316 | Living Wholeheartedly, Honoring Your Wife’s Emotions, and Connecting Amid Dysregulation (Jay Vallotton)
Episode Description
For Jay Vallotton, the turning point in his marriage was learning to connect with his wife through her emotions rather than trying to fix them. Now, Jason urges men to reconsider their approach to emotions, both in marriage and parenting. Tune in as he shares practical advice for repairing mistakes, handling dysregulation in a child, and approaching conversations with the end in mind.
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Jay Vallotton is the founder of BraveCo, a member of the Senior Leadership Team at Bethel Church, and an overseer of the Bethel Transformation Center. He is passionate about helping people discover their God-given identity, find freedom, and walk out their true calling. Jason lives in Redding, California, with his wife, Lauren, and their five kids and daughter-in-law.
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· To live wholeheartedly means addressing sin, being present, and fulfilling your God-given call instead of allowing fear to shrink you.
· Your wife needs to feel seen, known, and heard.
· Trust is not built through the absence of mistakes but by how you repair.
· The #1 conversation hack is to start with the end in mind.
· The right time to instruct and discipline is not when your child is emotionally dysregulated.
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Jay Vallotton: [00:00:39] Learning the journey of validating where she's at while not tolerating disrespect, while not just shutting down her emotions because it's so easy to go, hey, you can't talk to me like that and miss she actually feels really afraid, or she feels so frustrated. I have to handle her little heart and then when she's regulated, go back to hey baby, it's not okay to talk to dad like that and to reinforce it, which she can hear. Because somehow we believe this myth that when our kids are super dysregulated, that's the best time to try to teach them a lesson. It's not.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:01:16] Hey guys. Welcome back to DadAwesome. Today, episode 316, I have Jay Vallotton back on the show. It's been about four years since he joined us last time. We're going to talk about marriage. We're going to talk about what's going on in our hearts, what keeps us from living a wholehearted, how do we avoid this, like rush that we've all feel as dads. We feel this rush to, like, fix our kids or move our kids in a respectful direction or an obedient, compliant direction versus like, really acknowledge that man, their little hearts, we have to wait till their they come down from this place of being so emotionally wrapped up in like di,s deregulated. So, Jay brings such wisdom. I'm so glad you guys are listening today. He runs BraveCo. He's serving men all around the globe. He wrote a book, Winning the War Within just talking about like man, do we understand what's going on inside? And the way I just was really real in this moment of like, man, I need this. My marriage, I need it to grow in this area. I believe it's true for all of us. So, DadAwesome, episode 316, here's Jay Vallotton. It's been about four years since you were on DadAwesome last. And you added, a little, a baby, a little son. I added a daughter since then. So welcome back to DadAwesome.
Jay Vallotton: [00:02:41] Thanks, man. Yeah, it's such a privilege to be on here. And just so crazy how quick life goes. And also, like, you know what happens in four years.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:02:52] It's real. There's a lot of, a lot of change in your world and in mine and in the guys listening. So any guys who have already listened, man, and if you haven't heard, we're going to link back to your previous, the previous conversation. But I thought is a just a launch in point to start at this word that I actually studied yesterday, the idea of being wholehearted, living wholeheartedly. I studied the side by side of Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 11. Where it's talking about, man memorizing scripture, telling our kids about all the God's done, writing it on our doorposts and gates and and our, strapping it to our wrists and foreheads, but it, both of them it launches in like like this call to live wholeheartedly. What does that stir up in you, Jay, when you think about like dads living wholeheartedly?
