This is a summary I did in the studio of a live parenting seminar I recently gave for 500 parents in Sydney, Australia.

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Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you here.

Thanks so much for taking a moment to come and listen to this content.

It's a great privilege to, uh, to have the gift of your time.

Time is such a commodity in our modern and busy world.

So welcome aboard.

If you're listening to me, you're here for one or two reasons.

You are either in the room recently where I spoke to about 500 parents.

And Dave you're listening.

When you were in the room.

Welcome back.

It was a really great night and so good to meet many of you afterwards.

If you weren't there, you'll have come across this in another way.

So welcome aboard.

We are all in one way or another on this parenting journey together,

this challenging, complex, demanding journey of parenting.

I was thinking recently that, uh, you know, a few years ago I saw

this photograph of the space shuttle in, inside on the cockpit and.

And you look at that photograph, you can probably Google And, uh, you see this vast

array of buttons and switches and dials.

And, you know, it's fascinating to look at that complexity, but believe

it or not, the space shuttle actually had a manual, an actual manual.

You could read on how to pilot and fly

And I'm mentioning this because it's interesting to note that something so

vastly complicated still had a manual, but guess what else is really complicated and

challenging, but doesn't have a manual.

And that's your child and my.

And my children.

Uh, we all, uh, desire to be really good parents, but it

doesn't come with a manual.

Does it?

It's, it's a challenging and, um, and at times frustrating task,

but, uh, it is a task with giving a very best if it's two, because the.

The results, both for.

You know, for, in terms of our own vocations and for the wider culture.

I just crucial at this particular moment in history.

So friends welcome aboard.

I want to talk about a few things.

I want to just give a brief summary of the evening.

And then I'm going to offer you some, you know, some of the key takeaways, hopefully

that are practical for you as well.

Karen and I have three children.

And as I mentioned to the audience, we weren't able to have

children for six and a half years.

We were desperate to start a family, but we weren't able to.

And eventually Karen was diagnosed with celiac disease.

Once that was resolved.

I, uh, I like to say we couldn't stop having children.

We had three.

In three and a half years.

And as I record this, they're still quite young.

And, uh, but so all I'm saying is we're very much on this journey with you guys.

As we try to do our very best and learn as much as we can and, um, hopefully

share some of what we're learning and what we've learned over the years.

My background, I guess, uh,

You know, has been in the education sector.

I've got a bunch of postgraduate degrees and, uh, have spent the last

kind of, I guess what it must be now two decades, uh, speaking around the

world to more than 400,000 people.

On all these sorts of topics.

And, uh, so that's kind of, what's brought us into this space

and let's, uh, let's jump in

Look, what I titled the presentation was I called it one big idea

in three useful questions.

So I want to give you one main idea that kind of permeates the

presentation and they're going to frame three useful questions.

And then in the end, I'm just going to give you a summary.

Of some of the practical ideas that I think we can all put into place.

So the one essential, big idea that I'm keen to share with all of us

is simply the idea that no one can parent your child better than you.

Now I know in the difficulties and challenges of daily life, it

can feel that that's not the case.

Right.

You can sometimes feel that you're not getting it right.

Or there's all sorts of challenges and problems.

And, and, you know, I don't want to digress, but all of

us are in a different place.

Some of us, you

Uh, parenting comes pretty easily to us.

We've been blessed with relatively easy kids.

Some of us Not in that situation, right.

We're dealing with.

Often complex, uh, behavioral problems or peer group problems.

And, you know, there's a spectrum right?

From, from no problems all the way up to extreme problems.

But I do want to really encourage us all to remember that no matter how

difficult or easy it may feel at times,

We've got to hold onto this belief that we're meant to be the particular

parent given to our particular children.

And that no one can do this better than you because no one could

ever be more invested than you.

So I'd like to think that God has really chosen and ordained you to be the

specific parent of your specific child.

And if that's the case, and I've got a relatively diverse audience

listening to this summary, but.

You know, I like to think in the sense of vocation, if we've

been called into a vocation.

Such as the vocation of parenting.

Then if God calls us into that, then it's his problem to sustain us in it.

So by that, I mean that, I think there's a deep, spiritual,

sacred aspect to parenting.

And if we're caught into it,

Part of our journey will be trusting that we are supposed to be there.

