent coach, and honored to be your guide in the work of showing up as your best for yourself and your family. If you feel as though parenting is one long personal growth and development workshop, you have come to the right place. The conversations you will hear on this podcast are all intended to offer you tools for moving forward, for expanding your lens, for shifting your narrative to one of possibility, connection and empowerment. You can be the parent you want to be. We are influencing the world with how we raise our children. When we bring deep, listening, acceptance and courage to our relationships, we are doing our part to evoke it in the world. I am thrilled to partner with you on this path. I hope you enjoy the show. All right, listeners, my guest today is Jeremy Schneider. Jeremy is a marriage and family therapist whose career spans more than 15 years of working with individuals and families, focusing on parenting, relationships and mental health. He is the author of fatherhood in 40 minute snapshots, a book that reveals how love for oneself his children and family can flourish over time. Jeremy has been featured in The New York Times, The Today Show and CNN, and has been a speaker on panels in New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Liverpool, England. He lives and works in New York City with his wife, Jem and his son and daughter, Lucas and dorit. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. Well,

Jeremy Schneider 1:51
thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Casey O'Roarty 1:54
Please share with the listeners a bit more about how you found yourself doing what you do.

Jeremy Schneider 1:59
That's a good question. I actually wanted to be a therapist since I was nine years old. So, you know, it was a long, long process. And you know, things really started to change for me. Obviously, when my kids were born, they're twins, they are now 15. Oh, so I got solidarity teenagers, right, right? You might like that. So two teenagers at the same time is, you know, it's just a breeze. There's no problems whatsoever. I i sleep well at night, not stressed. I'm really relaxed. No, there's no issues. And, you know, but after they were born, I really started realizing I didn't have a good childhood growing up, and so, you know, I wanted to do it differently than the way it was done to me. And started really thinking about, well, I don't know how to do it, and I found, for me that writing in the morning was this incredibly valuable tool to help me think through what I was doing, what was happening in my family, gave me kind of a chance to take a step back. And then the advantage I had, even though I was commuting into the city every day. The advantage I had was that I had this 40 minute train ride. And I used this 40 minute train ride to start writing about my kids when they were about one and a half. And I haven't stopped. And about a year ago, to almost two years ago, I realized, you know, I think I have, I have the makings of a book. And of course, I wanted to call it fatherhood and 40 minute snapshots, because I wrote them in these literally in 40 minutes. Each little article was written in 40 minutes. And it's like a snapshot in time of what we were experiencing as a family, what my struggle was as a dad. You know, what thing I had tried that somehow had worked and made a difference in my family or in my children. And I wanted to, I wanted to share that. And it's, it's kind of split up into different categories. So you can kind of look at, oh, I want to just see some stuff on sleep, or I want to see some stuff on bonding. Or, you know, I want to look at, you know, getting ready before they're born, and thinking about that. So that's kind of how it's, how it is, and that's really what I've been working

Casey O'Roarty 4:29
on. Yeah, I'm looking at your book right now. I'm so glad that I got a chance to check it out. And my husband really liked it, too. He read it cover to cover. Yeah, that's nice. I finally figured out how to get him to read parenting books. I just leave them by the toilet. I know that's a little crude, but it is super useful listeners, I'm telling you. It's really like, oh, look, there's a new book here. I'll just kind of check it out. And especially when they're really well written, you know, and intriguing, they get read. So. So what did you notice? So you started, and I think I was laughing, you started writing when they were about 18 months old. So I'm guessing with twins, did that feel like when you finally kind of came out of the fog of two babies?

Jeremy Schneider 5:15
How did you know? Oh, man, I can only imagine, absolutely what happened? I mean, we probably started to come out of the fog around 16 months, when she wasn't breastfeeding anymore and they were just like, mostly sleeping through the night. You know what? Yeah, you probably remember this when you get like, be for me, at least when you get beyond four hours of sleep in a row, it just makes such a huge difference. But I, you know, that first year is such a blur. I have such little memory of it. It was so terrible. And I mean, I loved having them, but I it's intense. I mean, it's why, you know, it's when you realize, like, sleep deprivation is a great torture technique. Because I just, I couldn't think, right? I couldn't, you know, everything just was so hard. And then, of course, I didn't, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never been a parent before, and all of a sudden, instead of starting with one, I was starting with two. So it was just Yeah, yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 6:23
And so tell me a little bit as you began to kind of process your experience and notice where you were feeling challenged, what if any did you What were the dots that you were connecting around the modeling that you had, and how you were showing up, and where things were hard, because I've shared a lot on the show around, you know, my own experience with that. And you know, there was a pretty severe pendulum swing in my household, growing up around deeply loving and then hurtful. And I declared, of course, that is not the parent, the mother, that I'm going to be. And then here I am with this three year old in front of me, and wow, that pendulum swing actually lives inside of me. And so, you know, I talk about my work of really learning more about myself, recognizing where my conditioning is guiding me, versus my own deep desire to be the mom I want to be. What's been your experience with that?

