The Four Pillars for Parents and Teens to Discover Your Purpose & Passion with Special Guest Buddy Thorton

Hey, welcome back to No Problem Parents. In today's episode, we're going to talk all about purpose and passion, how we can help our kids to figure out their purpose and passion, but also for ourselves, and how doing so is actually going to help us create positive social change. So my guest today believes that the shortest distance between contemporary social shortfalls and optimal social paradigms is through the family. We're going to discuss his four pillars that he says parents and their kids can use as their foundation for discovering their purpose and passion.

The four pillars are my life, my voice, my passion, and my choice. So meet Buddy Thornton. Buddy is a Vietnam era veteran who served as a hospital corpsman in the US Navy. He's been married to his wife for 48 years.

He earned his BS in allied health sciences from UW Milwaukee. He has certifications in mediation and paralegal studies from Lakewood College and a certification in life coaching. He's the owner of BCT Mediations Plus and co-owner and course creator for Life and Legacy Academy and the COO of the Brokenness to Healing Foundation, a nonprofit working with disadvantaged youth through after-school mentoring programs. And he serves as an advisory board member for multiple domestic companies.

Now, Buddy is the creative mind behind the Slippery Slope series of educational books. You're going to hear all about that and more. To read his full bio, go into the show notes. You can find out all the links about how to get in touch and learn more about Buddy at bctmediationsplus.com.

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Finneman. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling?

Whether you are at your wits end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman. All right, welcome to the show, buddy. I love talking about parenting and I really appreciate the invitation. Well, that's awesome. So we're going to talk today about the four pillars that are life skills that you say open doors to co-creation and the future for parents and their kids, the who, what, when, and where, all that stuff. But before we do that, just give us a little bit of background and how you got into this field of being a parent coach. You know, I was the youngest of four when I was growing up and my parents were not affluent. So they told me at the age of 17 that if I wanted to go to college, I needed to earn the GI Bill or do it myself.

And so I literally left home at 17, joined the military, joined the Navy during Vietnam, never finished high school until I was getting a GED sitting on my bunk taking a test in the military and I passed my GED and when I got out of the Navy I went straight to college but by then because I was a Vietnam guy I had gotten married had a couple of kids and so I had them very very young I was married at 19 and by the time I was 25 we had four children and then when I got out of college, I pivoted to a pro career in bowling. I was a PBA member for 27 years. And I spent a lot of time serving me. And I spent a lot of time watching my wife, you know, work a full time job and struggle with the kids. But now when I was home, obviously, I did a lot of things for the kids. I took them to all their doctor's appointments. I, I intervened with them at school,

My wife was able to just do her job and come home and be a mom around her job, which was actually worked really well for us that I didn't have what I like to call a classic job. I had a in and out of town type job. And what I found was the more time I spent with my kids, the more my kids evolved rapidly. So, you know, they they interacted.

My oldest daughter asked me to teach her to play golf. My younger son asked me to teach him how to bowl and he actually became a pro the same as I was. And that interaction kind of built me into the parenting space. And I wasn't really even aware I was in that space until I retired from bowling.

I went and got my master's degree and then I got into my doctoral studies and I fell and broke my right arm, had to stop all kinds of physical activities. at the same time going through all that over a couple of decades my oldest daughter made some bad choices and ended up getting to spend some time courtesy of the state and when people would say you know you were such a bad parent and I was like no have the conversation with the person who's incarcerated she'll tell you what she told the judge my parents didn't teach me to do this I chose to do this. So when she got out of prison, we had a hard, hard conversation and she said, you know, you know, a lot more about parenting. And my problem was I ignored you.