I spoke in Boise, Idaho a few years ago and I never forget

what the, the Bishop said.

He was introducing me to a teaching convention.

And, uh, I remember him famously saying, he said, everybody,

you've got to stop trying to make Jesus unemployed, who has liked

So for me, there's a deep, um, spiritual basis to what we're doing here and

that God wants to support us in it.

So.

As I mentioned before, there's a lot of differences for us, uh, in

difference in our life experiences.

So some of us, you know, there may be some single parents There'll be some of

us listening where everything's going well, as I said, some of us listening, we

everything's a challenge and difficulty.

But despite the differences that we have.

And the other difference I mentioned on the night too, I should recall.

Is our own experiences of being parented.

So, you know, our own experience of our own childhoods.

Some of us had a really straightforward, easy childhood.

Some of us had extremely difficult childhoods.

And therefore, you know, the, uh, The experiences that we've had

really shaped our parenting and, and create either blessings or

challenges for us on the journey.

But despite the differences.

I was really keen to say that what unites us all as parents, the one thing that

we could say, despite our differences.

What unites all of us as parents is that we desire the good of our children,

that we love them, that we desire.

Good for them.

Uh, in my post-grad work in philosophical anthropology, we did a lot of work on.

Understanding The deeper meaning of human love.

And it's been highly sentimentalize in our culture into a purely emotive

construct, but decide that you love your children really means that yes,

there can be an affective component.

Boredom really means that we desire good happens to them for their

own sake, for their own good.

So what unites every one of us is that if we could wave

a magic wand, we would, will.

That good happens to them, not just that.

They have good experiences, but that they become good on this journey of life.

And the last kind of opening point I made was to remind us all.

There'll be nothing more significant.

I think that we'll ever do in this life.

Everything else can be taken from you, right?

Every, every bit of success that you've had in your life, whether it's career

success, financial, professional, whatever it is, you know, you can be.

General secretary of the United nations, you know, whatever you could be president,

but all of these things can be taken away.

And all of these things are susceptible to the ravages of time, sooner or later,

all of these things can be taken from us.

So.

What I like to say to people is.

In the final moments of our lives, you know, it really, what will

be most significant to us will be the people in the room with us in

those final moments of our lives.

You know, and, and I quoted Saint John of the cross who famously said

at the sunset of our lives, we will be judged on how we have loved.

You know, so in the daily battle of life and all the complexities that we're

all living through, the busy-ness, the overwhelm, all of that, that defines so

much modern life and modern parenting hold onto the fact that really.

You know, in the day-to-day daily grind, everything's screaming at us, right?

There's so many emergencies, there's so many contingencies and

things you've got to deal with.

But let's try and hold onto this truth that this parenting journey

is just about the most significant thing that we're going to be doing.

All right.

So let's move on to these three useful questions.

So we've got the one big idea, which is that you're meant to be doing this.

You're uniquely positioned to be doing this.

No one can do this better than you.

Okay.

So.

The three useful questions that I framed these number one, what is your deepest

desire as a parent for your child?

Where's the deepest desire that you have for them.

Second question was what stops you from achieving that desire?

And finally, uh, what can we do to more closely realize our desire for

our children's growth and flourishing?

So what is it that we want?

What stops us, getting what we want and what can we do to make it more frequent,

having more frequent experience of.

Of approximating what we truly desire in this parenting journey.

So I'm going to step through those quickly and then I'll give you the, um,

the, what I come up with in the end, I came up with eight practical things or.

You know, a mix of theoretical and practical things we can do.

Are you ready?

We're almost, uh, we, we, we're almost there.

It's a short summary.

Uh, time is precious.

So let's do it the first useful question.

What's your deepest desire as a parent for your child I did an, this sort of

experiment in the room where I said, if you ask most people, you ask the, the

man or woman on the street, the average person, the average parent, most people

tend to say something along the lines of.

That they want their child to be happy.

So, what I said on the night again, was that's problematic for a few reasons.

One is, you know, at least without going deep down this rabbit hole.

The meaning of the word, happiness has undergone a rather seismic.

Uh, transformation since around the time of the French revolution.

Before that.

If you asked somebody about happiness or what it meant to be happy.

They would not have conceptualized it as necessarily a feeling state.

As in an emotive feeling state.