Jeremy Schneider 7:22
Well, I think, I mean, I absolutely hear what you're saying, and I think I have so many reactions to it, I'm not even sure which one to start with. To be honest, I think, you know, one of the things that I realized early on is that it's so hard to not be something versus trying to be something, right? So I knew what I didn't want to be. I didn't necessarily know what that translated to into like, daily actions, right? Like, you know you you have this, well, I don't want to be like that, but then how do you know what to be like? And so that took a lot of time for me to kind of think it through, really figure out, you know, what were some of my principles of parenting? You know, what were, what was my vision for my children? And I think what really helped me was thinking about, well, so when they're 25 or 30, what kind of people do I want them to be and and, of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is that I want them to know their love. I want them to have this foundation of unconditional love no matter what happens in their life, no matter what goes on, that they'll know even at 30, that we're there for them, we love them, and that whatever choices they make, whatever things happen, nothing can change that. And obviously that I didn't have that. And so that was a big push for me. But I also think that's a really important foundation for people to have, right? And so then you start thinking about acceptance, you know, that kind of unconditional acceptance as well. How do you how do you do that? And then you start thinking about, well, I want them to be good people. How do you sort of create good people? You know, what are the things that I need to do as a person and as a parent to help them be good people, and then also just sort of, you know, one of the things that I learned in my marriage and family therapy program that really stuck with me was this idea that every step that I take in my personal growth is one less step that they have to take. That's a great way to put it, and I love that, right? It's just this idea that if I work on my stuff, one, that stuff is less likely to affect them. Two, they're less likely to learn it from me, yes, so that it gives them a little bit better shot. Now, you know, I. I'm we're always going to be working on ourselves. We can never be perfect, and that obviously should never be an expectation of ourselves. But you know, especially those of us who grew up in a difficult home, the idea of personal growth, self awareness, self understanding and being able to be, as I like to say, kind of better parents, partners and people that, to me, was one of the driving forces in the way that I was as a parent, and the way I've been as a husband and and frankly, the way I am as a person. I mean, I I knew I had a lot of work to do to overcome what happened to me. And so you know that it really kind of drove where I was going. And then, of course, when the kids were born, that kind of urgency to it magnified intensely.

Casey O'Roarty 10:49
Yeah, what I'm hearing you say is, even before the question of, how do I do this? I'm hearing you talk about that awareness and that willingness to create a vision and to look through the lens of, you know, I want to do things thinking about the long term versus the short term. And I love what you said. All the work that we do on ourselves is, you know, such a gift to our kids, because otherwise we're just basically passing it on, but that takes a certain level of awareness that there's work to be done. Yes, right? So, yeah. And so my come from, so today, everyone, I'm so excited that Jeremy's here because we are going to talk about co parenting and being in alignment or not, with our partner, and how, no matter where each of us is, we can find places of connection. So my come from is positive discipline. And I don't know how familiar you are with positive discipline, Jeremy, but it's a real paradigm shift. And looking at and responding to behavior, it it kind of turns, well it does turn the punishment, reward behaviorist model on its head and embraces Adlerian theory, which that's the basis of positive discipline, which finds behavior as purposive and goal oriented, and most importantly, understanding that it is movement in the direction of our perception, our human perception of belonging and significance. So it moves the focus from as parents, from what should we do to our kids to get them to behave towards what's happening for our kids right now, and what are the skills or tools they need to move through it? And I would add, how do I be with it in a way that is helpful and not hurtful. And sometimes, when there is some misunderstanding around that, or, you know, just surface level understanding, this approach can seem or be portrayed as soft or permissive. And again, that's really a misunderstood perspective of it. And, you know, shout out to all of the conscious dads that are listening and that I've worked with that have shown up to my parenting classes that are the ones that are calling and saying, I would love for my wife and I to do some coaching with you. I appreciate you so much.

