Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
Games That Connect: Building Relationships Through Play
Games create powerful connections with children and teens, allowing them to open up about emotions in ways direct conversation often can't achieve. They offer a natural setting for learning crucial life skills while having fun.
• Board games, card games, and active games all provide opportunities for emotional growth
• Children are more relaxed and open during play, making it easier to discuss feelings
• Taking strategic pauses during your turn to ask questions encourages meaningful responses
• Games teach frustration tolerance, impulse control, organization, and social skills
• Adapting games to each child's interests and competitive nature is essential
• The "feeling wheel" game uses dice rolls to prompt emotional awareness discussions
• Creating clear boundaries around respecting feelings during gameplay ensures everyone feels safe
Remember, you only have to be this side of good enough. Have fun playing games with your children and subtly weave in opportunities for emotional growth and connection.
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step-parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with my producer, sidney Moreau. Happy New Year to all your parents out there and the families out there. This is our first show since the holidays. I took several weeks off and had a lot of joyous experiences, a lot of work, a lot of stress. Same thing, sydney, I'm guessing too for you as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, holidays are always a busy time and I actually decided to give myself a gift and took off for the Thursday after and went to Mexico for four nights just to give myself a break, that is awesome. Trying to prioritize that stuff for myself. What part of Mexico it was in Playa de Carmen, oh yeah, Playa.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful. It used to be a little town, now it's gigantic.
Speaker 3:We were in a remote area so it was really nice and quiet. Yeah, it was wonderful. Took a direct easy from Cancun, so fun stuff. I think that should be a requirement of parents after the holidays, because the holidays aren't so fun.
Speaker 2:Oh, they can be really stressful. Yeah, between Christmas and New Year's I took my son who's now 32, and he had a couple days off from doing surgery and I said do you want to go to the Colorado University football game down at the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio? We were in a bowl game and he was like, yeah, let's go. So we actually Saturday morning flew down to Houston, rented a car, drove three and a half hours to San Antonio, checked into the hotel, changed and went downtown for the pregame, saw the Alamo, the Riverwalk over the stadium, got our souvenirs. We had these incredible seats, fourth row from the field, right where all the CU players are and we're seeing all the stars and Coach Prime and the band was there and the cheerleaders and the Ralphie the Buffalo Having a great time until the game started and the CU Buffaloes were asleep and we got annihilated. So it was a fun adventure.
Speaker 2:The next morning we got up and drove back to Houston. We stopped at Buc-ee's. We have a Buc-ee's in Colorado now we wanted to go to Buc-ee's in Texas and for our listeners, buc-ee's is basically a gas station that's as big as any grocery store you've ever been in. They must have had 50, 60 gas pumps, 30 EV chargers and this huge building with every souvenir you can imagine clothing, food items. They make smoked brisket. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:It is a Texas thing, so we loaded up at Bucky's, drove to Houston, flew home. So it was a very short trip, a lot of fun being with my son but at the same time. But I was going to. It's funny you said that, cindy, because I was going to say happy New Year y'all and hope you had a reasonably happy and relaxing holiday break. And the reason I say that is because, especially when they're young or you have teenagers, holidays can be the best of times and they can be the worst of times.
Speaker 2:The little ones are tired, they're not sleeping right, they're eating all this crap, they're all overexcited. And then you have the big meltdowns and with your teens they're trying to endure their parents' and family time and they just want to be with their friends. And then they take off with their friends and you get the call at midnight and all that stuff. So they're always challenging and that transitioning back to school and my wife said it again last week and I always experience this too that our first week of our group therapy programs after the breaks are awful. The kids are just bouncing all over the place. But this week it's all been normal. It's all been back to normal. The kids are used to it.
Speaker 3:This week they get sick, it's like they get the germs.