So what I say to people to help them understand initially is the problem

with saying that your desire is happiness, or you want your child,

or you want someone to be happy.

You have to remember that.

Ax murderers and psychopaths.

Uh, capable of experiencing the emotive reaction of happiness.

Regardless of how abberant their behaviors are.

So if our greatest desire for our children is nothing other than a

feeling state that's problematic, right?

Because.

You know, It means they're the goal state of their being is very much at

risk of the vicissitudes of life, right?

Like they hacked.

Well, I have this feeling state if they experienced loss or suffering.

So.

What does happiness really mean?

So I took the audience back to the deepest roots of it, which probably go back to.

You'd say probably maybe 500 BC.

You know, classical Athens kind of thing.

Where.

The idea of happiness was based on the Greek philosophical idea

of what they called a Damon.

Not a demon, a Damon, which was this idea that the Greeks had, that we all

carry within us a, like an imprint upon our soul, which you can understand as

like software code or computer code.

And the goal of life is to take that source code.

And actualize it into the world, right?

To bring out all your potentiality, all the courage.

You could have all the compassion.

You could have all the creativity you could

And take that code and bring it out into the world.

And if you did that, the Greeks would refer to you as a, you de Mon or you would

experience what they call the eudaimonia.

And for the Greeks, that was kind of the goal of the good life.

Was to take the natural potential for good within you

and bring it out into the world.

So, and the vehicle for it, the modality, the way that they did it

was through what they call virtue.

That the way that you brought this thing out into the world was living virtuously.

All right.

So that's the end of the philosophy philosophy lesson.

But my point is if our desire for our children is happiness, what it really

means is that our desire should be for what the Greeks would say is true.

Human flourishing.

All of the potentiality in your child coming out into the world over the

life course over their life journey.

So it's the development of character then becoming all that they could

be not in the kind of Oprah new age sense where it's all about.

You know, self-actualization often say that I, I think, uh, Maslow was wrong.

You'd all be familiar with the idea of, you know, that the Maslow's.

Hierarchy of needs and self actualization was the pinnacle.

I think he was fundamentally wrong.

And if you read biographies of his life, he was pretty strange cat.

I mean, to be honest, go have a look.

Uh, I don't discount everything he said, but the idea that self actualization

was a pinnacle is I think incorrect.

Uh, the.

Pinnacle of the human experience is something that,

um, you know, if you look at.

For example, Thomas Merton's book, the seven story mountain.

He makes the point that that the ultimate point is not self,

you know, Self actualization.

Self-transcendence it's to go beyond the self to take all that you are

and offer it up into the world in, in the gift of yourself, to the

world and to relationships and to creativity, into building the common

good, all those sorts of ideas.

So.

Well, I guess what I'm getting at here, and I apologize if I've just,

Fall and tripped over and falling down the philosophy rabbit hole.

But I think we need to get some of this back.

I think we need to think deeply about what is a fundamental desire for parenting.

I find it sometimes when we have to deal with consequences

in our own parenting, right.

We have to set boundaries for our kids.

And I don't know if you do this, but I can second guess myself, am I being too hard?

Am I being too easy?

What's the, you know, what's the right mix here.

And then I remind myself, you know what I'm trying to do here.

Is form character.

What I'm trying to do here is what the Greeks were saying

is to take this imprint.

And use the vehicle of virtue and character development.

So that child flourishes in life.

Okay.

So.

I hope that's useful that what we want is their happiness, but that hair happiness

conceptualized as human flourishing.

Potentiality through the vehicle of virtue and character development.

That's what we're after.

And the last thing is

As an answer to question one, what should deepest desire as a parent for your child?

Is I shared a story of my oldest child, Olivia, who is a.

You know, we've we, we took her out of formal schooling and she's been home

educated and just doing a phenomenal job.

Like she's, she's just achieving.

You know, amazing

Doing a kind of great books, classical education program out of the U S.

And a few weeks ago, my oldest brother was over with his family.

We were having lunch on a Sunday and afterwards everyone was sitting around.

He asked me how Olivia was going.

And I just raved.

I said, mate, I said, she's You know, in this beautiful space she's doing so well.

She's reading.

You know, to talk feels, uh, Democracy in America, she's

reading the Federalist papers.