And the vast majority of my listeners, and the vast majority of the people that I work with are the moms. And what I hear over and over again is this work both positive discipline and personal growth, which there's a lot in positive discipline, like you can't not grow as a human if you're working, you know, inside of the container of positive discipline, it's just impossible, and it's so powerful, right? So the moms are saying, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. It's making such a difference. And how do I get my partner on board? So you work with families, and I love that you were getting the male perspective. What are the trends that you're seeing with the roles of around the roles that dads are taking in parenting, and has it changed over the course of your career? What are you noticing?

Jeremy Schneider 14:12
I definitely, I think about a lot, you know, fatherhood involvement, or dad involvement. And I think, you know, certainly in my dad's generation, right? If you were to survey people our age and say, Hey, how many of your dads were really involved? They were there to pick you up after school, or were there at dinner every night, or were involved in the activities that you did, or listen to the challenges that you were dealing with in middle school and high school, things like that, you would get a very small percentage right. The amount of dads that are now involved, dads these days in their 20s and 30s, is extraordinary, and that's certainly one of the biggest things that. I've seen, and it's crazy. You can see it now even on television commercials. Television commercials that used to be so mommy centric are now you're seeing just more dads, either in the commercial or as the sole focus of the commercial, and not as a joke, right? Not as like, Oh, look at this goofy dad, you know, but as a dad that's actually caring and involved with their kids, I think that's a huge shift. And I think it's one of the things that I've most enjoyed about kind of this time in the parenting spectrum, you know, is that you you really can see more dads, not only involved, but proud of, you know, and I'm going to take some time off of I'm going to have a more flexible schedule, because being around for my kids is more important to me than it was in the past. And I think that's one of the biggest things that I've seen. I think one of the challenges, and I you know, I hope all of your mother fans can understand this. I think one of the challenges is that historically, parenting has been the way that mom wanted to do it, and one of the adjustments that this fatherhood involvement, I find, is causing is that that's not quite okay anymore, right? Mom doesn't get to rule, and I don't mean that in a in a obnoxious way, right? But doesn't get to rule the way the house runs. That still happens, certainly in many scenarios. But I think men are saying no, no, wait, it's not. We're not following your path. We need to find a path together that we both agree on that is good for our kids. Yeah, and I think it's, it's created a whole series of conversations about the intricacies of parenting that I think most people in those 20s and 30s were frankly unprepared for right? I mean, they didn't see that kind of parenting as they were growing up. And don't really, you know, we don't, nobody teaches about parenting. I mean, you teach about parenting, right? We don't learn about parenting in school, right? We don't really learn about parenting in college, we really learn about parenting on the fly, which is like the craziest thing in the world, right? It's the most important job we ever have, and we make it up as we go along, right? Yeah, let's not get me started on that, yeah. I mean, even

Casey O'Roarty 17:34
for me, and I'm sure this is the same for you, it's like we have our educational background. I have information, and I'm also very much in the thick of fear, and, oh my gosh, am I doing the right thing and right? Like I'm in it, you know, I'm totally in it. And I hear what you're saying, I hear what you're saying around, you know, it's this, and I kind of think it's the kind of the same thing around the roles of the mother shifting as well, and like, taking a more vocal stance around things like finances and bills and, you know, being in the workplace and so I can see, and like the it's all these moving parts. Yeah, that may not have been what was modeled for us, right? May not have

Jeremy Schneider 18:23
and it adds a complexity, I think, to parenting that was I, I think it's unexpected for a lot of people, right, right? Because they thought that there was this sort of path, and they learned a certain path, but when they got to this point in their own lives, they're like, wait that i i want it like this. Now, I don't know how to do it, you know. And I think this is where the sort of, you know, I always think that the relationship, the the two parent relationship, and again, whether that's male, female, female, male, male is unimportant to me, but it's that bond that's the foundation of a family again. Divorces happen. It doesn't mean the family is dead or anything like that, but if you have two people raising a child, that is the foundation, and if they don't treat it as such, it obviously has enormous amounts of problems, and I think that's communication, but it's also, you know, I like to tell parents when they're pregnant or thinking about having a child to, you know, go out to dinner neutral location. Maybe you know, if you want to use your phone, if you want to use a pad of paper, and just start thinking about this 30 year old, 25 year old child of yours, and what do they look like, you know, what kind of conversation are they having, what kind of relationship are they having? And, you know, start to kind of work backwards from that. And what are the kind of quality. Employees that make up that kind of person. And then what are the things that we need to do as parents to encourage and support and kind of free those qualities to come out? Right?

