Welcome to Big Blend Radio where we celebrate variety and how it adds spice to quality of life. Welcome to Big Blend Radio's quality of life show. Today we have Jeff Nelligan joining us to talk about his book Four Lessons from My Three Sons, How You Can Raise Resilient Kids. This is the second edition. He's also author of other books. He's also a military veteran. He's been in politics for quite a while too and we're going to learn about that because I think if you're going to be in politics, you're going to have to learn how to be resilient real quick because not everyone's going to be nice to you all the time, right? Jeff, welcome. Not exactly Lisa. It's called the swamp for a reason, right? Right. There's not a lot of niceness in the swamp. Agree. Wow, wow. How did you go into politics? Is that something you thought of as a kid? Because he went in the military then politics or let's get that part together. Well, the foray into politics really began when I was about seven years old. My mom was a big time political activist in Los Angeles and associated with campaigns for city council and mayoral office as well as for different initiatives on the ballot within LA County. And she always would take me along on canvassing. So seven years old with a little clip on bow tie and a jacket and khakis on. And I would walk for hours every day. And she would say, the reason I'm taking you along is because if you've got a kid with you, they don't shut the door in your face. Exactly. So miles and numb miles and hundreds of miles of walk in these neighborhoods all over the city of LA. I just, I liked it. You know, my mom was an upbeat, positive, real, real leader. And so it just was part of the makeup through, you know, elementary, high school, college, and then afterwards. Wow. So that's amazing. I mean, you think about, you know, and then there's also like the full of freshmen, right? It's canvassing. But it is, I mean, it's really, you know, you're knocking on someone's door. It's a stranger. I don't know how much of that goes on now. I know it still happens, but people are, it's a, you know, nowadays we don't call people on the phone unless you know them. Don't answer, you know, so it's a different time. But do you think those are some life lessons that you learned doing that? I mean, getting out there and meeting new people. And you know, you do learn from what your mom is saying and what the people on the other side of the door are saying, right? So did you learn at a young age communication and maybe even things aren't going to go the way you always want them to? There you go. Lisa, you hit it right on the, you know, right there. That it's the beginning of resilience because as with all kids and all adults, you're forced into situations with strangers in a strange environment, and you've got to make it right, or try to make it right. And for kids in any age, no one gets a free ride. So every day is going to present a kid, and again, adults with an obstacle, a setback, a trial. And they involve strange situations and strangers and tough, kind of tough endeavors. And the sooner you can get to the point where you can hit that obstacle and get over it or around it, the better off you are, because tomorrow there's going to be another one. Yeah. And rather than folding like a $3 suitcase, or having the parent act as a snow plow, sweeping away all the tough stuff, the kid learns it on his own. And after a while, it becomes reflex to approach those tough, unknown, strange situations and drive through them. Yeah, I think that's important. You talk about this also in your book, you have like a section talking about, you know, don't hide from, you know, the reality of life, you know, it's even in the beginning, you're like, Hey, trigger warning. And I got the giggles at that. Because I was growing up trigger was a gun, man. Everybody is like, you know, it's so funny how words change over the years, right? And I was raised very differently and in different countries with different, I mean, just you, I grew up in Africa and you learn things like Olympic mines and what a bomb looks like and what a hand grenade looks like and what an AK-47 is. So these are real things and you do have to learn and it's in your face. And it's not, you can't play helicopter mom with those kinds of lives. And I don't think we actually can today because there are situations with shootings in schools, there's situations go to Walmart and get blown up, you know, there is climate change, it's got to be fearful for kids. So do you think for adults, you can't just keep positive, it's all going to be fine. You kind of have to work through this and fear is a good thing, but you can't let it dictate you, right? So can you touch on that part with all these real heavy pressures that kids are facing? Really? I mean, there's college and all that, but right now in this, like that communication between parents and kids. Yeah, I make two points about that. First of all, you're growing up in Africa and I take it with South Africa or Mozambique somewhere around. In Kenya, South Africa and Kenya. Kenya, then, you know, don't go there now. No, no. But that experiences, you know, it underscores kind of the things that are my book you grew up in or, as you said, you use a word