Jay Vallotton: [00:03:36] Oh. I mean, the first thing that I think is like, I want to do that. And because I don't want to assume that that I am fully, fully doing that, you know, like, one of the scriptures, one of the prayers that David prays is like, God, search me, know me. Like reveal to me what's going on in my life. Which honestly, like is such a scary, dangerous like prayer, you know, because, but on the other side, I think that in order to live wholeheartedly we do have to address those areas in our life that aren't whole. That that have cracks or have a little bit of brokenness or doubt or, you know, lies and that's a very challenging thing to do because I think it always, it always preaches good, you know, like like scriptures like that preach good. And I'm not dogging anybody. I'm saying like, that's a, that's a feel good message. When you get out of church, you're like, man, I'm going to live wholeheartedly and be. But what that really means is when I come home and my wife confronts me on something and I dismiss her feelings, I'm not living wholeheartedly. When I come home and my kids want to play and I don't want to be present, I'm actually not living wholeheartedly. And it's very hard to, the practical application of of being. Because the things that you write on your heart, the things that you, that you write on your wrist, the things that, the truth, God's truth, right. You have to live those out in your day to day life. And there's accountability inside of that. We don't talk about accountability a lot in our day and age. There's not a lot of kind of accountability. But God, God has a standard. And can you imagine, I honestly don't know what would happen if God came down today and highlighted every area of my life that I'm not living wholeheartedly. And like, the truth is, is that it just it wouldn't just be sin areas because I don't have any outward, outward sin area that I'm like, you know, I haven't looked at pornography, honestly, since I was 16 years old. I've had bad thoughts for sure, 100%. I've, I've looked at another woman and been like, wow, wish I could have her. And so those are places that like, you know, I, I would say were, were sin areas of my life where I've stumbled like that before. But then there's other areas that aren't sin but aren't wholehearted, right. That are just below God's standard. And and so when I, sorry I'm going along. But I think of it really when it gets down to like, what does it mean to be a wholehearted man? It means that you don't violate your conscience and that you're living to God's standard. Because sometimes you do things that don't violate your conscience, but that aren't at God's standard. And I have to correct those, right? Like I have to, I have to change those I have to. It could be as simple as like me not feeling confident in, in myself and who God's called me to be like, that's that's below God's standard. That's actually not walking wholeheartedly towards the calling God has on your life. And then when we get even more, it's, well God's, it's like being fearful, right. Like God's called me to take BraveCo to X,X, to do X thing, and I'm like, I don't think that I can accomplish that. That's not actually pursuing God wholeheartedly. And so it goes beyond like I think the base line is like, yeah, if you have sin in your life, and that's the easy things to find. Those are like you know about it, right. Like, you're doing things with your eyes and your hands and your body that you're not supposed to do. That's the easy stuff. The hard, am I walking out this life wholeheartedly, is when it's, am I walking, am I, am I fulfilling the call? Am I letting fear shrink me? Am I backing down? Am I being present every day? Am I allowing my my wife to give me feedback and input? Am I being moved by the Holy Spirit when I'm playing with my kids? Not not like am I falling out on the Holy Spirit, but like, am I allowing the Holy Spirit to go, hey, you need to be gentle here? Hey, actually, you told her, you told her no, but she's really going through something hard. You need to actually need to listen to what she's going through, don't just tell her no. You know, it's those kinds of things. Like when I think about being a wholehearted man, a man after God's heart, it's tough. It's tough. It's be, it's a really being intentional and being tuned in and turned on to what is God doing in my life right now? And am I being attentive? Am I a steward of all that He's doing in my life?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:15] Yes. When I think of a gauge of a dashboard on my living wholeheartedly, for me, the the five people that help me most with that are my four little daughters and my wife. And it's, it's I just see in those interactions it's most clear. No, I was lacking there. Oh, I missed it there. And they have tons of grace, tons of forgiveness. But you mentioned, your wife and dismissing her feelings. That be an example of like, no, that wasn't wholehearted. But I, I want to go into that relationship. But for us that are married, you wrote a couple, statements, I think I found this in your Instagram, I can't remember. I, I pull all kinds of things preparing for these conversations. But you talked about a turning point in your marriage. And you said when I quit trying to talk my wife out of her negative emotions, instead, I just met her there where she was at. And you went on to say my wife's emotions were not something to fix, but something to connect to. Now, I read that this morning in preparation. If I would have read that yesterday morning, it would have been really good. It would have been really good for Michelle and me. So, would you take us into that topic of like, man, how do we live wholeheartedly into that connection and that place of not trying to fix?