Casey O'Roarty 20:14
So, yes, so important, and what a great start to building that foundation, and let's go kind of extreme and say, Okay, so let's talk about the parent. And maybe it's the mom, maybe it's the dad, who has really deep dived into learning about parenting and really appreciating, you know, considering the context of of my content, really appreciating this positive discipline, this different way of looking at behavior, of wanting to be in relationship with the kids and the partners, come from really being no we need to dis discipline. You know, discipline as code word for we need to give them consequences and punishments. We need to be hard on them. This is too soft, you know. And then that disconnect, which happens, right? And sometimes, you know, we aren't. We just don't realize we should be having these conversations early on, and we just roll into it, maybe find ourselves with school age kids or even teenagers, and the parenting styles are so different, and one parent is really seeing how the fuel that's being added to the fire through their partners doing the best they can with all the love that they have for their kids, but but really their ignorance around behavior and and what's going on under the surface. You know, we get excited and we want to share and we want to support them. And I think sometimes, sometimes we don't always know the best way to open up these conversations so as the other person doesn't slip into being defensive, or, you know, shutting us out, or this is how I was parented, and I'm fine that conversation. So what tips can you give to listeners about how to be, you know, gentle with the other person and to really come from a place like we do with our kids, of being helpful and not hurtful, because ultimately we want the other person to hear us while also listening deeply to them. So what are your tips around that

Jeremy Schneider 22:28
huge question? I think there's a few softballs here. Are you? No, I think there's a couple of thoughts. One is, and this is, you know, the way you think about, the way you talk about positive discipline and positive parenting approach, I think holds for relationships, right? I mean, we want to be we want to come to people in a place where they're at and help them and be able to be empathic to what their experience is, and be able to help them kind of get to a better place. So if we're working on the assumption that this, and we can just say Father, for the time being, that this dad wants to be better, but is stuck in some if you want to call it traditional thinking and a traditional mindset, or a stereotypical mindset about the way parenting should be, I think one of the first things to think about is sort of, what's his background, what's his experience, what's his relationship with his parents, and can We talk to him in a way that is empathetic to his experience and his understanding, right? I think it's hard to come at someone like that head on, right, right, because it's very easy for them to get defensive, right? Some of the sort of reason behind their behavior may very well be this kind of worry about what's happening to their kids if this doesn't get better, right? I mean, sometimes we, you know, we see our kids doing something that we did, or we're so scared that we almost did, or something that we we lash out, right? Because it's our fear of where we're afraid they're going to go, not actually fear of where they are. And so where's this dad coming from, that kind of thing, and kind of coming at him from a different perspective, and trying to help him talk about, I think, what he's looking for, for his kids, and what he wants, and trying to sort of gently help him see, hey, wait a second, if this is what you want, and again, not coming head on, because that's going to challenge a defensiveness for him. But if this is what you want, what other ways can you behave that would help your child get there, right? I think that's one thing I. Think I find a lot, and there are studies that absolutely support this, fathers, who learn more about the importance of being involved as a dad become more involved dads. And I think too many men have grown up and watched men play a peripheral role in parenting, but then have grown up and wondered, do I really have something to give? Yeah, and to me, that's one of the saddest things, right? Like, what do you mean you don't have something to give? You're a good person, you're a caring person, you're a loving person, like your kid desperately needs, that you have so much to give that I think we often forget the power we have as parents. And I don't mean like abuse is power. I mean, of course that can happen, but I mean the power we have to influence and affect our children is enormous, and I think that can be very scary for some parents, but I think also, particularly for dads, there can be this, well, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing, or I'm not confident in what I'm doing, and she seems like she's fine, like she's seen, you know, his partner, it's like he feels like she's doing really well. And so what else could I bring them without sort of understanding there's a whole other dynamic involved in a father child relationship, and that there's a real benefit, not just for kids with two parents, again, whether they're the same gender or whether living in the same house or not, right? There's a, there is a, you know, a psychological scientific benefit for kids with two parents. But also, you know, one of the greatest things in the world that I've experienced is how much I've learned from my kids in interacting with them. I mean, the things that they've taught me that I just didn't, whether it's you know, possibly how to be a little bit more cool, which has been helpful. But also, just like you know, the subject matters that they're fascinated by, that I didn't know anything about, right? So a great example of that that I love talking about is Broadway. I had no interested in Broadway. Both my kids extremely interested in Broadway. And instead of going, well, I don't really know anything about this fine, I was fortunate enough to say, Well, what do you like about it? Yeah, explain it to me or show me like, play me the songs that you liked and some of them I didn't like, you know, and that's fine, but some of them, I was like, wow, this is amazing. I get it, you know. And I don't think I'm ever gonna love Broadway the way they do, but it's become this thing that we can bond over now, because I was fortunate to just be able to say, hey, tell me about it like this is something I don't really know much about. And so I think you know those two things, you know, the being able to come at a dad from another angle, being able to help a dad learn about it, whether that's, you know, printing out a little article that talks about, you know, Dad involvement, or whether it's sharing a study, depending on the kind of man that he is right, like some people really do well looking at a scientific study, and some people do better with kind of a more anecdotal approach. And that's that's the approach that I use in my book. That's what I like about it is I enjoy talking about myself, so I enjoy writing about myself. So the you know, my stories are more anecdotal, and so some people learn better that way. So kind of finding where the little crevice is to reach him, I think, is what's really important.