reality. That's reality. And you know, you made a way through it. And probably was that development of your own resilience at an early age, particularly around the things you just talked about. Today, you know, we talk about the challenges that kids face. And whenever I'm talking to parents and they start to bemoan, you know, oh, the great, you know, mysteries hanging over us, the great, you know, bad things about to happen. I always say, you know, my dad at age 15 was working at the native mine, a mile below the surface of the Sierra Nevada mountains. And at age 18, he took place in the invasion of Okinawa. And at age 19, he was patrolling the streets of Tokyo as part of the occupation force. He came home after not seeing his parents for 18 months and took care of his father for four years. So when people talk to me about how bad or how hard kids have it these days, I think, you know, you have that's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point. Oh, and by the way, he grew up in the depression in a small town. I think people, parents, particularly tend to elevate because of self obsession or self pity, the, you know, the supposed challenges, you know, we live in the United States and you see it every time you go to a national park, for goodness sakes, you're on the road seeing real America every day. We live in the wealthiest, best educated country on the planet in the history of mankind. So gosh, the sense of gratitude for what we have versus the idea that the sky is falling, it just, it doesn't square up. So if, and my final, the second point is if parents accept that, then of course, every day is just going to be a weeping, you know, self absorbed march through all these terrors when in fact, you know, you grew up in Africa, I actually have been to about 90 countries and probably two thirds of them were third world countries. And you want to talk challenges every day, how about finding something to eat or running water. So the minute you give into that, then of course, then you, you get, like you said, the helicopter parents, snowplow parent, that's just got to somehow brush it all away. In fact, kids need to deal with it early on, because I'll tell you, Lisa, Lisa, if the parent is pushing aside all the bad things that are going to happen to a kid and not letting the kid he or she deal with them. By the age of 24, that kid is sitting in the basement playing Minecraft and a parent sitting there going, what the hell happened? Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think I was working since I could walk, like if you wanted something, you had to work for it, right? If you had a budget for it, I wanted a guitar. So my mom said, you want a guitar? You're really going to play it? Well, you're buying half of it. You're going to buy half of the guitar. And I'm like, exactly. I'm not an adult. She says, well, you see those windows? They need cleaning. Maybe the neighbors need some cleaned. You're going to be the, you're going to be the maid for a bit. And so I did that. I did yard work. And then it was a, I learned to like it because I had this goal. And then I did get the guitar. And because I invested in the guitar with blood, sweat, and tears, I played the guitar. I took care of the guitar, you know, so there was, and I learned budgeting. And I was like, well, can I do double time? Can I do overtime? No. That's a lie. You know what I mean? So, there was, you know, there was this balance and, you know, it's, yeah, I think working things out, you have to work things out. It gives you a sense of accomplishment. I remember as a teenager, I mean, I went to 16 schools, we traveled around a whole bunch in Africa and England, all of that. And when Nancy had her magazine in South Africa, which, you know, it was, she was like the last independent publication when things got a little wonky there and we had to come home. But I was, you know, one of the people working for a turn and said, you know, because I was starting to act out a little bit, she needs more responsibility, which was completely the opposite thought pattern. And as soon as I had more responsibility, man, I was in it. I was busy. I was like, self feelings of accomplishment. And I think that's something to strive for is when kids feel accomplished, they're going to go for more. And they're going to take on bigger challenges. Is that what was it like for your sentence? Because they all have done really well in life, right? Yes, they have. And, you know, I mean, thank God. And I will tell you too, Lisa, hey, man, I could get a call in an hour. And one of them has gone south somehow. But that's the way life works. And I already know that whatever happens to them, they'll recover. They'll climb over the obstacle or get around it, even at the ages of 28 or 26. I like the way you kind of detailed your childhood because, you know, that's how a lot of people did grow up. And those are eternal values. You know, as you said, discipline, accomplishment, you know, self respect. Those those qualities just seem to be a little bit extant today in today's youth. And I, you know, we were talking earlier and I said, Oh, the anecdotes. You know, I mean, everyone has them about kids. Every generation is banging on the next generation. That's from the time of Socrates. Come on, that's, that's just like, you know, hazing when you go to college, you know, but not the bad hazing, you know, I don't mean it that way. But, you know what I mean, you've got to have a little bit of initiation as we called it. That's not hazing initiation. That's correct. But, you know, so the anecdotes and the hazing, but let's face the numbers. I mean, a typical kid between the ages of 10 and 18 spends eight hours and 47 minutes on a cell phone on a digital device. That's more time than they sleep. That's every day. Yeah, eight hours, eight hours and 47 minutes at and that's not including schoolwork. Okay. Half of kids by the age of 18, beginning last year, have had a major depressive episode. 