Jay Vallotton: [00:09:29] Yeah. So, I used to think that, I used to think that, that I was doing a great job by not not having very many needs in a relationship. You know, not being, not being tough, not being tough to live with. And and that I can just, I could take a lot. I can handle a lot. I could, I could really meet a lot of, a lot of my wife's needs and, and, but really what was happening is, so I was very I was very high pleasing. Like, which isn't bad as personality type. I am, just by nature, high pleasing, you, by nature, are high pleasing. You know, it's it's part of like the counselor in us. It's part of the pastor in us is like, I really, really want to help people, and I really don't want to be a burden. That's all good. But what also was happening in me, more importantly, was I was afraid. I was afraid of conflict. I was afraid of what would happen if I went against the grain, if I told my wife, I don't actually like how you talk to me there. I don't like how you're treating me here. Or it was just so much easier to like, and I wasn't, like, a total pushover, right. Like, I'm not like, oh, just letting somebody run me over. But it's like the small things, like, I'm just gonna let that slide, she's on her period. You know, like, I'm, she's in the middle of cooking dinner, like, she didn't really mean it. She's just, like, stressed out and, and, and so what I started to realize is I'm afraid of my wife's emotions. I'm afraid of her anger. I'm afraid of her frustration. And my wife was, my wife is not like this horrible person. I'm just afraid, right. Like I just have fear. And, and so what also would happen is when my wife would have high emotions, like, let's say I come home and and she's saying, you know, I'm just so frustrated with the kids. My initial feeling is, I got to fix this. I got to solve this. Like we got to we can't have a frustrated woman running around here. And and the truth is, is like, I'm not trying to solve it so that her life's better. I'm trying to solve it so that my life's better. And if I can't solve it, the next best option was dismiss it. It's not gonna, it's not, babe, it's not that bad. The kids are, you know, they're just kids. They're just doing kids do. Instead of going, tell me about that. You know, a woman has three basic needs, and they have more, more needs than that. But in a relationship, to be seen, to be known and to be heard. To be seen, known and heard. And if you meet those needs, if she feels seen, if she feels known and she feels heard, it's like everything else works. But as soon as you start, as soon as she doesn't feel seen, as soon as she doesn't feel known, as soon she doesn't feel heard, she's gonna, she's gonna fight or flight, right. She's going to do one or, she's going to emotionally retreat, and you're not going to get her, right. You're not going to, you're not going to really have, you don't really have your wife. You may have a cordial, peaceful relationship, but you don't actually have your wife. Or she's going to fight, right. Because she's going to, she feels invalidated. She feels frustrated. She feels wrong. And so you're in a constant fight. But as soon as you, as soon as you see, know and hear, so, right. So I come home, same scenario, my wife says, oh, the kids were so terrible today. I feel so angry. And I realize anger is just an emotion. It's not good nor bad. It just is. And I go, oh, babe, tell me about that, that sucks. Tell me about that. Now I'm going against the grain of what I want to do. I hope you guys hear that. Like I'm afraid, I feel fear now, right. Like I'm having a moment. I feel fear, I feel, I feel frustrated, I'm bummed out. But I'm saying, hey, babe, tell me about that. What happened today? She goes, oh you know, Edie's been screaming all morning long. She's had a really tough day, and Liam's got a cold, and so, you know, he's just whiny, and I go, oh, yeah, it's so tough. That is so tough. Okay. The Gottman Institute calls this a bid for connection, right. And we know that they can, they can basically predict divorce based upon if you are able to meet, meet or if you don't meet your your wife's or your partner's bid for connection. And these bid for connections are these small little touch points. I come home for work today and I'm going to tell her something. I'm going to say, oh man, today was really frustrating. I had a, my next podcast appointment just canceled, and if she doesn't see me and hear me and validate where I'm at, then I actually just don't feel any connection. And I get resentful. So that's that's the next step, right? Is I get resentful. So again, like, I think what I have practiced, this is not, this is not my normal. This is against my normal. This is a sacrifice of loving her. This is a sacrifice of loving me. This is a vision point in my life. I want my kids to say I want a marriage like, like mom and dad. So this is why I choose to do this. And I practice guys, like I practice a lot. I put it in my mind when I'm driving home, like, I want to be present for my wife and for my kids in these moments. And if it sucks, it's going to be worth it. But here's what happens, right, I push through my fear. I go, babe, tell me about that. She unloads and I'm thinking, oh, tonight's going to be horrible. But tonight's never horrible, because of that. It's actually gets better, right, because she expresses her emotions. That brings connection. That brings a sense of relief. She is not staying in that moment, she had that moment. And now I'm able to really meet her where she's at. And I get the reward of that, which probably isn't sex. It's probably a deeply connected relationship, which sometimes is sex, but most of the time is I have a real partner who feels cared for and loved and known. And in return, she wants to do that for me.