She's reading Plato's Republic.

She's 15.

And, you know, I said, she's just amazing, you know, she's, she's got,

she's working, she's done all this stuff.

And.

He said something.

It really stuck with me.

And trust me, there's no, triumphalism in this.

You know, it's like, we've, we've been, we, we prayed a lot.

We've worked hard.

We've tried to do what we can.

But he said to me, he said, oh, it's because she's taken on your values.

She's taken on your values.

And it really struck me.

I suddenly realized I went he's right.

Like she's actually.

Looked at Karen and I and our view of the world and what we value

and believe is worth valuing.

What is worth.

You know, what's true.

Good and beautiful.

And she has.

I guess witnessed Considered And taken it on as, as appropriate for her.

So at this point, I guess some people can push back and say, well, have you

just created an automate on if you just created a robot carbon copy of

yourself in Canada, it's not true at all.

I don't think that's remotely what's happened.

I think that she has.

Just observed and thought and read and experienced and it has and taken it on.

And if people still resist that I say to them, well, it as a parent, I guess,

because you could say, well, you know, you children should encounter the world

and meet all these different people and make their own value judgements over time.

I go.

I don't know, friends.

Think about it this way.

If you do not want your child to take on your values.

Exactly whose values do you want them to take That's a pretty

confronting question, right?

Because if you do not want your child to take on your values, we've got a

problem here because for that to be true, you would have to believe that

either your values aren't that good and there's better one somewhere else.

And that's a pretty.

Depressing thought to be honest.

You know, I think we should, as parents have some, you know, some courage in

the, the significance of what we believe to be true and what we've experienced.

I think just try not to go down the rabbit hole, but I think one of the In

post-modernity is the idea that, that, that young people are inherently wise

and they are the equal of their elders.

That can't be, you got to live long enough, like, um,

You know, I remember my forties now and I'm like, you I still figuring it out.

Like you have to live long enough.

You have to have a lot of experience.

You have to suffer and file and have some wins and live life to kind of

frame what you know, to be true.

And what is worth valuing.

So.

I think we can be, it is okay for, to want your child to take on your values.

I really do.

You know, and the last thing I'll say about that For a long time, Olivia and

I would get up every Saturday morning.

We drive two hours to the coast.

Uh, cause she loves surfing and we got into surfing.

And unless two hours there, we would just talk and listen to interesting

podcasts about the world and history and geopolitics, and talk about

Then we drive back for two hours and I look back at that time and it was tiring.

It was exhausting.

It was a lot of driving, but I really see that time as formative in shaping.

So I just want to say to you, what's your deepest desire for your child?

Flourishing character development virtue, and that they.

Take on the best of your values, maybe they didn't take on absolutely everything,

but the best of what you value.

All right.

Number two.

What stops us from getting what we desire for our child and.

You know what I said?

There's, there's three factors.

The first two, I mentioned a briefly, the third, I talked about a bit more.

The first factor that stops us.

Like our hearts are full of hope for our kids.

Right.

So what stops it from working?

Number one is the surrounding culture itself.

Uh, I refer to this as.

Uh, you know, I just, I sort of said to the audience, I don't want to spend the

next half an hour on a whiteboard listing.

All the things that you know are really wrong with our culture.

I think that happens a lot.

Right.

We list.

Body image and social media and pornography and all these

things that affect our kids.

And they're all real.

And then we need to talk about them in, In the right context.

But I just said, look, the culture around us in general is inimical to the values

that most of us hold for parenting.

Right?

It's just, it just is.

So my synopsis of the culture, what I think is happening is what we've

got is essentially late stage hyper consumerist, technocratic capitalism.

Infused with a kind of Nietzschean, nihilism and endemic cultural Marxism.

I think that's basically a.

A good synopsis.

We've got a huge regulatory capture.

We've kind of got the fusing of huge corporations, the political

Millia and, uh, legacy media, those three things reinforce and

feed off each other financially.

And.

And, and we've got You know, this Nietzschean nihilism still floating

around that nothing can be truly known that there's no, you know,

the good and evil are purely, um, relative and the will to power.

And then you've got cultural Marxism with its inherent focus on victim groups and

creating sorts of cultural evolution.

I think that's all over the place.

It's everywhere.

It's just.