28% of kids under the age of 18 or obese or overweight. And then you look at the tail end, the oldest of the Gen Z and they're, they're really not ready to enter what we call the workforce, what you and I have been doing for, you know, many years. It's a surveys from Forbes and resume builder within the last two months, if shown, these big surveys of hiring managers, the corporations of all sizes from 50 people to 5,000 people. And when asked about current college graduates applying for jobs in the last two years, they said 58% of the people that they had hired within the last year had been fired. 61% of the kids that the young people that they had hired were consistently late to work. And here's the, here's the, here's the grenade speaking of those. 35% of kids who came to an interview, their first interview brought their parents. No, don't, don't, no, no, no, no, no, no. That happened to Nancy, I call Nancy, my mom, Nancy, right? That happened in, in South African with her magazine. She hired some, I think the guy went to school with me or something. We had two incidences of this. And she told the kid, you're going to go deliver the magazines, right? It was like a easy job. And she fired him because he didn't do his job because I followed and checked up. Did you place the magazines with the cover up? You know, there's, it's competitive when magazine racks. He didn't do his job. And she's, and she warned him. She gave him three. And this is the one thing my mom always did was follow through. When she gives you three chances and you do the third, you're done. I don't care. I don't care whatever it is about follow through. I don't care if it's good, bad or ugly. She's going to follow through. So I learned that really quickly. So she fires him. His mom came out, had the audacity to come and yell at her to what she told her really, really colorfully how to leave the building. And then, so then the one time she hired another friend of ours and he was pretty much driving me around. And I was in sales and everything. And I was training him. And his dad wanted to come work there. And she turned and said, this is not good. You know, I already had to go through hell because I was a kid, right? No matter what, I'm going, right? If you're working for your parents, you're going to have to do three times as much as anybody else. You have to prove to everyone, you're not there just, you know, as a token, right? And she told the dad, she's like, if I hire you, you're going to screw up Ian's, you're going to mess it up for him if you don't really help him, number one, and really perform. So she had, she created her own chamber of commerce. This is in South Africa. So all her clients would come over on a Friday afternoon and we had like a networking cocktail hour between staff and everybody at the magazine. And her clients would come and it was her way of checking up on our business from what the salespeople were doing. And everybody knew Nancy sits behind the bar. He knew it. And what did he do? He positioned himself in Nancy's seat of power. That was pursuit of power, you know? And so she turned around in front of everybody. She's remember what I told you. Now, when you're fired, I warned you, if I fire you, your son is going to, because that's the way it is. This is you came on with that. So she fired both of them right there. Boom. Because he took her chair and she wouldn't, he would not leave the chair. And so she says, you're not lead. Boom, you're out. So like follow through again, right? So follow through is a big part of this. But this thing with kids and their parents being involved with their their job, I don't care if it's, you know, McDonald's. Oh, please don't do that. That it just that's just so wrong. That no, no, really? Did you get 35% right? And that's from three different surveys, I forgot to mention or neglected the intelligent.com, which was 850 hiring managers. So you've got three different surveys, you're keying in at that 35%, one out of three, bring your parents to the first interview. And then you realize that, you know, which is the shambles, of course, you know, these hiring managers are rolling their eyes. And then you've got virtually half five out of 10, who can't even make it through the first year because they're just incompetent. So what I'm saying is, you can look at all the generational, you know, snark. But the numbers are there. You know, you've got, you've got literally 44% of kids between the ages of 18 and 32 living at home with their folks. Well, okay. So do you think