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:15:49] Right. There's a whisper in that scenario that you just talked about of my wife saying, man, this was so hard. And, and school and house and management and this trip and like, things are not, the wheels are coming off this thing like, right. I, what I hear is a whisper of I have failed as a husband. I have failed as a father. I have failed as a provider. I hear these whispers of her emotions has caused me to be a failure. And it's a total lie. Because what she wants is what you're describing. She really wants to be seen, known, hear. But that's, what would you say to like me, expressing, I was able to actually walk through Michelle, like, I think I'm feeling like a failure here, and that's why I'm coming back with strength and push back. I actually had to write it on a note card of like, this is how I feel. I could not, I was having such emotion of wanting to push back against her emotion. How would you kind of take me into that a little deeper?
Jay Vallotton: [00:16:43] Dude, that's magical, right. Because we all want to be able to say that we nail this 100, 100% of the time, in the moment. Like, this is what I do for a living. It's what you do for a living. And I mean, some days I get my butt kicked, right. But can you repair? If you can repair, see we think that trust is built through the absence of mistakes. But trust is not built through the absence of mistakes. Trust is built by, often by how you clean up a mess. And see your wife trust you because she knows you can have a bad moment. You're going to go away. You're going to process through that in a healthy way and come back and give her what you wish you would've given her in the, in the moment. And that's more valuable than being able to nail it every time, because we innately know no one's going to nail it every time. But what we don't know is, and I trust that you're going to come back and repair what has been damaged. If you can repair that, I really want guys to hear this, if you can repair what you are messing up, you're adding so much more value than just trying to get it right, perfectly or expecting yourself to. So you're not and your wife's not, your wife's not, more importantly, your whole environment, isn't. So your kids are going to watch you do this process. Your wife's going to watch you do this process, and they're going to follow in this ecosystem that it's okay to fail. It's not okay to hurt each other but it's okay to fail because we can go back and clean up a mess. So I would, for starters that's the baseline, right. That's that's a foundation that we're trying to lay. And I think, as you get really good, now, what we're talking about is can you, can you be self-aware with what you're really feeling, what you're really needing, what's really going on inside of you? And self-awareness really is the key here. And we can give some tips and tools for that. But that's really what's happening, right. You come home, your wife's talking to you, and you're feeling shame. You're feeling guilt, you're feeling some sense of remorse, whatever, anger. And if you're self-aware enough, you start to realize, oh, shoot, I'm feeling guilt, I'm feeling shame, I'm feeling remorse. You could even stop right there and just say, gosh, babe, I feel a lot of shame right now. I feel a lot of guilt. Or you can put that on the shelf and go, okay, that's what I'm feeling. I don't know that that's true. You could be the scientist. I don't actually know that that's what she's saying. And you can just meet her where she's at. My wife and I have a saying that you can really only, you can really only process one, one person's needs and emotions, one at a time, right, at a time. And so it's so much better if you can just kind of, like, shelve what you're feeling for the moment and really deal with her, really meet her. And if she wants to tell you, hey, I feel really frustrated at your lack of, you know, parenting me, or, you know, parenting the kids and then allow her to say that. Otherwise go, oh, tell me about that. Ooh, tell me about that. So then you know, the next, like if you have some key phrases, if guys just have some key phrases that they know that you can practice. And honestly, it sounds really dumb, sounds really scripted, but that's what you need. Because in the moment you're scared. So you're adrenaline's pumping, you feel like you're in a fight. If you can just say, hey, tell me about that. Or wow, that sounds really hard. What do you need? Amazing, right. She's going to meet you in that moment and unpack more. And later you can go on and say, gosh, when you're talking about that, I just felt like a failure. But you can always address that later, you know.