And she wanted to make her own way and she was allowed. Right. Right. And so and because I wasn't as available as I could have been if I had not been on the road a lot, I felt like I dropped the all. And so my give back was, okay, I became a mediator and I work in the family space. I'm a certified family mediator between parents and their teens and between parents and schools and that type of environment. And I found out that I really could connect with parents and I could connect with teens as long as they wanted to change. So I peer-to-peered with some people who were teen coaches and I became a parent coach and I started working with parents and I found out that in the over a 10-year period the problem is with the parents it's not really with the teens the teens first of all they don't know where they are who they are what they are so they need to learn that and the parents want to be control monsters so I just said okay you know what enough is enough I need to work in this so I went and I worked really hard to learn as much information as I could about the neurobiology of human development. People like Dr. Elise Elliott,

who wrote What's Going On in There with the newborns to five-year-olds. And then I went through a series of other books and determined that, you know what, the development's going to happen. Can we guide it? Can we nurture it? And so that's how I developed my love of parenting.

and that's why I jumped into this space because I found out A, I was passionate about it and B, I resonated with it, loved it. So why not do it? I'm a firm believer in Dr. William Glasser's choice theory. You make choices for yourself. And so it doesn't matter whether you're a child, a teen, a young adult, or an adult, a parent, you can only control yourself. You control your actions, but you can make an effort to influence other people. And so my parenting guidance The way I work it is I tell people in an optimal world, this is where you go and this is what you would end up with. But let's be real. These are all the different things I talk about.

Attachment style, infant attachment style, and how it evolves into adult attachment style and how that affects or disaffects you in the society we live in. And then, you know, how you can pivot from being on a suboptimal area into an optimal area. And all of that's because I saw the problems I had and the things I didn't catch with my own children. Now, I have grandchildren who are all adults and I have 10 great grandchildren.

The newest one was just born on October 9th. So I've got all these generations. And if you know anything about human development and the theorists like Jean Piaget, he wrote all of his work with his work with his own kids. So I live in a living petri dish of parenting.

I get to see how my kids parented their kids and I get to see how my grandkids are now parenting their kids. And it's really amazing when they come and they say, I'm really confused about this. Could you help me with this? Because that's almost like a self-affirmation.

Oh, yeah. Isn't that fun? It's so great. It's awesome when you're asked to help.

It's not just giving unasked for or unsolicited advice, but your kids actually want, your kids and grandkids actually are coming to you to say, hey, I'm struggling with this one. help me figure this out. Well, and here's the thing. They know I refuse to interject myself in.

Just, you know, I just believe that would be unethical. If they are struggling, what's the best way to learn is to conquer a mistake. You know, either you either get it right or you learn from it. The only failure is quitting. And when they get to a point where they have a barrier, they are struggling to get over, I don't give them a direct answer. I do the Socratic method.

I ask them the questions and I lead them to where they need to be. And they already have what's inside. It's in their heart. It's in their soul. It may not be in their conscious mind, but you can draw it out. You don't just give it to them because at the end of the day, they need to feel as if they can be passionate about what they're deciding. It's their choice. I can't make their choices for them. So I literally don't just say, this is what you need to do. I ask them, what do you think would be the correct path? And then we discuss it until they come to a conclusion and it works.

And that's how I work with my clients. I don't tell them what to do. I ask them questions. I lead them to an area where they get to make choices based on their own reality. Right, right. Oh, I love that. And here at No Problem Parenting, No Problem Parenting is all about, it doesn't mean, oh, no problem. We have problems and we just say, oh, no problem. And we throw it out like it's, you know, no big deal. No problems are problems. What we help you do is turn those problems into a no problem because right in the definition of the word problem, it says problems are meant to be dealt with and overcome. And oftentimes we need to allow our kids to make mistakes, you know, work that through before they can actually deal with and overcome their problem.

they need to fall on their face a little bit. They need to make, they need to decide, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to solve the problem this way. And then even though we think, oh, that's probably not a good idea. That's not going to work. We got to allow, as long as there's not a safety risk, got to allow them to figure that out on their own.

Yeah. My greatest mentor taught me that the best way to stop stumbling around in the dark is to fall flat on your face and have to stand up and get your bearings. so why wouldn't you let your children unless exactly what you just said yes do we need to make sure they're safe and secure absolutely that that would be an unethical stance to say it's okay to let them have on their tombstone watch this okay that would be horrible but at the end of the day you need to let them make mistakes and then you need to ask them if you had to do over what would be your option. So what do you think you would do and how do you think you would do it? And you walk them on a path of discovery. It's not recrimination. It's not control. It's not anger. It's let's walk this path together. I feel your pain. I want to give you my empathy. I want you to understand that I'm not going to give you sympathy. I'm not going to feel sorry for you. But I am going to walk in your shoes with you because I love you. I care about you. And I want you to learn yourself. I want you to be curious. I want you to understand so that next time when you're faced with this, it's not an aha moment. It's a, yep, I know this.