it's the numbers, the numbers go on and on and on. So that was the reason I wrote the book was because I know I do even six years ago, seeing some of being around kids and parents for 20, you know, for two decades, that this generation just wasn't making it happen. So hence, the book and the key thing behind the book being, you've got to have a strategy for raising your kids. Because by the time you may know this Lisa, but by the time a kid reaches 12, you the parent have spent 75% of the time you're going to spend with that kid by the age of 12 and by 18, 90%. So if you don't develop these qualities, you know, personal courtesy and confidence and resilience and ambition in those kids at 12, the culture is raising them. And who what notable parent thinks that the culture raising their kid is a very good idea. So you can't really, you can't blame the cell phone. You see what I mean? Like this whole thing about the phone, playing Minecraft, it's a, you know, it's like, hey, you know, do you come home and eat the whole chocolate cake? Or do you wait for everyone to sit down and have a slice of cake together? Well, I will go for the cake. No, I'm kidding. But you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, it's about the education of these are your, here's some triggers out there. Go find your trigger. You know what I mean? But the society raising your kid right now is not a good, not a good plan. And that's, yeah, the village concept was good too though, but you know, whatever the village concept, the village is fine. But you know, it's community, it's a school, its neighborhoods. And most of all, it's the parent. And if the parent is, if the parent is complacent when their kid is on a phone nearly nine hours a day, that parent has a major problem. Mm hmm. Because he or she completely disengaged in the child's life. Mm hmm. And what happened 15 years ago with that eight and a half hours? Where was it filled up with instead of staring at a phone looking at YouTube and TikTok? Well, and, and if, you know, okay, so not to get brutal on things, but you know, there's that case that's been I know you, the, um, here in politics, we can say anything. Um, kids that are going and do the shootings, right? In schools, you know, there's that case that thing was a first landmark case started in, it was in January, I think it, they now decided to bring the parents into the case and into the court over this. And I thought, you know, how do you not know if your kid is, you know, going off the rails? How do you, how do you not know as a parent? Like, if I was getting wonky, Nancy would know, you know, so it would, I don't understand how a parent doesn't know if their kid has a gun, knows how to shoot a gun, is having suicidal tendencies. I mean, every parent's different, but I think a parent would tap in if they were not, if the phone wasn't being the parent. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. The culture and for families going through this, I'm really, really sorry, you know, and I'm not being brutal to them or the parents, but, um, that is a really rough thing to go through as a parent. You know, if you did something like that or committed suicide and suicide and suicide attempts during COVID was huge. And the bullying that happens and the bullying again, where's the parent? Bulling comes out of lack of self respect. Bulling comes from fear. So what's going on at home where your kid's turning into a bully? They want some kind of attention. Right. And that's what I'm saying. That's why I say about the strategy and the key for parent engagement. And the 75% of the time, by the time, by the time the kid is age 12, you know, that's, and that's why I wrote the book because I thought, you know, and the book itself, you know, it's a 40 minute read. It's, it's pretty loose and it's pretty funny. And as I said, it's very brief, but it's, it's a marker for a parent. And it's authentic because in the book, I take many shots at myself. It's not some wonderland walk through how successful my kids have been. In fact, in the book, there's 127 words about what my kids have accomplished. And they're at the last page of the book, because it's not built to be some kind of, my kids are so great. And they've done all these things. And they went to these great schools. And they, they're in these massive commands leading hundreds of men and women. There's none of that. It's just, this is how they were raised. And it may be a good marker for parents out there who are curious to say, how am I going to, how am I going to pull this off? I think it's great that it's straight up and quick to read because I think parents are busy. And it's getting, I think it would also just a society is, has to come back to some values of family unity. And I think COVID was a very interesting time for that. But now we're getting out of that, right? And it's kind of, now it's, it's an interesting time with, you know, remote working and, you know, it's kind of an interesting balance and a lot of change. And so I think it's cool if your kids are part of the change. You know, if they suddenly mom is home half of the week and she wasn't before, yep, you're going to get caught, but just kind of cool. You know, I wrote a, I wrote a book about right after