Speaker 2:You're right, you don't miss a fly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had one home for two days this week already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they're back into their routines. So today I was thinking I guess this show is going to be a little reflection on the holidays and a fun one to talk about. It'll be probably short and sweet and the idea of connecting with your children and your teens through games, especially board games, but not just board games. Games, especially board games, but not just board games. Now, before we get to the topic, I want to thank Megan at the Cantina Book Club podcast. She had me on yesterday. We spent it was supposed to be a 45-minute interview, we went for 90 minutes and it was just glorious. She's a wonderful woman, young mom of two. She's got a four-year-old and a second grader and she's the real mom. She was willing to share some of the times. She got angry and upset with her kids and everything and we just had this lovely talk and at the end she said you make me feel so good about my parenting and I'm much more relaxed now and I was so happy. I thought, oh yeah, because you only have to be this side of good enough. So it is learning how to let it go and relax and just focus what you can control and let a lot go, and apparently that's going to post in about a month. We'll take her Now for our topic today.
Speaker 2:It emerged in my mind about two days ago. I came by the office to check the mail and kind of get ready to get back to work and ran into one of my therapists, nathan Davidson, who's a younger gentleman and soon-to-be parent. Actually, he just found out over the holidays and he was coming on the office and he was carrying a backgammon board. Now, some of you know the game backgammon, others may not. It's not a traditional one that many people play, but I love backgammon. I played it every day during college and I'm like, wow, you play backgammon. He said, yeah, and it's a fairly complicated game. Once you learn it it's pretty simple. But he said to me, yeah, I use it with my kids when I'm in therapy and I designed a way to talk about feelings with it and I'm like, really, he's yeah, and I said write it up and send it to me. So I have what he sent to me and we're going to go over that at the very end. But it got me thinking about, as a therapist, how much we use games to connect with the kids and engage children and teens and I've got to tell you. I laugh all day long and I play games all day long. I've played tens of thousands of games and the connection you have with the kids.
Speaker 2:I had a young man, michael, who probably 30 years ago he came back to visit me. I saw him in middle school and then he was 20. He was a newly appointed firefighter, so he was 20. And he came back and he saw me and he said my parents took me to the psychologist. I just hated it and then they sent me to you and you weren't like them, you were fun. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. I had a great time with him.
Speaker 2:He was a really sweet kid and you'll find some children our daughter is one of them are naturally just open. They're just dying to talk about their emotions and process things. And those are when you're a therapist and you have people that just want to come in and they have a list of things they want to go over and delve into and to find insight. It's just heavenly. But we work with a lot of kids and a lot of boys and young men who really aren't really adept at talking about their emotions, especially if they're in the autism spectrum, have autism spectrum, if they're in the spectrum, I'm sorry, or they're spirited young guys who do not want to just sit here and talk to me. And that's one of the reasons I love our group therapy so much, because we're active and we're playing games and all of that. But when I'm seeing individually just trying to sit here, there's times I thought I feel like a dentist trying to pull out some cavity from 30 years ago stuck in someone's tooth, because that's just not how they open up. So sometimes some kids do and others don't. And that's where the games are so important and really allows us to connect with the kids and help them open up. So today I thought I'd share some of my therapeutic strategies that I weave into a whole variety of games and some of those you might consider implementing at home as you're playing games.
Speaker 2:Many of you probably played games over the holidays. We did when I was a kid. It got me thinking about my childhood. Every Sunday after Bonanza we'd play cards, and when we were little we'd play Uno, and then we moved up to Spades and Hearts, playing more sophisticated card games, and then we got into high school or college. It was the board game Risk, and especially at holidays with my brothers and brother-in-laws in town, we'd have these battles at Risk that would go on until three in the morning. It would be so much fun, but there was always somebody kind of getting pissed off. But it was great. So I'm guessing you all did a lot of games. We did too, and we do a lot of games here at the office and at home. Cindy, does your family have any favorite games?
Speaker 3:We play different types of games. My youngest is so physical and we do scavenger hunts and things like that. Obstacle courses yeah, things like that yeah the American Ninja Warrior or something.
Speaker 3:He could be, he could be, he could be. Yeah, and I think with my older two card games like war taught my son poker early, things like that kind of games Never really the board games on planes, but we went on some trips and over to Europe where you're on a 10 hour flight and we'd play war together the whole time and just laugh and talk and have fun beating each other.
Speaker 2:And now everybody's just in their own universe, especially when you look at kids and families. All the kids are on their own device, parents on their device. Nobody talks to each other. You know like what a waste of connecting, but it does keep them calm.