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:20:22] So, tactically, this happened like three nights ago. This is fresh stuff here. I was able to capture what you just said, as far as, you know that, we really need to stay focused on one person at a time. And I actually use the tool I used Voxer from, she was in the house, and I said, hey, just give me, give me 5 or 10 minutes to process, pray. And, and I thought I might just like jot down some notes to come back, but I actually just sent her message, hey, this are some of the ways that I like that that that I am feeling right now. And, so it segmented to I was able to share kind of my heart. And that did kind of change the whole evening. So it's just a tactical way. One other thing I learned from you, it may have been in your book, Jay, or maybe it was also Instagram, which has been a great, and I'll link your Instagram and make sure our community is following you. But you talked about this conversation hack of, man, how do you want this conversation to end? And if we just come in with knowing, well, well, I want to move from my arriving home into dinner with the family, like that conversation moment, I wanted to end like this. And it's my wife feeling loved, supported, hugged, like I want it, I want it to end like that. Well, that kind of changes how we approach and enter in. Could you unpack that a little further?
Jay Vallotton: [00:21:33] That was great. And I got that from John Gottman. So I wish it was mine, you know, I wish I had all the science behind that. But, I implemented this probably like ten years ago, in my life. And it's, as a counselor even, it's a game changer. But it's, it works so well with confrontation. It works with your wife. It will, like when couples get in a really tough spot, all you have to think, you know, and we all do, right, like, you screwed it up. So it's one thing when you didn't and it screwed it up. It's a whole nother thing when you screw it up. This is where this tool will come and is magic. Because you're coming to do your repair attempt. You're coming back to, like, try to fix things. If you can think, how do I want this to end? Grab that piece and make that your, your starting point with her, verbally. So, you know, let's say that I dismissed my wife's feelings and I said, babe, like, you're blowing this out of proportion, it's not that bad. And now she's pissed off and she goes, I don't want to talk. Like when my wife goes, I don't want to talk anymore. I'm, like, frick, dude. I just really blew that up. So, I, at that point I'll say like, yeah, I get it. I'll walk away and think through like, I really messed it up. So my, my repair, I'm going to come back and I'm going to say, hey, I know, I know that I dismissed your feelings and that I know that that, that's really painful. I don't, you don't deserve that and I don't want you to feel dismissed. And because that's how I want us to, I want us to, and if I now if I jump into I want to feel connected to you. I want you to feel seen. I want you to feel known. I want you to feel heard. That's the whole start of my, a lot of guys would come back and say, listen, you're so frustrated about something that happens every day. You're so frustrated about the, Edie and Liam, you know, having a hard moment. It has to be okay that the kids have a hard moment. You're back in the fight. She feels it, she still feels dismissed, still feels, you know, doesn't feel seen. Another scenario is I had something really hard happened, and I need to confront somebody, they don't know about it. If I start with, hey, I want to share something with you and I'm doing this because I want to feel connected. I want to feel known. I, at the end, like, I want, I want you to know where I'm at so that we can solve this problem. You just set them up for success. And now I'm going to use the tool and the principle of talking about myself, right now, not talking about them, but talking about myself. So that would be the next plug and plan there. It's like, start with the end. So the principle is if, a how you start a conversation decides how it ends with 80% accuracy. So that's where it starts. I'm the, I don't think it was the Gottsman Institute that said, start with the end in mind. But I've learned that if you start with how you want things to end, if you grab that and put it in the beginning, it's magic. They just say a soft start, a soft startup decides how the whole conversation goes.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:24:46] Okay. This is so helpful. I would stay, you know, the last ten minutes of this conversation today, Jay, I want to, I want to stay there longer, but there's so many other areas that, that I wanted to ask you about. And for the specifically dads with a four year old, two year old, because kind of a phase of your littles, you got your, you got your adult kids and then you got the two littles. I just thought it'd be helpful to go this direction for a little while here of, what have you learned, the last few years, since we connected last for the last DadAwesome podcast? Like, are there some learnings that you could be like, hey, this, this has got to be transferable to the DadAwesome community?