CO, well, in the midst of COVID and the absolute incomprehensible response by governments everywhere, the lockdown, the isolation, the quarantines, and the book was called your kids rebound from pandemic lockdowns, a parent guide restoring their family. And it talks about what happened, the catastrophes and the numbers. I mean, it's got 270 sites to literature from NIH, CDC, Hopkins, Pew Foundation, numerous medical and psychological societies. But at the same time, the other, the other half of the book is about, this is how you can get your kid back to where he or she was, and even better, because the smart parent realized that, and you kind of said, you know, mom's around now half the day, the smart parent and smart kid realized at that moment, this is my chance to vault ahead of all my peers, because everyone's in this static lockdown isolation scene. And I can really boost myself above in all the endeavors that I do. And I've talked to a few parents whose kids did that, but obviously vast majority just, you know, retreated into their shells. For parents listening right now, what would you say is a first step to get on track? I'm obviously get the book, right? But a first step, like you don't just sit down with your kid and say, okay, now we're going to pay attention to you. You know, and here's my plan. This is what you will do, you will get up at six o'clock every morning. No, but what is the, what would be a first step? Great. I'll start with this. Our jobs as parents is not to build a relationship with our kid. We already have that. Our job is to teach our kids to build a relationship with the rest of the world outside the front door, the places, the successes, the failures, the Home Depot, the hardware store, the grocery store, the neighborhood, the church, the scouts, the volunteer opportunities in the neighborhood. The first step is you put your kid out in that real world, and at a young age, you give them tests. Here's an example. I wanted to begin this whole fatherhood thing by making those kids, all three of them, as resilient as we spoke about the first minute here, as possible. An indoor mall, three kids with me, Saturday, it's seething, there's tons of people, strange place, opened my wall, took out three $5 bills, gave each to one kid, one to each kid, and said, go get the old man change. And the oldest was seven, the youngest was four, and I said, it's not a race, just come back, I'll be standing right here. And off they went, delighted with the task. And, you know, they struck, two struck out at stores and had to go to other ones. The kid came back with 20 quarters in his pocket. They came back, they had accomplished the task of uncertainty in the midst of a strange place. We just kept doing it, and doing it, and doing it, wherever we were. Then we would graduate, you know, we'd be at a restaurant, and I'd point at one kid, six years old, and I'd say, you memorize everything the family wants to order, and tell the waiter or waitress. And then we're in a park a lot somewhere. Here's dad's ATM card, go get me 300 bucks, here's the passcode. And so the task for graduated more difficult, more of a scene. But that's the first step is give your kids tests in the real world so that they come back satisfied and pleased with what they've done when they started out knowing that it was going to be rough. That's cool. Yeah, it's like a game. Yeah, the second thing, and it follows along the first is you yank the phone out of their hands, and you say there's going to be a new way this family's going to deal with this thing. And you sit down the family, you say we're going to put together a social media contract. And in my book rebound, there's four different prototypes of social media contacts contracts. And you sit down and you say we're going to devise that no no phones and meals, no phones in the cars, an hour a day on your favorite platform. I'm turning off the routers at 730 in the whole house. And then you say, and I'm going to do the same thing, you're not going to see me with this thing in my hand. Which is what I did when I was early on with my kids, I would never yank it out no matter what. And I actually had a real job. I was presidential appointee for AGHS. And if I wouldn't pull it out, no matter what the hell happened until I was away from my kids. So that's the second part. And then the third part is, and this is for younger parents, but parents of all types, three actionable items in a typical day, like I said, number one, no screens, it's over. And you don't say, well, they'll say, well, it's not fair, you know, Jimmy and Betty have them. Well, great. Like I told my kids, we'll celebrate Jimmy and Betty. Good for them. You don't live there. I live in my house. You know, maybe their parents have lost control of them, but I'm not losing control of you. So the phone. The second thing is, and I did this, gosh, year after year after year. I mean, we still do it sometimes when my boys come home from deployments. We just walk around the neighborhood 45 minutes to an hour. Yeah, young kid. And I did this when they were in strollers. I mean, we had a stroller that held two kids. And I had one on my back and an hour in nature, in all those wonderful places in a neighborhood or a park, you see it every