Speaker 3:Traveling with kids, I am so thankful for the technology.
Speaker 2:I know there's a plus side to it, yeah, but on this topic today, I love college football and I saw a commercial in one of the bowl games and it's this family with a couple younger kids mom and dad and this teenage daughter and they're all working on a jigsaw puzzle and it's for a steakhouse. I thought we were having a staycation staycation, not a staycation. Like she was ready to boogie out, she had enough family time. It just cracked me up. So you have to change it up with teens, that's for sure. You got to and, just like Cindy does with her son, you adapt your games and what you're doing to your child and what they enjoy and what really motivates them. So here are some tips that I do at the office and now you could maybe weave some of those into home.
Speaker 2:Now the first thing I want to explain is just from a professional standpoint. There is what's called play therapy. Now, play therapy, traditional play therapy, is very much different than what we're doing here. In play therapy you allow, usually you go to the therapist's office, they have a sand tray, they got the dollhouse, art supplies, all kinds of little figurines, clay, and you just allow the child to free play and then the therapist interprets some of that into what's the child's emotions, what are they dealing with, what are they struggling with, and it's more of an interpretive of the child play and the way we use play is to be engaged ourselves with the child or the teen or the young adult and then to talk about and weave in their goals. So everything we do is very goal-directed.
Speaker 2:When kids are coming to see me. Young adults, the first thing is what do you want to get off from? What do you want from me? I need some goals to help you with. And GAINS gets us through, that makes it fun and entertaining and it gets you through the hard times.
Speaker 2:Just last night I see a young man who's absolutely brilliant. He is on the autism spectrum and also has anxiety, and right now he's sitting for a board exam. It started at 9 o'clock, it's 9.30 now, so I wish him blessings. But he came in yesterday and when I first started seeing him nine months ago, he was a young man that was just crippled with his anxiety and very negative self-talk and he would come in and just sit on my sofa barely saying a word, and I would try to probe, question after question, finding things he liked and interest. God. It was the most miserable first couple of sessions. I just couldn't get anywhere with him and he could barely talk and he would mumble, and so finally one day I said, hey, do you want to play Uno? And he nodded his head. He'd lit up. He's the fastest shuffler I've ever seen in my life. He's a piano. He's a organ player as well. He's very talented in lots of areas that he's an organ player as well. He's very talented in lots of areas that kid can shuffle a double-decker cards faster and more elegantly than I've ever seen in my life. And so we started playing cards together and he's done a really nice job of not shutting down. He's made a lot of progress, except yesterday.
Speaker 2:He came the day before his test and I started by saying how are you feeling about the exam? And he just shut down and he curled up into his hole again and I just I did a little probing and then I said let's start playing Uno, and then let's do that first. And the first hand he was almost catatonic got through it. And halfway through the second hand he played a draw four wild card on me. And if, uno, you don't want to get the draw four wild card because you got to pick up four cards. And I was like, oh man, and he had this slide of a grin at the side of his mouth and I said I saw you grinning at me, you whippersnapper. And then he started laughing and within two or three hands having a great time wide open, and then I was able to say so, are you stressed about the test or about your preparation. What do you think? And he said, paul, he said I probably could have studied more and I've never taken this kind of exam and I'm not sure what's going to be on it, and so I'm a little anxious about it. And so then for the rest of the session we were able to process just getting in there, doing the best you can. If you don't pass, you can do it again. It's not a one-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, it's just a hoop you need to jump through. And then how to take his emotions out of it and pre-prepare for tomorrow morning. And last thing I said when you get over there to the exam, go to the men's room, throw cold water on your temples and your cheeks, and that will reduce some of your anxiety, and then just be free, just let your head open up and let out your knowledge. And Mike Esses, he'll pass. He's one of the smartest kids I've ever met. So it gets you through those hard times.
