Listening Builds Trust: Create a Crazy Cool Family with special guests Don & Suzanne Manning

Hey there parents, today's episode is about listening and how listening builds trust. And before we get into the episode today, I want to ask you a quick question. How's your kiddo doing in school? How are their academics coming along? We're a few months into the school year and I just wonder, is your kiddo struggling? Do you have an unmotivated learner?

Do you have a kiddo that's just hating schoolwork? Well, unlike traditional methods that focus on weaknesses, Learning Success Academy is here for you. They harness your child's strengths and their potential. They're going to teach your child how to learn to learn. By combining the powerful A's, alignment, activation, and acceleration, Learning Success Academy is going to help your child to learn and achieve like never before. And their approach will boost your child's grades by 30 to 50 percent. And in addition to that, they're going to help instill confidence and intrinsic motivation within the first 90 days. Their program is accredited and approved by the International Coaching Federation. Amplify your child's academic results by setting them up for success at a neurological level. Go to learningsuccessacademy.com for more information.

That's learningsuccessacademy.com. Hey guys, I'm Jackie Fineman. I'm a parenting strategist and coach. And after 30 years and with more than 50,000 hours of experience working with kids and families, I promise you there is a solution for your parenting challenges.

The key to this parenting gig is to guide and lead your kids with less fear and more confidence. You don't have to know everything to be the expert of your child. So let's get to the root of what is going on in your home with you and your kiddos. And then we're going to prepare for the worst and change the conversation.

Kick fear, worry and guilt to the curb. You are exactly the parent your child needs and wants. and you are more capable than you sometimes give yourself credit for. I launched the No Problem Parenting Podcast to reach more parents and share the Cliff Notes version on how to solve a variety of parenting problems in the moment as they are happening in your home.

Problems are a part of life and they're meant to be dealt with and overcome. So I teach parents how to turn any problem into a no problem. In this podcast, you're going to find down to earth, practical, fun, no-nonsense, and sometimes best-ackwards tips and ideas for how to navigate this thing we call parenting. You're going to learn about resources on a variety of parenting topics and increase your rock star parenting moments. Let's get into today's topic and meet our next guest.

Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents. My guest today is going to talk to us about all things listening and how listening to your kiddos builds trust, how to get your kids to even talk so that you have the opportunity to listen to them and how to create your own crazy cool family. Don Manning is a business owner and investor. He's a CFO of a real estate company and serves on the elder board of Valley Creek Church, a church that he and his wife Suzanne helped start over 30 years ago. Suzanne has invested her time as a teacher, a wife, a mom, homemaker, mentor, girls minister, speaker, writer, and most importantly, an encourager to everyone she meets. Together, Don and Suzanne have raised seven children. They are all now grown together. They have a passion to help families rethink the way they do family one relationship at a time. And today's focus is going to be on listening and how listening to our kids builds trust and is also almost always inconvenient, but we want to show up for our kids and we want to be safe enough for them to actually talk to us. I'm excited to share all the resources from crazy cool family and to welcome you to the show today, Don Manning. Jackie, super excited to be here. My wife, Suzanne, and I, we love talking about communication with parents. It's so critical and yet so underdeveloped in the parents we see all over the country that we talk to. I know. Isn't it amazing? It's like we're almost afraid

to have conversations with our kids and we're not sure, can we say this? Can we say that? How much can we say? What can't we say? But you and Suzanne really have a passion to help families rethink the way that they do family and what family is to them and means to them one relationship at a time, you say. We have seven kids and we have four girls and then three boys. And so picture, you know, I don't know if your audience is mostly male or female, but I'm a male. So, you know, I'll tell it from the male perspective. So, you know, years ago, because my wife, I always say my wife was always relationally better. She still is relationally better than me. I mean, she, we had four girls first and there was a time that I'm 10 years into parenting. My wife brought our oldest daughter into the marriage. So we have a blended family. And then we had six kids together, three girls and three boys. But at this time I've got, it's me and five women in my house.