day. You know how important that is to the human mind, even when the kid is like three years old, you know, just giving that sense of, and actually knowing where you are, starting to build what a community is. And, you know, that's really huge, you know. Yeah, exactly. There's more than the four walls of the house. You know, there's God's providence is out there in all its beauty. And then the third thing we did is we read to them at least 45 minutes to an hour every day, sat down either when they were hit the rack and sitting on their bed or in the living room. And we just gank out books and we'd read to them later on when they got older. We just read together, all of us, as family. Three actionable items, they don't take anything but time. And if a parent doesn't have time for that, and that's, that parents got to take a real, real evaluation of what they're doing. Yeah, that takes, you know, TV seems to win. I mean, you'll watch, I mean, people sit with their phone and TV all at the same time and a computer. Yeah. Three screens and one, like, or tablet. I mean, what do you, how are you? No, your brain actually doesn't work that way. Multitasking is a myth. Oh, I know. Well, you know, if someone says that's hard, I'm asking, I'm saying, no, you're not paying attention to me and you're the one that called me or you're the one that contacted me. If you're multitasking, you're doing something at 50%. And if you're happy with that, God knows where you're going to be in 10 years. Yep. I can always tell when I've made mistakes where what I was doing, it was like, oh, you, you answered a call and you didn't, you know, you didn't focus every single time it is that and I have to go to myself like, why did you make that mistake? You know, what was it? Oh, yeah, I was doing that again. Well, maybe you should stop doing that and just get through, power it out. You know, so it's the focus part is good. And I love that it's a family oriented tasks, you know, that's really good where it's everybody's accountable. Yes. It's a way of life, a lifestyle and good habits versus, you know, right in that conversation. Shut up, eat your cookie and go cook your room and play on the screen. Oh, gosh, you know, it's unimaginable to me. But, you know, it's that personal courtesy that we kind of touched upon, you know, just being presentable, introducing yourself to adults with a handshake, looking him in the eye, saying, Mr. Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith or, you know, Mr. Boorhees. And then that second part, just that confidence, the confidence you get by walking around that mall, all by yourself, looking for somebody to get a store to give you $5 worth of change. There's nothing like it. And it pays off. You know, yeah, I did that again and again and again with these guys. And then, of course, you know, the real world will always gives you those great examples. My kid, the youngest kid was six years old. He was in a mall at a birthday party with a bunch of kids and these three irresponsible parents and the parents left the food court to go to a movie theater with 13 kids, missing three kids, leaving them in the food court. One of them, my son, and then two other kids, who immediately started crying once they realized where they were alone. But my kid says, wait a minute. My dad once told me at a college football game, if you're lost, you can't see anything because you're about three and a half feet tall. So what you do is you look for that guy or that girl with the stripe running down their pants and that's security guard or enforcement officer or a soldier and you run up to that person and grab their leg and say, I'm lost. So these kids are balling and my kid tells them, look, we need to do this now. And they finally find a guy after about two minutes who hooks him up with the irresponsible parents. But the key was my kid didn't panic. He knew exactly at six years old, five and a half. He knew exactly what to do. So that's what I mean. These tests pay off when it counts. It really does. When we first got to this country leaving South Africa and we moved to California for a third time, and we were in an apartment because we were going back and forth to Mexico because we were actually moving to Mexico. Anyway, we flipped all over. But we thought our magazine would open between the two countries and we'd live and know that didn't work. Anyway, you could give your bank account to Mexico if you want to do that and play permits. We learned. Anyway, so I had a friend because we also had a band at that time and we'd come back from a gig on New Year's Day and we'd done a gig out in the desert and it's a brago desert state park. Came back and at that point, there was all kinds of, we were bombing Baghdad or something at that point and we went in the apartment and his stuff, all his gear, he was a bass player at he'd brand new bass and amp for Christmas. And that was what, 19, 20, 21, 20. I don't know. Now I was over 21, 21, 22. We'd go up. I just wanted to take a quick shower and that was going to drive him home because we're all there and we hear this explosion. And we're by camp Pendleton in San Diego and I'm like, holy crap, Baghdad bombed us back. And we're like, what? Because it really was huge. Well, there was