I've been here before. I know what to do. So let's get into these four pillars. Why don't you just begin by summarizing the four pillars for us? Well, the four pillars are very simple.

It's the way I list it out is my life, my voice, my passion and my choice, because at the end of the day, you have to be you have to be in charge of your own life. I start with a very strong locus of control. Internal locus control is part of understanding who you are. And if you're allowing other people to dictate your life to you, you're not in control of your life.

So I help people, A, realize who they are and why they are. and then I help them build that ability to control their own decisions and choices by anchoring on what they believe they are and then I help them with their voice a lot of people are extroverts they're fine some people are introverts they're fine too as long as they understand when to speak up and how to speak up and how to project even non-verbally we a lot voice is more non-verbal than verbal. That's why in a world where you're only talking to people on the phone, you don't have good communication. Zoom calls are even a little bit weak because you can't read all of the non-verbals. You can only see someone's face. So those two things are very foundational.

And then I spend a lot of time on my passion, how to separate your true passions from everything else that's a lower level or suboptimal passion. It's okay to like them, but it's not your passion. And then everything else is taking those three pillars and getting your chair standing on that fourth leg, which is how to make proper choices, choice dynamics. When you talk about passion, their true passion, well, how do you separate your social interests, the things you like to do, the things that kind of fill your cup from passionate pursuits, like something that you're really driven to do?

Well, let's be honest about the teen space. Okay. There's only two things teens want. They want to find out who they are in this world and they want to socialize.

That's the only two things on their mind. You have to actually build in a choice matrix where they want to do the other things. And the way you do that is circle it back to, hey, if you really want to be involved with people, don't you want to be involved with people who like what you like? You don't want to always be doing what other people like and ignore what you like.

So let's discover your passions. Now, separating a social passion from a true passion is very simple. A social passion is something you do so that you can interact with other people. It's a relational skill and it's relational and it's very necessary because it's what fills your cup.

You were very accurate. But the true passion is something that you would do absent anybody else's support, absent anybody else's interaction. you would pursue it because you love it beyond anything else. It's a lot like when I became a professional bowler.

It was a fallback sport. I had broken my shoulder when I was 15. Otherwise, I probably would have played baseball, but I couldn't do overhand sports. But I was determined to be an athlete.

And so underhanded sports, I turned to golf and I turned to bowling and I turned to racquetball and other things. and I ended up being really, really good at bowling. So that's what I did. And it became enough of a passion that I pursued it to its highest level.

That is a true passion. Very cool. So that's how you separate the two. Yep, that makes perfect sense.

Now this is, I think the third time bowling came up. So I am going to throw this in here. I have a cousin, Tim, Timothy Schmidt, who actually created something called the Shark Paw and we're gonna do an ad for him. Because you're our bowler. Have you heard of the Shark Paw?

I have to admit I have not. It's all right because it's fairly new, but it is the newest way to clean your bowling ball. And it actually takes the oil off the ball better than any other product out there right now. My son still bowls and he still averages well above 200. I mean, he was a pro, right?

So I don't bowl anymore because I broke my right arm and it was broken in six places. So it's held together with plates and screws and I don't really get to do that as much. But anyway, I just had it. You just keep mentioning bowling.

I'm like, I have got to throw out the shark paw. All right. We're going to do a real quick segue so that I can introduce the shark paw bowling pad. The newest way to clean your bowling ball.

This patent-pended bowling cloth is designed to absorb oil quickly without the abrasiveness of leather. keeping each and every shot consistent every time down the lane. Shark Pa is in production. You can go to sharkpa.com, order yours on Amazon, on eBay. You can get them in a variety of colors and you can even enter to win a free Shark Pa of your own. Go to sharkpa.com. That's S-H-A-R-K-P-A.com.