Casey O'Roarty 28:54
Yeah, looking for the opening. I really appreciate that. I Hey, listeners, I'm just popping in real quick to remind you that one of the ways that you can work with me is through private one on one coaching. I am a certified positive discipline trainer as well as a certified life coach, and I love working one on one with clients to tease apart the challenges that they're having, as well as help them build a foundation around being the kind of parent that they want to be. If you are interested in learning more about coaching, you can go to www dot joyful courage.com/coaching, you. Coaching.

That's www, dot joyful courage.com/coaching, and if you're interested, you are welcome to schedule a free 20 minute explorer call with me at. Any time back to the show. What came up for me also is the importance that fathers have towards interrupting the conditioning of our culture around the messages that boys specifically are getting around, you know, expressing feelings, yeah, being affectionate, yeah, you know, because yeah. And I listened to you talk about Broadway, and I'm thinking to myself, Oh, my God, I wish that my kids were interested in Broadway, because they love trap, which is an offshoot of rap, and it's really, do you know what it is? Yeah, okay, of course you do, because you have 15 year olds, and it's like, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, and I've asked them, like, tell me what you like about this, and let's listen to it together. And then I'm just so I feel so old and so appalled, and I get to just love them and hug them and have conversations around messages, and I ask questions like, so how would you like if you were hanging out with people and they were, they maybe weren't wrapping this conversation, but they were speaking it out loud. Would you want to hang out with them? And they're they both look at me like, I'm insane. Like, no, but that's not what's happening here, Mom and I get to be like, okay, okay, you know, and Fortnite as well. So my son is 13, so he is in the Fortnite phenomenon right now, and, you know, sitting down with him, and he loves to try to teach me how to play, and I get to just push aside my whole oh my gosh, this is such a waste of time, and recognize actually, this is an amazing use of time, because I'm connecting with my 13 year old son, and yeah, and so connecting with them, seeing them, being with them where they're at, and Being willing to have hard conversations and be a model, especially for our sons, around being emotionally expressive, right? And, and, and it's not easy for everyone, like it's it's easy to say, hey, dads, you need to be more affectionate and emotionally expressive with your boys. And they might even think like, Yeah, I do. I want this for them, and being in it, you know, any, any kind of new type of behavior is so challenging. So how do we, as the as their partners, help them right? Because it's vulnerable and and even the women have a hard time with vulnerability. You know, and even like, and there's variance between like. It doesn't it's not a woman thing or a man thing. It's just a thing, yeah, and something that I do, and I would love to hear what like, how you support couples in your practice, is, I'm, I'm really big on being transparent and authentic in all the relationships in my life. And so one of the things that I invite parents to think about, and it's I love what you said, Yes, positive discipline. We call it parenting, but it's humaning, right? It's being in relationship with the people in your life. And so I really encourage parents to when it's time, when their opportunity presents itself, when there is an opening or crevice or whatever to really say, you know, I'm feeling uncomfortable. I'm feeling nervous about bringing this up, because I don't want you to feel like I'm being hurtful or trying to make you feel less than as a way and starting off that way as so that the soil is more nurtured and neutral, to have hard conversations about, how can we both show up better for our kids? Because that list that you were talking about, you know, our kids 30, at age 30, we, you know, I don't want anyone to think like, oh, shoot, I missed that opportunity. Like, you can always make that list, right whether your child is 15 or eight or in utero. But how do you support couples you know in in the in the process of opening or one person in the process with trying to open up a conversation with the other? What are some tips that you share that are useful. I