And so, and if all these emotions and all these words and all these things going on and, And, you know, and I'm a Christian guy. And I just said, God, a couple of things here. One is I realize I'm going to have a huge impact on the lives of my children. No matter what I do, I'm going to have a huge impact on the lives of my children.

And I also realize I love them very, very, very, very much. You know, I didn't know I could love like that. When you become a dad, you know, you look at that kid that God's created. You know, it's just amazing.

And then I realized the third thing was I didn't know what in the heck I was doing. And I said, you know, if I don't figure this out, it won't be good for me and them. And so, you know, what that did was I just kind of went on a quest and my wife was already kind of on the quest. Looking ahead at parents that we were, you know, kind of stalking at the time, we just saw that when parents connected with their kids, that was a great measure of success.

and that, you know, regardless of the personality type, regardless, some people were organized, some people were, you know, disorganized, some people were, you know, faith filled, but it seemed like when parents connected with their kids, that was a theme that gave them a much better chance of success. And so we just went on this journey to, you know, and it's been now over two decades to figure with, you know, as we grew in our faith, you know, we also grew in our ability. And you were talking about how I believe that all parents want great relationships with their kids. Maybe they want a great relationship with their wife or their spouse, depending on how that marriage is going at the time, but they all want great relationships with their kids,

but they just don't know how. And so much of it is training. And so that's what we kind of focus on. Over time, we said, hey, we think that God showed us something about relating to our kids, It's through, we use biblical principles, but it's really all about connection, you know, and even, you know, if a person is not faith-based, I say, you know, there are two focuses we should have in life.

One of them is if I'm a Christian, I say, love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. But then he gives us a second commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. I think even from a secular perspective, I would tell people first focus is be healthy, be a healthy person. But then even if you're a healthy person, if you're a healthy, selfish person and you don't pursue the relationships in your life, those relationships are going to not go well for you. Right. Absolutely. So I got to get back to, so how did that go with you with those five women in your home before the boys came along? I'm a pretty intense guy. I've found over time, you know, I have, I have a lot of energy. I would be called a driven person, you You know, and so many times I would come in and I would have the best intentions to share something, quote unquote, with my daughters that would help them, quote unquote, to do something better in their lives.

And I would walk up later and they were crying in the bathroom because dad had hurt their feelings. And I was like, oh, wow, why? You know, I mean, I could say this to somebody at work and it works out OK, or I could, you You know, say it to a buddy of mine, it would work out okay. Why is it different with my daughters and how can I learn to be different?

And, you know, we just learned some principles and some concepts that were really, have become really effective. So you fast forward today, I have great relationships with my four daughters and my wife. You know, I have a great relationship with all my seven children. You know, they're not perfect and my kids aren't perfect.

Dad's not perfect. But, you know, there is a lot of health. You would come into our home. Four of my kids are up in northwest Arkansas, up in the Fayetteville area.

So I just got back from there yesterday. And if you were to interact with us, I spent four days up there just interacting with my kids. And if you were to hear the conversations, you would go, that's healthy. And, you know, Jackie, I give an example sometimes now of a Rubik's Cube.

And I think it's a great analogy because, you know, for years I saw a Rubik's Cube. They've been out for 50 years and I had no idea how to do it. One day, my boys came home. This was a few years ago and they are solving a Rubik's Cube.

And I said, wow, I've seen a Rubik's Cube for 50 years. I have no idea how to solve that. And they're solving it. And I said, how do you do it?

And then they said, dad, there's no way you'll learn this. And I said, I think I can. But what they learned on YouTube are the algorithms. And what they showed me was eight different algorithms.

And when you look at the cube and you perform an algorithm, what's an algorithm? It's just a set of instructions. And over the course of a couple of months, as I desired it, learned it, and applied it, I can now solve a Rubik's Cube. Well, that's the way relationships are.

You know, we have seen relationships forever. You know, and we can solve them on the surface maybe, but we don't know how to solve them in depth. But guess what? There are algorithms.