an explosion. A lady had driven into her carport and something happened with the gas tank and it blew up and everything exploded. All the gas tanks, all the cars blew up, including mine and his gear is gone. My stuff's gone. Just one after the other, all of our storage sheds, everything, everyone's stuff blew up. And then we're like the apartment complex, you know, and we had just kind of, I think we'd been there six months, but we already knew who lived where because Nancy, our very observant, we always know, you need to know the neighborhood, you need to know who's what where. And through that, we knew there was an elder man that lived in this one court and even Matt knew we both looked each other and went, we need to go get him out because he was not dressed properly or anything. We got that man out because he was really elder and just, you know, luckily the fire didn't get to the actual apartments, but it was knowing, just knowing who, what and where, who needed help out to get them out in that case. And that's just about being aware and walking that territory and knowing your community, right? So having those things, and it's something that she taught me, you always keep your eyes open, man. Know who lives where, know what's what, you know, be friendly to your neighbors, even if you don't like him or they don't like you, be nice, be polite, you know, be the polite kid. And I think that kind of paid off. But then what was interesting is in people across the street put out chairs, because now everybody had to evacuate everything. So we thought they were chairs for all of us, the whatever victims, but not victims, you know, nothing really bad happened to us. No, it was for them to sit and watch. How about that? And so that was a lesson. We're like, we just lost our car, we just lost all this stuff. And to us stuff is tough. You learn that when you live in Africa, you travel. And but it was like, wow, okay, you got to you got to step up and wake up to this is a different world, you know. So yeah, it was interesting, interesting life. But I love those tasks. I love those. And three a day, that's that's a good way to go, you know. Yeah. And just if you can, if a parent can pull that off, you know, they build that kid who's self aware, and like you kind of just alluded to, but where have their surroundings, you know, situational awareness, just, you know, being able to walk into a room and read a crowd. And I mean, there's examples in the book where I, these, these guys are in a strange place and they need help. And they know exactly who to go up to and ask because it just got a sense, an intuitive sense of who's hot and who's not. Yeah, you see, that's exactly that you've got to learn to trust your instincts. That's real crucial. And those instincts are developed over years and years and years of doing, you know, these tasks and not having dad or mom plow the way ahead in front of you. Exactly. Well, Jeff, this has been fun. Thanks for joining us. Everyone, Jeff Nelligan, Nelligan books.com. Thank you. Hearing your, you're upbringing in your background, it's obvious you had to have all these qualities because, you know, South Africa is, you know, not a rather dangerous place and Kenya and then moving here and then going to Mexico. So you've seen, you know, as an early age, you know, the age of 19, that you have to have all these qualities to thrive and survive in the world. Those are the qualities I wanted in my kids and those are the qualities every parent needs in their kids because, again, you know, at the end, you got you got 12 years to make an impression on that kid. You know that that's it's enclosing on this. The qualities are there. It's important because there were life skills that a survival, right? And you don't want to be in a place of survival. So you can't be living them as though anything's going to happen. But it's just being aware is actually just a it's polite to be aware of surroundings and things, you know. So there's a survival part of it. It's about life. It's about learning to trust yourself as an individual because anything can go happen. You can't rely on if something bad happened. It might be me who has to pull everyone out. You don't know, you know, or something to help pull you out and you're going to have to help them pull you out. You don't know what's going to happen, right? In life. But the thing I've seen too in parenting is that parents want to be dancing our best friends. You know, however, there's a it's not. She's still the mom. She still does the books, man. Tell you what, she will not let me touch the books. You know what I mean? There's certain we have our given in our business. We this is your thing. This is yours. This is what you excel at. That's what you excel at. But we have to learn each other's business. We have to in case something happens, we take over. But it's so we can be friends. Yes. But it's a lot of times I see in parents that they want to be, oh, my kid loves me. See what I mean? And it happens, especially in divorce, right? Oh, I got the kids this weekend. So the, you know, rules are out the window. I want to be the good parent. I want to be the liked one. I want to be the friend. So I mean, Nancy, our friends, but I'm we're adults. And, you know, and we