Speaker 2:And first then, on tips at home, it's not just board games, and we already talked about that with Sydney, one of my first memories, and I was just a young whippersnapper myself at the time, and I saw this 11-year-old kid who had already gone through puberty. He was huge and had learning issues and hated school, hated talking about emotions, was very angry. He was a kid who would flip desks over at school and the principals would have to haul him out of class. And so one day I'm like why don't we go in the gym? And my offices have gyms and we rent spaces from churches, so we have gyms and playgrounds. And I said let's play some hockey together. So we go to the gym one little plastic puck and some hockey sticks plastic ones and I said here's the rule. We set up cones for goals at either end of the gym and I said we'll keep track of our scores so you can beat each other, but anytime I score on you, before we do the face-off you have to tell me something about you and what you're feeling and experiencing. And he agreed to it and we would battle each other. I'd be exhausted and every time we'd score I wouldn't drop the puck until he talked. And that worked for him. I remember another and he is now doing very well. He lives up in Montana. I talked to his mom a couple months ago and works for the Forest Service and he's a fishing guide and loving life.
Speaker 2:My friend Noah, who I started seeing when he was nine or something, very active young man, lots of energy, and so he and I he was big in athletics, played college basketball. Actually, he and I put an old bike tire and a rope up in a tree and hung down the tire and then we stood 15 feet away and we had a football and we practiced throwing. We'd keep score of who could throw the football through the hoop and you get a point every time you could throw it through, and then in the process and this is whether it's outdoor activities or in board games about every three throws with him or every three turns. If I'm playing Monopoly or we're playing cards, that's when it's my turn I stop and then I'm like oh so tell me about your goals or tell me about that. How are you feeling about that Now? They want to keep playing, but they know that I'm not going to roll the dice or take my turn until they've answered the question. So I'm not constantly peppering them, but it's just this subtle art of weaving it in there, and it works better if it's on my turn, because then I'm in control and then I can wait for the response and then we can. Then I take my turn or we go back to it and then we can come back to it again a little bit later. And you're really, when it comes to emotions, some kids, they just tell you my daughter's one of those others you just have to weave. You're weaving and you're just throwing out things and see what they're like fishing. You're just seeing what they bite on.
Speaker 2:Now, when you play games and sports and things like I enjoy and I will tell you I'm a very competitive person you always want to assess, like, how competitive are your kids and how competitive are you as a parent. You may not like competition too much and you may hate trash talking. Now, on the other hand, one of your parents or one of your kids might love trash talking and being competitive. I am one of those people. I find trash talking to be an art, but it only has to be with the players that like it. If they don't like it, you don't do it with them and you only do it with the family members that like it. But I typically I offer it to the kids first and I find 90% of them just love it and I'll be like, hey, now do you mind if we have a little teasing, a little fun while we're playing and they're like, oh yeah, that'd be great, and then we talk about okay. And if it's with a family, if someone likes that, who doesn't? Let's respect everyone in the family Then we go from there.
Speaker 2:But with the various games, like with Uno, I do a point system and whoever loses the hand, they have to count up the points in their hand. It's the new marriage value of the cards plus 20 points for face cards, 25 for a wild card, 50 for a draw for a wild left in your hand, and you don't want points. And whoever gets to 500 points first is a loser and that takes about three sessions. But then as soon as I started, I'm usually like I bet you hope you can beat an old man, don't you? The kids crack up and when they beat me they are just beaming. They're like I finally took him down and I throw out the whippersnapper thing and I love to play little jokes every now and then.
Speaker 2:If a kid at UNO calls when you have a wild card, you can pick your own color. A kid at Uno call when you have a wild card, you can pick your own color. And if they say blue and let's say I have red in my hand, I'll do the old. You said red, right, they're like no blue. And I said oh, yeah, red, okay, they're like no, no blue. I said, oh, I'm sorry I got to turn up my hearing aids. They laugh and I don't even have hearing aids, but it's just back and forth and it's so much fun.