There are things we can learn. If we'll learn, desire it, learn and apply it, we will see improvement in our family relationships. And that's what we do at Crazy Cool Family is we help people learn those things to improve all of their family relationships. Speaking of Crazy Cool Family, what was the inspiration behind the name and the tools and the things that you're offering? I just got to know.

Yeah, so great question. And crazy. And again, we're a faith-based organization. And so crazy because God's ways are crazy. And usually, even on a secular perspective, you know, the way to success is usually different than what everybody else will tell you. Crazy in the sense of different.

You know, like, wow, that is, you know, my my Texas Rangers just won the World Series, you know, just last night and when we're recording this. And so there was just this crazy bond they had as a team and they were crazy resilient. You know, that's the type of crazy that we're talking about. And cool, because I tell parents all the time that if your family is connected, it's the coolest thing that'll ever happen in your life.

You know, and Crazy Cool came out of it because I just saw over time the things we started to do start to work. And I said, I really do have a Crazy Cool family. It really is a gift from God. And I don't take it for granted.

And so that's how the name came out. Love it. Tell us about the vision and the mission of the company. And parents, check them out at crazycoolfamily.com.

you have so many great resources, free downloads. So tell us a little bit about how you're putting these together and where this is. Is this coming from your actual experiences with raising your kids? You know, we go from 33 to 17. Now I think we're about to launch a new website and we'll update that. I think it says 32 to 16 on the current website, but yeah, we've got four daughters that are married, five grandkids. And, you know, I've got my oldest son about to be married. Well, by the time this podcast comes out, I think it'll probably have happened. And for us, it came out of first our family. We felt like that God gave us a gift, you know, and the gift of family. And I think that sometimes people feel like they have to apologize for having a great family. I'm like,

no, that's where we should be. And we said, how do we give back? And, you know, for us, it became giving back at our local church. And so we just started to teach people at our local church.

We developed a curriculum. We called it Heart Connected Family. And that became a 12-week course we just taught to parents in our church. We did that for several years. And later, somebody said, man, you guys have got to write a book. And I said, man, I've got seven kids. I'm in the real estate business. I'm coaching sports teams. I'm an elder at my church. I said, no way I've got margin to write a book.

God has other plans. And so we created some, you know, some business opportunities came up that created some margin. And we wrote a book and started and released it in 2018. The book's available through Amazon or, you know, on our website.

It's called Crazy Cool Family. Same thing as our podcast. We're not very original. But and then that led to what we do now, which is really just reach out to parents and say, look, do you want to have a vision for your family?

Do you want to build connections in your home? You know, I remember when I was, you know, in that stage of having four daughters and the sons were coming, I said, man, there's so much fragmented information out there. I wish somebody would write me a guidebook. And again, we're faith-based.

So I said, could somebody write me a guidebook that just shows me where to focus my energies to have the best chance to build an amazing family? And so that's what we've tried to do. We're always improving it. We now have electronic resources.

We're actually coming out with a new website that's coming out. We'll have two physical workbooks. They're six session interactive workbook experiences. But I love having a mentor.

I love learning from people. I feel like mistakes of others are cheaper than my own mistakes. And so what if we could sit down with you over time and just drip into you everything we've learned over 30 years of parenting and teaching thousands of parents, that's what we try to do with all our materials at Crazy Cool Family. So if there's a parent listening today and they are just struggling to connect with their kids, maybe there's a bunch of overwhelm going on.

Maybe they've gotten distracted with work or events. What is one communication tip that you can give parents today that are struggling to connect with their kiddos? There's about a dozen that come to mind. And so, and with that, realize that we learn relationships over time. Remember the Rubik's cube example, you know, you'll learn one algorithm, you'll try that for a while, and then you'll go to the next one and learn it for a while. And over time, you keep trying them.

And now, you know, when I do the Rubik's cube, those algorithms come naturally to me because I've practiced them over and over again. I've made mistakes. I've asked questions about them. So one of the things I tell parents a lot is relationships, a long-term game.