can actually get into a little bit of a tiff here and there were mother and daughter. It's going to happen, but you have laws and we have rules and conversations and there's going back to the plate, going back to the plate and going back to the plate. It's not this. Oh, me. I don't know. It's I don't explain that, but it seems like a lot of times I see parents just want to be the popular parent. Is that right? And it goes back to what I said earlier, you know, our job as parents is not to build a relationship with a kid that minute a parent tells me that, you know, their kid is their best friend. You know, I say to them, I said, look, they call it parenting, not childing. If you're kids, your best friend, there's something wrong there because you're a parent, you're not a buddy. And if you're a buddy, that means you'll never make the right decisions to make that kid be able to stand up on his or own two feet. Yeah, us buddies, when we're, you know, our buddies is growing up, man, we were the ones laying traps for the parents to get away with it, you know, we were the ones ditching school. We were the, you know, all of that stuff. We were the ones, you know, and kids together, they devised the plans of, you know, how far can we push this envelope, you know, and a buddy is a yeah, that's when you do the crimes together. It's also, you know, you also mentioned something earlier, you know, earlier about being able to make that decision when it's, it really counts, you know, we noted in the beginning of the broadcast that my all three of my sons are military officers. And two of them have been in situations very tight and very dangerous, right next to bad guys. And I can't, I won't describe anything more than that. Okay. But they're in those situations and they've got 45 guys that are looking up to them saying, what do we do, Lieutenant? And my kids always came through with the right answer. Why is that? Because they were trained that way when they were as in their Navy training. But also they bring a wealth of those kind of decision making and those kind, that kind of resilience to the Navy before they get in. So when things are really hot and lives are on the line, my kids make the right kids. They're young, young adults, they're adults. They're not even young adults. I can't stand that term. As adults, they make the right decision because they've been making so many prior to that. And so when lives and real things are on the line, they do the right thing. And that's key. You know, every parent would like to have that. I'm fortunate. And so like I said, at the beginning, they could go south. And I know they'd recover. But that gets back to what you're talking about really key situations, like you described in that explosion at the apartment. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That was crazy. That was a crazy time. I was like, all right. Yeah, you know, I think it is, the end since the decision making is really a big one. That's a big one, learning to make a decision, learning to trust yourself. So even if you're going to be naughty as a kid, you have to, you're already calculating risk when you're doing something naughty. And like, you know, I have a friend out the Commodore he's since passed in Mexico. He was our neighbor. And his kids were brats and I was a brat. But he would, he's, you know, later for all adults, you know, and he's like, and I love his kids because, you know, we did, we pushed the envelope. He said, but that was you were already playing risk. You're already weighing it up. How far can you go? Can you trust yourself to even make X, Y, Z happen? You know what I mean? And so, you know, that was the thing. And he was like, you're also bored. If you're in school and you're bored, you're going to be a brat period. You know, so I think parenting and teaching goes hand in hand as well. Oh, yeah. The teacher is not supposed to be the best friend either. The teacher is not a parent, but it's supposed, you know what I mean? So it's that same thing as well. So I think I got, I got in trouble a little bit. Well, as you say about teachers, teachers are the most important people in this society. And next up are first responders and next up after that are military, military men, just like, and women, just like my kids. Teachers today in any public school are dealing with the parents that are never there, that are totally disengaged. And with a culture that allows these kids just to be absolutely out of control. So teachers, you know, deserve our greatest respect because they're so ill paid. And yet they they spend more time with a kid than any parent does throughout the course of the kids to life. That's true. And they really, why are we paying them? That's ridiculous. Yeah. Come on, politic, man. Jeff, it really has been a great conversation. I think we've covered a lot of ground today. So the book is four lessons from my three sons, how you can raise resilient kids. He's got other books, as he was saying, you can go to neleganbooks.com. All the links that I talk about on shows as always are in the episode notes. Thank you so much for joining us everyone. And thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for listening to Big Blend Radio. Keep up with our shows at big blend radio.com.