Pick one up for your favorite bowler today. I just love promoting products and services that parents use in their everyday life. And especially if when the parents are the inventors of the product themselves. And I didn't even mention, but Shark Pa is actually USBC approved. So the US Bowling Congress actually approved the Shark Pa. So it's really super cool. And it's a, you know, regular dad that had this invention and is putting it out there. So we'll get back on track. That was so fun. Thanks for letting me segue, buddy. You talk about the who, what, when, and where are set pieces for the why and the how action pieces in our lives.

So explain that a little bit and then explain that interconnectivity of the why and the how. I can do that. Okay. The who, what, when, and where is the reason it's set pieces is because there's almost 8 billion people on the planet.

Nobody has an identical who, what, when, and where. So everyone has to self-determine what those things are. And a lot of it does align with passions and a lot of it aligns with necessity. Okay. If you don't have it in your repertoire, it can't be a what for you, but it might be a what for somebody else.

So who, what, when and where is really a what I like to call a compartmentalizing effect. It's what defines your environment. It's what defines your possibilities. It's what defines where you might go with your passions.

But now you go to the how and the why. If you have to ask the why, then you still need to discover the how. you know how do I get the ability to throw a bowling ball and why would I want to be really good at it so you have to interconnect those two and there's no such thing as a why that is a standalone and there's no such thing as a how that's a standalone so how and why why do I need to do this or why would I want to do this or you know what is my compelling interest for doing this becomes a why. Why? Why would I have a compelling interest? At the end of the day, if you can answer that question now, the only question left in the basket is how.

Do I have the ability to learn how to do this? If I don't have the wherewithal to learn the how, can I find someone who can teach me the how? Or can I have someone help facilitate the how? Or at last case scenario can i buy the how you know because in our society everything's for sale right uh not really but we'll we'll go there so the who what when and where is critical it was without those in place how do you even define the why and how do you even need the how that's the question and uh and that's where i start i always start with the who what when and where my My intake is I need to know your who, what, when, and where.

Yeah, so talk about that. Is that usually the parents that you're answering that for since you're a parenting coach or is it the teenagers? Well, it's a mixture. I usually talk to the parents and I tell them that you can bring an engaging teen, anyone above the age of 12.

I'll even consider a fairly mature 11 or 12-year-old in the conversation. but kids don't develop abstract thinking until they're at least 12 years old, 12 or 13 in that area. So they really need abstract thinking to be able to conceptualize something that they have not engaged with yet. So they're useless to the conversation until that's there. But once it's there, when a parent is struggling with a teen, usually the teen is going to look at him and go, well it's because you don't do a this you don't do b that you don't do c that but the kids are inexperienced they really don't know how to have that conversation with their parents from a uh invite me in type scenario so yes i end up i end up answering the parents they go i really struggle understanding my kids you know where they're going what they're doing why they're doing it and i you know everybody is trapped in their generation okay you're trapped in your generation. I'm trapped in my generation and my generation is a lot longer than yours. So,

but that's not to say we can't learn about those younger generations and that's not, we can't understand their motivations, but it always circles back to the why and the how. Why are you doing this and how can I become a part of it is usually the parent conversation. how can I prevent you from getting hurt how can I facilitate your advancement how can I open doors for you without you know over opening doors right but it's it always revolves around that the parents come to me and say I believe my kids off going in the wrong direction and I really I don't know how to rope them back in and it's like have you had the conversation with them about the how and the why because the parents can usually tell me the who what when and where they usually have that that's usually there but statistics and research show that parents only spend 37 day minutes a day average with their kids now 37 minutes a day how much of that's quality time okay so what's about that other 23 hours and 23 minutes that's really really that big question mark hanging on a parent's head. So you need to understand the how and the why after you pile up your who, what, when, and where. And so I help parents if they're not, if they can't answer the who, what, when, and where questions, I tell them that they're not having enough communications conversation with their kids. Then they, we get that built. We build that communication,

the bi-directional communication. We get them comfortable because here's the, here's the kicker, Jackie, the kicker is a child either locks you out of their quality world because you're not engaging with them or they invite you in as long as you're engaging with them properly. If you have over expectations, you have over entitlements, if you turn them into affirmation monkeys, if you do any of those things, they're actually going to lock you out of their quality world because they don't see you bringing value to the table. They love you. You're their parent, but they don't need you because you're not meeting their needs.