Jeremy Schneider 34:22
mean, I think your point about how to approach it makes a lot of sense. I think it's also thinking about again, kind of going back a little bit what I said earlier, but the same idea of sort of understanding where he's at as a parent, right? And I think it's easier to say he's not doing what I want him to do, or what I think he should be doing, versus what are you trying to do? Like, what are you thinking about when you're parenting? And, you know, what are you feeling when you're parenting? Because, you know, some of that can just be so much. Of that, like struggle with the self worth. Some of that can be exactly what you were talking about earlier. It can be that, well, no, no, I need to toughen him up. He needs to be harder. I need to, you know, and and, you know, that is a very real experience for some men. I obviously highly recommend against the head, but that is an absolute experience for some men, that perception that we need to be harder and we need to be tougher, and I think that, I think the only way we can break that, frankly, is by raising more emotionally intelligent and sensitive young men, because I think that's, I mean, that's the future from my perspective, right? That's the future. We're going in that direction anyway, right? We might as well just accelerate that by allowing our boys to experience feelings like a human Yeah, that only seems fair, yeah. And so, you know, I think you know again, and I don't mean to repeat myself, but I do think that it's the same kind of sort of understanding where this dad is coming from, yeah? Because I think once we can understand kind of where their mind is when they're parenting, it's a lot easier to start thinking about, Oh, okay, you did it because of this. I get that that makes sense. I can understand that, you know, one of the things that I've done in that situation has been, you know, and then you're kind of sharing interactions back and forth versus assessing his parental style and applying critics or critiques of it, right? And I think, you know, I, I really think that so much of yes, there are some men out there who are just not ready to be a parent, but I think more just like there's some women out there that are not ready to be a parent, but I think more often than not, the when I run into men who are struggling with parenting, or maybe not being the kind of parent even they hope they would be, it's often one because of something they went through in their childhood and they haven't quite figured that out, or they haven't gotten over it yet, or two, it's because they just don't they don't know, right? They don't have enough information, they don't have enough experience. And no one really ever said to them, Hey, you just keep trying until you figure something out. You just keep practicing until you get better at it. And I think, you know, we could teach people who are about to become parents those two things. One, a lot of parenting is about experimentation, right? Yeah, you just don't know what's going to work. And frankly, even if you figure out what works, it might not work in six months, and it might not work with your other child, right, right? And two is, you just get better the more you do it, yeah. And so just keep trying, because you're going to get better, just like if you're good at exercising or if you're good at playing a sport, or if you're good at doing technology, or if you're good at writing, whatever it is you got good at it because you did it a lot. You've never really done parenting. Give yourself a chance to do it more, and you'll find that it pays off in dividends. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 38:34
and listening to you, I'm really coming back to all of the tools that we use in positive discipline, which is connecting before correcting or redirecting. I often encourage parents, when trying to solve problems with their kids, to start off with, yeah, tell me about your experience with this. How does that? How did that feel for you? Because it we are so full of assumptions and so often miss the mark, because we think we know what the other person is experiencing, and what I'm really listening into, as you talk, is for couples, for mothers, to really listen into the experience that their partners are having inside of parenting and listening without judgment, so that they can say, Yeah, this is hard and scary for me, and I know I'm getting it wrong and I don't know what else to do. Or yeah, this is hard and scary for me, but I feel really strongly about this one place or this one thing, and I think too it's really important for us women to honor, not only acknowledge their experience, the our partners experience, but to really honor that it is the experience that they're having, and to trust that their partner's relationship with the children is theirs to own and create and to be in and we can be in. Encouraging, and we can be empowering, but we also, at some level, need to just let go and trust that they're going to do the best that they can do, and everybody's going to be fine. Yeah, they're not fine, but it's, you know, it's all going to roll out, right? And we can there's because I think there's also this tendency, I know, in the parent child relationship, but I think also in the partner relationship, to hang on and and to be really attached to what that other person's relationship looks like. And I don't think that that serves us very well.