You know, I think for myself having written study very deeply, I just kind

of say to people, I feel like it's the last scene of wizard of Oz and I

pulled back the curtain and I've seen what's going on behind the curtain

Um, like, oh, that's what's going on.

Okay.

Well, um, I'm going to click my heels together and head off somewhere Uh,

by that, I just mean that, you know, this is a culture that is not going to

be doing you any favors in parenting.

So I don't mean that we, that we run to the Hills.

We're here.

We got to make the best of it.

We've got to try and transform what we can reasonably transform.

But let's just be alert to the fact that.

And I would say vast swathes of the education system.

Uh, immersed in forms of cultural Marxism, whether they know it or not.

Uh, so you gotta be highly selective and attuned to where your kids are at school.

And that's why it was great to, to be row was a 10

I was real pleasure to be there.

Uh, because I think they get it and they know they get it.

So those are the, the first thing is the surrounding culture.

The second thing is the reality of evil itself.

Um, and then most of my audience are people of faith.

So I think the reality of evil of Satan and his desire, I sort of said to the

audience, we always gotta remind ourselves that the devil is not the equal of God.

They are not rivals.

For a whole bunch of reasons.

If you look at the, you know, If you look in scripture, God didn't

throw the devil out of heaven.

Right.

It was just wasn't even, you Michael did it.

It's like, you know, Satan was an angel that just, you know, I sort of said,

got it handed to him by Michael and thrown out and took a third with him.

So.

You know, Satan doesn't get to win any kind of ultimate battle.

So there's no great big, final.

Well, there is.

Final showdown, but it's not as if God's there.

Some of the Trinity is going, what are we going to do?

Do you think we can pull this off?

It's like, no, it's all done.

It's done and dusted this.

There's no final victory for evil.

It just isn't.

So, um, the only thing that the devil can do is to deprive God of individual souls.

That's that that's the game, right?

It isn't about is Satan running some incredible strategy where he's

going to sneak up on the Trinity and somehow, you know, risk, cosmic power.

That's not going to happen.

What is going to happen is genuine.

Evil is going to target marriage and family.

It's going to target people of faith.

It's going to target parenting.

It's going to target kids, all of it in the simple attempt

to separate souls from God.

That's it.

So I really want us all to be switched on to that truth.

I think in the last, whatever period of time.

You know, we've sort of.

I think we've stopped remembering that, and we need to remember it

again and begin to pray into that.

Begin to be spiritually very aware of it.

Be very much praying for our kids.

Uh, trying to grow spiritually ourselves.

And, uh, so that's the second part.

And look finally, the third thing that stops us from getting what we want.

Is what I talked about in lot more detail, which was our own

woundedness pain and past failures.

And in some ways that was the focus of the evening because.

We forget that.

No matter, even if we were parented almost perfectly, every

single one of us carries wounds.

So again, we've got a spectrum from people who are experienced profound abuse and

trauma and violence and abandonment.

All the way to people who felt they were parented really well, but still carry.

You know, the little scrapes and bumps of human family life and still,

you know, carry some things around.

We all do.

Right.

So.

One of the things we need to be vigilant about as parents is

simply that we carry woundedness.

We carry brokenness.

And what I said next was.

I asked the audience, the question.

What do you think is God's ultimate purpose in cosmic history?

Like, if you look at the great sweep of spiritual history,

What do you think God's doing?

Like what, what what's, what's the macro view?

What's the, the meta-narrative of all spirituality and faith.

And what I believe it to be.

And what a lot of theologians would say is it's all about redemption.

At the whole thing.

Is got offered.

Relationship, relationship was broken and then go, just went to

work, to restore relationship.

So the entire.

Sweep of cosmic history is about healing.

It's about redemption and it's about restoration, That's what

the incarnation is, right?

Like CS Lewis said that the incarnation is a daring raid on enemy held territory.

That's what it's about.

So.

We need to remember that.

All the wounds and the brokenness that we carry.

God is very much interested in healing.

All right.

What we need to do is be aware of our need for healing.

And pursue it.

So there's a whole bunch of ways you might do that.

Some people don't want to do that through counseling and, and possibly

therapy and working through trauma.

Um,

You know, I recommended stuff like the Catholic.

Uh, the Christian prayer ministry of people like Neil

Lazano, who runs the Unbound.