Jay Vallotton: [00:25:19] I'm relearning everything. And, and I don't want to. I'm not like, oh, I'm rewriting the book on, I'm not rewriting any book. I'm relearning. I did parenting, you know, for those of you that don't know, I have a 24 year old, a 22 year old, a 20 uhh, almost a 20 year old, from my first marriage. So I'm remarried. We went on this, I don't know, nine year infertility journey with my now wife. And so it took a long time to have kids again. And now I'm doing it over again. And I thought, it's going to be, you know, not easy, but I know what I'm doing. And the truth is, is I know what, I know what I did. And, but what I'm doing now, so where I'm at now, my, my daughter has some sensitivity issues, some sensory issues and or challenges, whatever you want to call them. I don't even know, correct term. But some challenges and so, you know, putting on pants, when she turned three, my mother in law passed away, and we went down there for five weeks to South Carolina. And we were in her home for five weeks. And it was very, very hard on my three year old to watch her grandma dying. And, and so that kind of kicked in what was already tough kind of made it really tough. And so, you know, my old way of parenting was just love and logic logic, you know, which was which was great and works if like if you have normal, easy kids like, it works and you think that you're the best parent in the world. You know, I've got a lot of friends who think they're the best parent in the world. They're, your parenting kids that are fairly easy, you know, and that's fine. That's great. Like, I hope that's all everyone has. But what I learned is my love and logic style is is fairly dismissive of what she's really going through. And it, it values compliance more than it does emotional connection. And so, I am, we have my daughter in some play therapy and some listening therapy, as well, which is helped immensely. But what's honestly helped the most is Lauren and I are in therapy with the therapist, learning. So I'll give you an example, 5:30 this morning, 5:40 this morning, my daughter calls out my name dad. So I go in there and She's ready to get up. So I know that I'm going to play on the ground with my daughter, well I played on the ground with her for the for the next hour and 20 minutes. And I'm going to interact in a way that's engaging, that's curious that, and so before, you know, before, love and logic me would have, would have, you know, we're not ready to get up, this isn't the time to get up and, you know, you need to stay in your room and then she's going to cry. And, hey, if you're not fun, you know, like you're not being fun, right. And so I'm just realizing, like everything to me now, everything is happened through emotional connection. I still have, there's still, she still needs to fear God. She still needs to respect mom and I. And so we're learning the journey of validating where she's at while not tolerating disrespect. While not just shutting down her emotions because it's so easy to go, hey, you can't talk to me like that. And miss, she actually feels really afraid or she feels so frustrated. So why she's talking to me like that is because she feels so frustrated. So it's like I have to handle her little heart. And then when she's regulated, go back to hey, baby, it's not okay to talk to dad like that and to reinforce it when she can hear. Because somehow we believe this myth that when our kids are super dysregulated, that's the best time to try to teach them a lesson. It's not.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:29:13] Isn't that the, the lizard brain? When they go, they go into that fight or flight, right?