And it's also a game that we have favor to win because I believe God has hardwired the hearts of our children to want the connection. So therefore, no matter where you're at, I want to be encouraging the parents that no matter where you're at in the relationship, if you will start to learn the algorithms of relationships and become a part of your life, you will make progress. And it may be, you know, I always say the progress doesn't look good in two weeks, but it looks good in two years.

You've done it over time, you know, there may be some ups and downs and some scary things. So all that to qualify, the one thing I would say to start out with is just listen. I think that most parents over-talk and under-listen. Listening is a very powerful tool to unlock relationships.

We talk about listen more and lecture less. So often with the best intentions, we want to tell our kids what to do a lot. And please hear me, parents. It's with the best intentions.

You are not, I mean, you know, it may be, okay, I'm angry about this or I'm frustrated about that or I wish they would do this. But, you know, we just don't find a lot of parents that are out to get their kids. They're trying to do things well, but just focus on listening. There's a verse in the book of James in the Bible that says three things that I think every parent could take home is be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

And if we could take those three things and incorporate it into the conversations with our children, so then it becomes how do you do that? Well, because then the parent will say, my kid won't talk to me, particularly as they get older. And that's so true. So first of all, a lot of times the reason your child is not talking to you is because you are not safe.

And so we talk about a lot of Crazy Cool Family creating a safe haven that we have to, at every age, we create. And it's easier when they're younger because they want to talk to you more. But even Suzanne, my wife, will say, if you'll listen to them when they're five, they'll talk to you when they're 15. I remember my daughter, Macy, when she was just a little kid, you know, couldn't even talk yet.

But she would tell these elaborate. She was like one and a half. But she would tell these elaborate stories. But we couldn't understand a word.

It would be like, you know, it would just be so it would be they would have plot and characters. and but not a word to be understood and she would be so emotive about it and so and I just got fascinated with just listening to it because it was almost try not to laugh oh I love that example I I can picture a little kiddo doing that right now and it's like oh yeah and then what happened and you know you don't even they're not even saying anything but you're oh really and then what and you know but you're building pathways you're building that listening builds trust and and so and many times like okay let's fast forward that to a teenager how was your day fine well what was fine about it well it was it was not much you know many times and and then we get why don't you talk to me you know well i try to ask you know continue to just you know try to find open-ended questions. Try to find inquisitive questions. And then you don't get to criticize what they say. So often when they say something, it triggers fear in us. And then we want to correct it because we're, you know, be a listener and be prepared to hear some things that you're not going to like, and then even saving that, okay, I'm going to talk to them about that later,

but not in this conversation. And I'm going to find a way to get it back in sometime. And when you become a listening parent, it changes your whole demeanor of parenting. One is it's hard to listen and be critical. It's, you know, if you're really engaging, you know, and you're trying, It changes your countenance, but it also just lets them feel safe.

You know, it's, you know, so often, and also another thing about listening is that it will always be inconvenient. It will always be when you don't, when you don't have time, you know, and it'll, and it's, and it'll always be, you have to work at it a little bit until you gain. But let me give you an example. like, you know, again, the four daughters, they would come home at night, you know, when they were teenagers. And, you know, my wife and I, and usually they would come home later than we went to bed. And, and I would invariably, you know, maybe we went to bed an hour later. So I would maybe wake up, reach over and look and there's nothing, there's, there's nobody in my bed next to me. Because my wife made a habit of when the daughters came home, she went into their room.

And she simply just said, how was the evening? Most nights it was no big deal. It was a five minute conversation. She went back to bed.

Sometimes it would turn into a deep conversation that would, you know, because she met them where they were, asked the questions and had a safe environment for them to talk. And just became silent and listened. And on the No Problem Parenting podcast, we're doing the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool. And you're reminding me of a couple of them as we're talking here that, you know, sometimes we do want to jump in and fix or solve if our kids are complaining about something or they're frustrated about something or, you know, whatever it is.