Jeremy Schneider 40:36
No, it doesn't, yeah, and I think it's important, and just to follow up what you were saying that, you know, there's, there's one thing to think about, that we can both be parents, like, for instance, my wife and I parent differently. You know, our relationship with our kids is different, and our parenting styles can be different, but they're they're different because we're unique people, and because we have unique personalities, and because we made a conscious effort to try and play to our strengths, they're not different because we have some fundamental disagreement about the way to be a parent, and are thus going against that right? And I think that's something to really try and foster in not just men, but in relationships, in that partner relationship, that we can be different parents headed towards the same goal, yes, and that we just want to understand that we're headed toward the same goal if we choose to do that in a different way, because I'm better at this, but you're better at that, or you're more comfortable this way, and I'm more comfortable that way, that's totally fine. We don't want to be the same parent. We just want to be parenting in the same direction.

Casey O'Roarty 42:07
Love that, love that. Thank you so much, Jeremy, that is so I think that just feels really freeing, right? And I'm going to make an assumption myself to say that I bet the people that are listening to this show are gonna are feeling a sense of freedom inside of that as well. So in the context of co parenting, in a way that's helpful and not hurtful, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Jeremy Schneider 42:35
Thought about this, you knew it was I did. It's interesting. I think, you know, having survived a pretty traumatic childhood, I think about courage a lot. I don't normally think about it in the in terms of myself, and that's something that I've been working on, you know, to give myself credit for how far I've come and what I've been able to do and the kind of relationships I've been able to build with my family, I think that joyful courage is really being able to enjoy it's not just it's not the Success. I'm trying to think the right word, like joyful courage, to me, is being able to kind of bask in this life I've built. Right It took a lot of work to get where I am, and my wife and I have worked very hard to get where we are together, and we've worked very hard to survive as long as we have with our kids and get this far. And I think, to me, like, you know, one of the phrases that I play a lot in my head is the term happy chaos. Like, I think of our life as kind of a happy chaos. CHAOS doesn't have to be bad, and that's kind of the way we think about it. My life is chaos. It's just straight chaotic, because having teenagers and wanting to be there for them and wanting to be there for my wife and build this business and so on is over. Great. It's It's chaos, but there's a happy chaos to it, because it all involves things that I love and to me, joyful courage has that same kind of feel right. It's the freedom, the sort of joyfulness of doing something that takes an enormous effort and overcoming anxiety and fear to be able to do it. But that doesn't mean that it's bad. It can still be joyful in that experience of it.

Casey O'Roarty 44:43
Yeah, thank you. Where can listeners find your book and follow your work

Jeremy Schneider 44:49
so you can check out my website. It's jgs.net so it's just my initial Jeremy G Schneider, J gs.net and. You can buy my book there, and soon I'm going to have an ebook coming out, and which is another little piece about some of my early fatherhood experiences. And then next year, my memoir is going to come out. It's called in my rear view mirror, and it's going to talk about what I've overcome to get to the place where I am today, I'm looking forward to being able to share that beautiful

Casey O'Roarty 45:26
thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation with me. Jeremy, it was really great. It was my pleasure.

Jeremy Schneider 45:32
Thank you so much for having me.

Casey O'Roarty 45:37
Joyful courage. Community. You are amazing. Big. Thanks and love to my team, including producer Chris Mann at pod shaper. Please be sure to join in the discussion over at the live and love with joyful courage Facebook group, as well as the joyful courage business page on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Play, iHeartRadio, or really, anywhere you find your favorite podcasts, you can view the current joyful courage programs and my coaching offers over at the webpage, simply head to www.joyfulcourage.com to find more support for your conscious parenting journey. If you want to give back to the show, and I really hope you do become a patron, click donate on the website to give back to the show that gives you so much. Any comments or feedback about this episode, or any others can be sent to [email protected] I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way. Reach out, take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be okay.