Jay Vallotton: [00:29:16] Yeah, she's fighting for her life. And I'm going, it's not okay to disrespect. Like, I'm tough enough. Here's the truth. It's because I'm afraid, right. I'm afraid that if she acts out like this, that she's going to be off the rails and out of control. But here's the truth, if she feels emotionally connected and she feels seen and known and heard, then she'll protect that connection. Everything comes out of that. And you know what, what I didn't know for a long time is that kids don't, babies don't have the ability to regulate their emotions on their own. They do it through co-regulation. And so it actually takes me, the parent, to bring peace to the child. That's why we rock, like we, we instinctually rock the babies and and we instinctually go shhhh. Like, no one really had to tell you to do that. We just do that. It's because they don't have, their brain isn't fully developed enough to do that on their own. Well ss they're getting older and even as their brains developing, we're teaching them. We're imparting to them regulation. This is how you regulate. So as my daughter gets older and we're watching it now, she's, this morning I walked in to, this a great example, I walk in this morning and my daughter goes, I don't want you in here, I want mom. And I go, oh, babe, I'm just here, I'm here because you called. Because you, because, she actually called for mom. But mom's sleeping, I'm here because mom didn't sleep last night, and, and so I'm here to be with you. And she goes, I don't, dad, I don't want you to be here. Now, she wakes up, she wakes up disregulated, some mornings. And so I said, hey, baby, I really love you. I, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to be here if you want me here. She goes, I don't want you here. Get out. And I was like, and so I said, hey, this isn't super fun for me. I just want to let you know this isn't fun for me. This is, this is really tough for me. I go back to my room, I lay down. Five minutes later, she calls me, dad. So I go back in. And she goes, hey, good morning dad. I said, good morning babe. She said, can I get up? It's is it morning time? I said, you can get up. And what do you want to do? You want to play? Yeah. Let's play. Well she's learning, she used to stay in that mode until I found a way, I would find a creative way to get her to interact with me, to help her regulate, to get out of that mood. Now she's, we've, over time, helped her learn that she can make a decision. She can climb the happiness ladder, and she can go from a place of being unhappy to happy. So she's literally doing that, on her own now and repairing, right. She's coming to a place where she goes, oh, I'm really just triggered. I actually didn't feel good with what I did with dad. That wasn't fun for me. I want to have a fun morning. I'm going to try again. And I get to go in and we had a great morning. She didn't actually freak out at all. I'm learning, I'm learning, and I'm growing where that would have, I would have felt really disrespected. I would have, it would have not been fun. I'm not, you know, it's not okay to talk to dad like this. If you're going to talk to me, I'm going to leave the room and you know all that stuff. There's a place for some of that stuff, and, you can't just let your kids run over you. But you also have to realize, like, I'm, I've got, I've got 18 years to win this. I got 18 years. The most important thing that she knows in this moment is that, like God, I won't leave you. I won't forsake you. I'm not afraid of your pain. I'm not afraid of your worst day. And honestly, I'm terrified of it. It's scary. It's very disregulating to me. It's very, very challenging. I don't like those moments. I want to do everything in my power to end those moments. So I have to, I have to regulate my own emotions. I have to talk myself down while she's doing that. Otherwise, I will act out. So that's what I'm learning.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:33:29] That is, you packed so many like, wisdom, like dad wisdom moments in that. Just what are you learning in one story. I, I would love to send our DadAwesome community your way. So, to follow you on Instagram, to check out BraveCo. You got a big event in June. Send our guys that direction. Your courses, your coaching. Specifically, I'm going to put there's six things that make a BraveCo man. I could record a whole podcast with you around each of those six. So I'm going to link it as just a way of like, wow, if these resonate with you, get over to Jay Vallotton and to BraveCo. So that's all I'm going to send our community your way. I'm so grateful for you. And so like, Jay, the level that you, instead of trusting your feelings, your emotions in that story you just told, the amount that you're like, I'm going to be aware that this and this and this are firing within me, but I'm going to bring the presence of peace to my daughter. I'm going to bring my strength and awareness that I have a lot more years lived than she does in this moment. I'm going to walk with steadiness back to the bedroom and and then just like, look at what happens when we enter versus trying to come against that, that's not what you should be doing in this moment. So there's so much there. I'm so grateful for you. I was hoping you could just pray over all of us as we end our time.