And, you know, sometimes we can just say like number 25 is, is there anything I can say that will help you? Yes. Yeah. And, you know, Suzanne, again, coming from a faith-based deal, Suzanne would say a lot, where do you think God is in that?

Oh, that's a good one. You know, it's like, where do you think, what do you think God's doing in your life? Or, you know, even on a secular basis, you could say, you know, how is that going to work towards your good? What do you think could happen?

And what do you think is a right response to that situation? And most of the time, we don't need to tell our kids. Even a seven-year-old, you're like, you know, what do you think you need to do there? Well, I probably need to forgive that person.

Oh, wow, that's a great idea. Why don't you do that? How can I help you do that? And Suzanne says a lot, and I think she's brilliant relationally, which she is.

But, you know, what she would say is, is instead of being on opposite sides of them, we come alongside them and help them navigate the journey. Many times we think of listening, if I'm listening, I'm giving up power. Actually, when you listen, you gain influence. And you come alongside your child and help them on the journey versus telling them what to do, which breeds resistance.

I love it. And again, Don, this is so in line with the work here at No Problem Parenting, like resistance creates resistance. And when our kids are upset, we don't have to join in on that emotion. We don't have to be just as upset as they are.

do you need me to help you right or do you need to just be upset right now so often parents think that we're taking away their power and in reality and you know or where our kids not my kid if I don't get on to them they're not going to turn out right and and I thought that too honestly I really did I thought you know I was a teacher at heart and so they didn't get it the first time they needed to get it the second time and you know whether that be in life or in sports or whatever I mean, I was the parent that they didn't want to get in the car with me after the basketball game.

I was coaching the team and I was going to make sure they did everything right. But I realized I had to pick my spots. And really, when I did that, when I picked my spots, became more of a listener that I actually, you know, parents say, well, you're lowering your standards. I say, no, you know what?

I'm going to bet my standards are higher than yours or at least as high. I just have a different way to get there. Absolutely. And when we're trying to solve our kids' problems, solve your problem this way.

And I'm going to give you this advice and I'm going to fix it for you, basically. Or I'm going to tell you the right way to do it because you're not smart enough to figure it out. You're breaking that trust. And I like that you use the word safety before.

You're not safe to talk to when, you know, all you're doing is directing. And parents, you know, what we're trying to tell you is, is that we realize you have great intentions. and we want to encourage you in your journey to just rethink, okay, there's that word in our website, to rethink the way you're approaching the relationships. I mean, that's what we do with every relationship in your home and Crazy Cool Family. We teach you how to make your siblings best friends. We teach you how to, you know, we're a faith base. We teach you how to connect your kids to God. We teach you about marriage, you know, but mainly it's that parent-child relationship we're talking about today, if you're struggling with your relationship, that's okay. You just learn that you can learn and you can change. And when you change there, there's, there's hope for any parent child relationship. Absolutely love it. You have so many resources on your website,

crazy cool family.com. And it might even be all updated by the time the episode air, this episode airs. You have base camp. Is that the 12 week course?

Base Camp is an electronic resource, a video-based resource. Think about it like Netflix, a bunch of courses. What we've done with the workbooks is now we've designed some interactive experiences where a lot of people like to write things down. And so these are workbooks you can purchase.

They're hard copy. And then Basecamp becomes the deeper dive through the workbook. So the workbook becomes a portal into Basecamp that is really more of an interactive experience. So we're super excited about that.

I'll also tell you that with that, there's a way to sign up for a daily email. It's wonderful. It gives you all the information we're doing. But the best thing it does, it gives you a tip of the day.

So, you know, when we're learning concepts, it just helps. These are literally like you can listen to it in a minute and a half. And it's going to give you a great tip on the things we're talking about, how to be a better listener, how to be more encouraging, how to correct carefully all the things that we teach, how to build unity in your family and all those things that are awesome. But you can sign up for all that on the website.

It's pretty crystal clear how to get there. That's excellent. And then let's real quick, before we wrap up, talk about the podcast. Yeah.