Uh, prey ministry.

Some people, some of us need to get prayed with.

We need to just receive prayer for healing.

And, you know, the Unbound ministry is a very gentle non-invasive.

Beautiful form of prayer.

So I just want to say to everybody listening.

Maybe you haven't explored this, but my point is that if we don't get healing

for the wounds and the trauma and the things that we've lived through in our

own experiences, It is hard, harder.

To parent as effectively as we could, you know, if we're carrying around.

All this sort of stuff.

So whether it's, you know, Rage or addictions or dismissiveness

or sarcasm and these things that come out in our parenting or can.

Then what are the roots of those?

And, you know, you look at the work of people like Dr.

Gabor Martay, like on addiction and trauma.

And we see how many of the pathologies that come out in life.

Uh, coming from pretty deep places within.

So healing comes from the sacraments, from prayer, from prayer ministry, from,

you know, these days I just go and sit in a church for an hour a day and I

Sit there and stare at the tabernacle.

And so what I And just, you know, after all these years I'm still

seeking healing and restoration.

To become a more integrated person to become a healthier wholly, a

person that's that's I'm trying to do, like you have to ask the people

closest to me, see how I'm doing it.

Check the report guard, but.

At least I'm aware that, that I need that, that that's a really important thing.

All right.

We're at the 24 minute mark.

Give or take.

So let's wrap this up.

What have we done?

We've talked about the one big statement, the one big idea, which is that no

one can do your job better than you as a parent and the three questions.

What do you want for your child?

What stops you?

And what can we do to experience it more often?

So let's finish up with, with number three, which is I listed kind of

eight things that we can go through.

So let me spin you through these and wherever you're listening to this.

There should be a link to get the PDF.

So Karen has done a beautiful PDF if you're a more visual person and you can

get all these notes on a PDF, it'll, there'll be a link to click to it.

So make sure you get the hard Alright, number one.

Reframe the trials and difficulties of parenting and family life

as invitations to growth.

Holiness and wholeness.

The things you see as most difficult.

Are often hidden invitations to unexpected growth.

I wonder if in parenting, like we often have some of the same

battles over and over again.

And some of them we need to have and really worth having, but.

Sometimes, you know, having coached a lot of people over the years,

the power of reframing questions can be quite profound, which is.

Instead of just having the same fight over and over again, ask

yourself a better question, which is.

What's going on here.

W what, what, where, where do I, why am I need to change?

Maybe it is your child that needs to change.

Sure.

But maybe we need to be more gentle.

Maybe we need to communicate better.

Maybe we need to learn to listen more fully.

So when the battles are happening and the trials and difficulties are happening.

That can be very debilitating and exhausting over time.

Right.

But begin to think.

Okay.

I remember a nun once famously said, God comes to you disguised as your life.

Like I spent years wanting God to speak to me.

Right.

I'm going, wasn't gonna speak to me.

I want an email from guide.

Just go, Jonathan, do this.

Here it is.

Step 1, 2, 3.

Didn't get it.

And you begin to realize that he's often talking to us through the

circumstances of our lives, through the difficulties and the challenges because

they lead us towards reliance upon God and that they lead us towards change.

So.

If you're facing some difficulties, ask yourself some better questions about them.

Where is the invitation to growth?

Number two.

Reorient your life to this parenting season and live it well.

Your time with your children in these formative years is short.

So commit to it because you'll not be given this time again, it's a

small window and it closes fast.

Audit your life and commitments and ask if you are doing all

that can be reasonably done.

Okay.

Just by that.

I mean, The incredible business and overwhelm of modern life in the big

cities particularly means that we can live kind of like I'll get to it.

I'll get to it.

I'll get to it.

I'll I'll get this time with much heart I'll I'll take them on this camping trip.

I'll get to this, I'll have this conversation.

I'm going to listen to them next

But by reorient our lives, I don't mean in a sort of sycophantic.

We're going to completely rebuild reality and make everything about our kids.

I just mean.

The window.

Is pretty small.

When I, when my kids were really little, they never slept.

And I just thought, man, I can never be harder than this.

Right.

We just didn't sleep for years.

Because they were so close in age and now they're kind of 15, 14, 12,

and it's a whole different set of challenges and experiences and taxi,

driving, and counseling and all these, you know, doing all this stuff.