Jay Vallotton: [00:34:44] I Can. 100%. Yeah. And I have a I have a marriage podcast, as well. So if couples are looking for help and kids, so it's called Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons and so, please go check that out. Father, thank you so much for what You're doing in our lives. And, Lord You know being a man, being a husband, being a father is a tough job. And Lord, we are, we're all in the same boat. John Eldridge gave me this prayer. He said, he said, I'm your son and You're my dad, would you come Father me today, Lord? That's the prayer that we have that, that you would come Father us, Lord. That You would help us to live wholeheartedly. Lord, that You would help us to address those areas in our life that we feel scared and powerless and weakened. Father, that You would bring us to a place where we don't lack anything, Lord. That we would have Your grace, Your mercy, and Your wisdom to to walk wholeheartedly, God. In everything that You've called us to do. Amen.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:35:49] Thank you so much for joining us this week for episode 316 with Jay Vallotton. All the show notes, the conversation links, the his book, the ministry BraveCo and all their resources are all going to be listed at dadawesome.org/podcast. And you can find it right there, it's the most recent episode. Also, of course, in all your podcast apps and players, you can, you can check out the show notes. I want to encourage you guys, DadAwesome, we are listener supported. We're a nonprofit ministry. We're so thankful, there's been about 65 families or businesses who have given financially to help support this mission, fuel the mission of DadAwesome, activating dads to lead with wonder. If you, at all, are curious or prayerfully would consider making a donation to DadAwesome, go to dadawesome.org/give. I want to thank you guys and thank the team that's already been behind this mission the last three years. I've been full time for about three and a half years in this mission of DadAwesome and our activation events, Fathers for the Fatherless. By the way, we launched our Fathers for the Fatherless event series, just this last week, so you can check out all of the f4f events. We've got triathlons, 100 mile bike rides, and obstacle course races featured all around the country, this next year. f4f.bike, F number four letter F dot bike to find out all that information. Thanks again for listening. Thanks for being DadAwesome for your families. Have a great week guys.
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· 3:48 - "One of the prayers that David prays is, God, search me, know me, reveal to me what's going on in my life. Which honestly, is such a scary, dangerous prayer. But on the other side, I think that in order to live wholeheartedly we do have to address those areas in our life that aren't whole, that have cracks or have a little bit of brokenness or doubt, and that's a very challenging thing to do. But what that really means is when I come home and my wife confronts me on something and I dismiss her feelings, I'm not living wholeheartedly. When I come home and my kids want to play and I don't want to be present, I'm actually not living wholeheartedly. The practical application of being. The things that you write on your heart, the things that you write on your wrist, the truth, God's truth.. You have to live those out in your day to day life. And there's accountability inside of that."
· 17:05 - "Trust is not built through the absence of mistakes. Trust is built by how you clean up a mess. Your wife will trust you because she knows you can have a bad moment, you're going to go away, you're going to process through that in a healthy way and come back and give her what you wish you would've given her in the moment. That's more valuable than being able to nail it every time, because we innately know no one's going to nail it every time. But what we don't know is, I trust that you're going to come back and repair what has been damaged. If you can repair what you are messing up, you're adding so much more value than just trying to get it right, perfectly or expecting yourself to. You're not and your wife's not, more importantly, your whole environment, isn't. So, your kids are going to watch you do this process. Your wife's going to watch you do this process, and they're going to follow in this ecosystem that it's okay to fail. It's not okay to hurt each other but it's okay to fail because we can go back and clean up a mess."
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