So we've been doing, this is our fifth year of doing the podcast. You know, we are super, that's where we just get to have fun. You know, with the workbooks, we try to be more strategic. With the daily emails, you know, we're trying to be, you know, a little bit serious.

It's come, but with a podcast, we just get to have fun like this. We get to, you know, talk to different people like yourself and people all over, as well as sometimes we talk to our kids. I love it that, you know, not this summer, but not last summer, but summer before last, we did a podcast with all seven of our kids. And we just said, how are you parented?

And, you know, what happened? What was your family like? You know, what was growing up like? And it was amazing to just get all the insights in that.

So we have a lot of fun on our podcast, you know, go to it. I mean, there's 230 episodes now. That's amazing. I love it.

And it's the raw and the real on the podcast, right? Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And we just, Suzanne and I are very, I don't know, irreverent. We're, you know, it's, I read a book one time and it said God was like a 10-year-old boy.

He's just, you know, he's just alive with life, you know. And I think that that's more about where we are with life rather than, you know, it's a bunch of rules and you got to follow everything. I mean, you know, our kids, the culture is wanting to pull them away to all kinds of things that are not healthy for them. What are we going to do to give them a different vision that is healthy and is fun and engaging?

I love everything that you guys are all about. It's been so fun having you on the show. Parents, if you want to experience a family where kids love Jesus, let's bring Jesus back into the home in a very, you know, modern day, realistic way. Let me give you an example to end this.

Think about your child as a thoroughbred horse, okay? that every why and no matter what they're how athletic they are how smart they are god created that child so they are a thoroughbred he made them he's super excited about how he made them you know god doesn't make junk in any way shape or form what the world and think about that thoroughbred horse he's in a barn right now and what the world wants to tell that thoroughbred horse to do is to go whatever you think is best you go you go frolic in the field and you go run around in the hay in the meadow and everything and what whatever you think if you want to work hard great if you want to whatever you want to be you be if your parents say and it's different you know rebel against that because it's all about you and all about how you think okay so now what i believe what God says is, is here's a way of life. Here is the best way of life for you. I've created you.

I know what's best for you. I'm going to give you some guidelines. Think about like, but we have to surrender to that. So we get under the bit and bridle, if you will, of the God. But what God's going to do is ride us out on an adventure. It's the adventure of life and he's in charge, But we are the thoroughbred that's going to ride out into battle and with purpose and life.

Parents, here's what you're doing a lot of times. Because of your fear, you want to say, no, no, no, horse, stay in the barn. Stay in the arena. Don't go.

It's messy out there. And what we do is our kid faces this choice of do I go to the frolic out in the field or do I stay in the barn? We're selling the wrong game. You know, instead, let's sell the adventure.

Let's say because that's the reality. That's where God wants us to go. He has an adventure. He's going to take care of us forever.

He's going to he wants he wants joy life. He wants all the fruits of the spirit in our lives. Go look at at Galatians five and look at the fruit of the spirit versus the desires of the flesh. It's it's just different.

We are selling. And I think so many Christian parents are selling the wrong story. And we try to help them sell a story of life and hope and love for them. Does that make sense?

It sure does. And I absolutely love it. Sometimes we don't want our kids to be thoroughbreds because of our fear and our worry. Right.

And our lack of faith. And so I love everything about that, Don. Thank you so much. Be sure to say hi to Suzanne for me.

And parents, head on over to thecrazycoolfamily.com. Everything is there. The book, the podcast, the resources, the freebies, and the soon-to-be workbook.

So thanks so much for being with me today, Don. Yes, thank you, Jackie. It's been really fun. And we'd love to connect with anybody that's listening and we'd love to help you in any way we can.

All right, there you have it, parents. Another resource that's accessible to you right from the comfort of your home. Hey guys, if you're enjoying this podcast, do me a quick favor and leave us a review of the show. And if you're feeling super generous, take a screenshot of this episode and share it on your social media with your friends and family.

And be sure to tag and follow us at NoProblemParents Doing so helps us help more families.