But I'm still reminding myself that Jonathan really is about kind of

10 years left and that's it like?

Yeah.

You'll still be friends with them.

Yes.

You'll still have relationship.

Yes.

They'll still be things But this really formative window is short.

So let's make sure that we are clear on that.

And then we are giving ourselves.

The best that we can reasonably give to our kids in the windows that we have.

Okay.

Number three.

Invest in your own wellbeing, health, holiness, and growth.

You cannot give what you don't possess.

And you cannot give from an empty well, So by this, I mean, The exercise, the

sleep, the diet, the hobbies, and a know something you just passed out.

I just went, Really?

What does he think?

This is like, you know,

It's just like the sound of music.

This is like we, the Von Trapp family We know the kids are going

to turn up and peanut falls.

And when he's going to lead, I go for picnics.

No.

I just mean that it's okay to take care of yourself because if you are.

Well physiologically as well as you can be.

Then you're much more likely to.

Parent more effectively.

So I do a daily podcast and yesterday I was responding to a listener

question about time management and I talk about the non-negotiables.

So I have, I probably have three non-negotiables every

day, which is exercise.

Um, an hour for prayer and then time with Karen, the kids, you know,

And shout out to Andy Mullins.

He kind of helped me remember too.

Give each of my kids, some one-on-one time per day.

Even if it's 10 minutes, hopefully a bit longer, but I'm making sure that

I'm hitting those non-negotiables so.

The exercise things huge for me.

So I just wanna encourage you.

Like we tell ourselves stories like.

Oh, I could never do that.

I'm too busy.

I can't, I can't, I can't, we don't critique our stories sometimes.

The fact is you probably can get better sleep.

You can probably eat a little better.

You can drink a bit more water.

You can do a little bit more exercise.

You can reconnect to hobbies and things that give you life

because they're not selfish.

They're not indulgent.

They're ways of balanced living than, than allay to love the people

that you care about the most.

All right.

So get back onto that part.

Number four.

Um, if you're married, invest relentlessly in your marriage, it can be really hard.

In the struggle and busy-ness of modern life, but it's incredibly important.

So both on the marriage part and on the, on the wellbeing part.

I remember speaking to people afterwards in this recent live

You may have to be creative.

I was speaking to one great couple.

Who've got five kids under like eight.

And they're just trying to find time, you know, for their own wellbeing,

exercise and stuff, and then each other, and then everything else.

So, what I kept saying to them is you might have to be creative.

You'd be surprised what you can come up with if you think it through, um,

intelligently and sort of carefully.

So I really wanna encourage everybody with that.

That, um, It's just in the busy-ness of parenting and modern life.

The marriage part can just sort of.

I think we can leave as like, oh, well we're married is all good.

We're solid.

We're just going to put that on the shelf and just get through.

It's a bit like being at the beach when you kind of dive and under a big wave

and you're just coming up for the next one and the next one, the next one,

you're like, we'll just get through it.

We'll just get through.

And I encourage you that you we've got to step off the conveyor

belt and put some time into each other and time into the marriage.

So Karen and I like we'll kind of walk.

As often as we can, we can just get some time walking, uh, on a daily

basis and just read is a talk.

It's just talk, talk, talk, talk.

We just.

You know, some admin to go through, but often it's just checking

in what's happening in life.

How are we tracking?

And, uh, and then, then when we can, we, uh, we locked the children

in the house and leave them unsupervised and go away for two days.

No, we don't do that.

So we don't do that.

Nobody called family services and we don't do that.

Uh, but occasionally we'll have like grandparents, someone stay over and

we'll get away and it's just the best it's like you actually got.

Wow.

Who are you again?

It's like, hello.

And, uh, you actually get to reconnect.

So those things are really crucial, right?

So invest in your marriage.

Number five model in life, what you say matters most model in your life.

What you say to your children matters most, the way that

they take on your values.

Is by seeing that, whatever you say, you value, you demonstrate that you value.

So I think for me, I've sort of shown, you know, the kids have grown

up with me doing ultra-marathons and all sorts of craziness that I do.

So they, they see that health and wellbeing is important.

You know, they see that books and music and, um, you know, academic,

intellectual pursuits are important.