You've got to put yourself in a position to meet their needs. I love that. So before we wrap up, if you were focusing on one parenting objective, what would it be? Before we wrap this up, what would you say to parents?

They should be focused that one parenting objective objective that they should be focusing on. Well, I do say that the only job a parent has is to develop a fully functional adult. And how you do that is you bring them through a very long series of iterative climbing steps on how to make proper choices. You should never make choices for your children.

You know, the worst thing you can do is have them walk out of the door and not know how to make choices that are validated for their environment and for what their passions are. So everything a parent should do. The number one kicker is if your child doesn't know how to make proper choices, if nothing else, build that competency in because at the end of the day, you're not going to be there to make the choices for them.

And in reality, you shouldn't be making those choices. They should. Right. I agree with that.

Yeah, it's that whole thing years ago I learned this, that you give your kids, when they're little, you give them a couple of choices. You want juice or milk. If they say, I want pop, they're not ready to make their own choices on their, you know, make choices on their own. Are they?

We need more practice. So then the parent chooses, all right, you'll have milk. When you can get to the point where you can say to your kids, you want juice or milk, and they choose one of the things that you suggest, you know that they're capable and they're ready to handle that and they can make their own choices, right? And then gradually we have to allow them to make their own choices as they get older when the stakes are higher and they're bigger responsibilities, right?

And there's bigger choices or more, sometimes it's even more scary choices, but too often we continue to make the choices for our kids and tell them what they need and which choice they should choose. And I think that's where we go wrong as our kids grow. Yeah, it's all about age appropriate menu driving. And I'll give you a very short example because I know that we don't want to waste time. But when they're very small between the ages of two and six, you can give them a limited menu like you just did.

would you rather drink juice or would you rather have milk? And they make a choice. And if they try to pivot out of those choices, you say, no, this is all that's on the menu. And you literally keep them in a compartmentalized box.

About the age seven, they learn inductive reasoning. About the age nine or 10, they learn deductive reasoning. Now they start bargaining with you. But they don't understand abstraction yet.

So you have to keep a menu. you might be able to let them add something on the menu. But what I have them do is say, okay, would you rather have corn or would you rather have broccoli? And if they say, well, I'd rather have broccoli, they say, okay, fine, great.

You wanted them to have the broccoli anyways. And then you may say, I know they like this. They don't necessarily like this, but I need them to eat this that they don't necessarily like. So you give them that as an option and then something you know they would absolutely say no to.

Right. So you can either have this or this and then they're going to automatically go right where you wanted them to go in the first place. But you're allowing them to make the choice. They don't realize because they don't have abstract thinking yet. They don't realize you're actually dictating the choice, but you're doing it in a kind of a parenting type of way.

Yeah, right. Exactly. Good. Well, any parting words for us today, buddy?

love your children never never miss a chance to give them a nice big hug don't congratulate them just because they got something done congratulate them because they took the time and put out the effort to get it done because at the end of the day outcomes are not normally in their control but how much effort they put in is a hundred percent in their control absolutely so you offer uh mediation coaching training all kinds of different things so tell us how we can get in touch with you if we want to learn more about what your coaching looks like well we just opened life and legacy academy bctmediationsplus.com and i guess we should have said this too before we wrap up you have a few books out a couple of international bestsellers so let's talk about your books really quick my book three and book four are available on amazon They're part of the Slippery Slope series.

So you can find them with Slippery Slope. And when you go on Amazon, are all part of a 12 book series, the Slippery Slope series. Books three and four. One is three.

Book three is for teens and young adults. It's a conversation between me and the kids. And book four is for parents, teachers and caregivers. And it includes every word from book three.

So we're going to have the link in the show notes for all of the different ways that people can get ahold of you. Thank you so much for connecting with me today, buddy. Absolutely. You know, it's always a thrill to work with people in this space.

Integrity is a role modeling essential. Thank you for tuning into the No Problem Parenting podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey?

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