And very much faith, you know, they've seen that's, I'm somebody

who takes my faith really seriously.

And, you know, we've raised them to really S to be part of that.

So, You know, I can't say to my kids, Hey, get up and go to church.

If I never do it, if I don't show them that it's just central to my life.

And then, and then they, and they've just taken that on.

So we've got a model, what we say matters.

Right?

We've got to model it.

Number six.

Um, frequently apologize when you make mistakes, right.

I've it's just something that I've always done.

It's like a grace.

I've always, I've really gone off the reservation and got it wrong.

I go and apologize and say, Hey.

You know, I'm sorry.

I do apologize.

And I'm really asked them for forgiveness and, and we move on.

So, you know, we're going to get it wrong, friends, like, yeah.

We're parents and we're trying, and we're the adults, but

we're going to make mistakes.

We're going to be tired.

We're going to be snappy.

We're going to get it wrong.

Just apologize.

Say, Hey, last night when I said that that was out of line, I shouldn't have said it.

I'm sorry.

I'm just tired.

Would you forgive me?

So I think that's just a, another useful thing to do.

And finally I asked Karen, I said, you know, What are the kind of three

things that you think are essential to your role as a mother, as a parent.

And then I shared mine for what it's worth, uh,

You know, for me, my big three were to serve, protect, and teach.

So practically I'm somebody that, and I don't mean this with a shred of arrogance.

I just do a lot for the family.

I just do a lot, whether it's cooking dishes.

You know, working around the house, driving people, I just

serve, I just serve and serve.

And you know, Karen's dad was like that somebody I really admired.

Uh, you know, You know, coming into relationship with Karen,

he just, she just served people.

So.

Um, so whether that's, I just think that's really important.

I think, uh, you know, especially if I could say this to all the men,

like, you know, Yes, we're out there slaying dragons in the workplace, but

to serve in the home, just to serve, just to keep giving of your energy,

into making the lives of your spouse and children a little bit better.

Obviously to protect and that protection can mean, you know, Kaz

and I have been, you know, really involved in the kids' peer groups,

like just helping them to perceive what a good friend looks like and what.

You know, friends who are not so great might be thinking and doing and, and just,

you know, to protect them from some of the stuff until they're fully formed and able

to make the right choices on their own.

And finally for me, it's teaching, like I just talk about everything.

Politics, music, history.

Uh, you know, all these different things.

I just love.

I mean, you know, I think by Def by vocation, I'm a natural, I love

to teach and say, oh, that's been a big thing with the kids for me.

Uh, Karen talked about her three were to provide presence just to be a

constant presence to provide nurture.

Which means to make home a safe place.

And to help guide the kids growing discernment in life.

So she said presence, nurture and guide.

So I offer you those, those things and you'll have your own.

I just want to offer you those as kind of practical things.

Uh, that we can be doing, you know, in the daily grind of life.

All right.

That's kind of it.

Uh, what else?

So there's still no manual.

I've offered you a few things, uh, from here.

Please check in with this.

There'll be links here too.

So I do this daily podcast across YouTube and podcasting.

And there's a lot of stuff that we'll be doing ongoing for parents, or

hopefully somewhere here, I've got a, a link you can check out to, um,

you know, to follow up with this.

So you can just stay in the loop at least get on my daily podcast list.

So you're getting that content.

Uh, for all the women, Karen does a remarkable masterclass.

She runs an online masterclass women around the world.

I think she takes like six women at a time in the masterclass.

So there'll be a link here somewhere for that.

Go check that out It's um, she's amazing.

And she does coaching and obviously, and I take some coaching clients.

So if you Um if anybody wants personal coaching with me or they're around

business or personal excellence that sort of stuff there should be a link here to

my coaching author as well So what else that's kind of it so i just want to bless

you i just want to say i hope some of this is useful to you you're never going

to do anything more important in You're uniquely to be doing this Karen, and i

are going to just press on ahead in the years ahead just trying to put out content

like this to bless you and support Because what you're doing is touching the future

you are shaping generations In literally what you're doing so May god bless you

may god bless your relationships your marriages, your parenting your homes

May you flourish in every area of your life thank you for what you're doing

day in day Go and check out all these links my name's jonathan doyle god bless

you and hopefully i'll see a lot of you on the daily podcast speak soon God