Speaker 2:And for some kids, for the kids who are more spirited, kind of your ADHD kids, they need to learn how to do that appropriately, not escalate it. And there's some research on roughhousing for ADHD kids. You have to teach them how to do it appropriately, otherwise they escalate too much and it goes too far and they're hitting someone in the privates or whatever, getting out of control. And it's the same thing with verbal banter. It's learning how to be just right, not too much, what things to avoid, what not to say, and for some of my kids it's learning that how to do it. For my kids on the autism spectrum they're very literal, so they just listen to words and they don't really understand tone of voice, sarcasm, and those are critically important social skills, especially as you're in middle school and high school where people are constantly being sarcastic and teasing and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And I had one time I was playing this middle school and I had one card left and I sarcastically held it up and I said draw for a while, like I'm going to lay it on him right. And he looked at me and said do I draw four? No, and so I explained to him. I said did you see here how I said it? I'm trying to goad you, tease you a little bit, like maybe I have a draw four wild for you. And then he said, oh, you were trick talking me. I'm like, yeah, and that's what he called it, trick talking. And I was like, yeah, it was trick talking and I didn't have a draw four wild, but it was so cute and just him learning how to do that.
Speaker 2:Other times with families, I recently saw a family of three, one middle schooler, two elementary age children all really fun kids, very competent, very athletic and lots of energy. And one of our goals was we could have fun teasing, but not too far. And when I asked a question because I'd ask all three the same question about what they were experiencing or how they were feeling they'd had a traumatic event in the family. And I said when I first started doing that with them, they would contradict each other, they'd make fun of each other and I said when somebody in your family shares their feelings, you do not put them down in any way. So that's our goal. And if you can get through a game with me for 15 minutes and you don't put each other down, you each get four starbursts. Cool, and it took a couple of sessions but we finally got there and I said it's one thing to have fun and tease a little bit. That's another thing that you go after somebody's feelings and we have to respect that. And you can do that in your family boy game too, and knowing who likes to talk stuff, who doesn't and who maybe has a hard time losing stuff. So that's the other thing. For the younger children, games are a great way to teach frustration, tolerance, the little ones. They always are urged to cheat or they throw the board over when they lose and they storm off and you're just seeing that as a building experience. So if you're playing, shoot some ladders or candy land. Those are all opportunities to learn how to handle frustration and keep planning and not giving up and not crying all those things.
Speaker 2:Impulse control. The game of life is another one and my game of life is 50 years old. It's so antiquated and the salaries are like abysmal and everything's really low cost. And I had this third grade girl who really struggled with impulse control, with taking her turn, going out of turn and then manipulating, so if she didn't quite get the spin she'd want, she would do the old. Oh, I messed that one up, I need to spin again. And so one day I finally said you know what? I put four starbursts next to the table and I said if you can go through this whole game without manipulating and waiting for your turn, you get all four. Was she ever motivated by that? And she did it. And then we talked about let's translate that to school and home. We need to learn to control our impulses.
Speaker 2:Last night I was working with a young man who in Uno it really helps to organize your card. Any card game it helps to organize your card. Usually you sort them by suit and numeric value In regular cards. In Uno you do it by color and then you have some special cards. I put those on the end and this young kid had a bunch of cards. He had a pickup. He probably had 20 cards in his hand and any time it was his turn he'd have to look through all 20 cards. And I just took them out and I said this is just a suggestion. But I wrote down for him on a sheet of paper that I write things down for kids and send it home with them. And I wrote down organization is the key to all high-level game management. And I said it would be really helpful to organize those things. He said, yeah, I don't do that. Yeah, I know it helps in life too. And I told him the phrase came from my economics teacher in college who in every paper we had to say organization is the key to all high-level business management. And that applies to home life, it applies to your card and it applies to playing games. So for our kids with ADHD, it's organization.
Speaker 2:Waiting your turn, paying attention to when it's your turn, is another big one. Or one of my favorite games is called Stratego. It's a game that came out when I was a kid and you're two armies like Napoleonic warriors battling each other and you really need to pay attention to when you run into another player who has a higher value than you do and you lose, you want to keep track of that player so you know what you're up against. But so many of them quickly forget. And I'm like, yeah, that was my 10, remember I? I killed your other guy earlier with a 10 and you just came right down. I really need to keep track of my 10. So it's a lot of just good old-fashioned executive function skills and then overall, just life lessons. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You don't brag when you win, you shake it off when you lose and the most important in life is just have fun, just go through life having fun filled with joy, and you just weave them in.
Speaker 2:And again for parents, I would tell you, when you're giving your kids advice on things, they often will take it much better from me than they will from you, or they'll take it from a teacher, not as much from you, and that's just normal child-parent relationships. So you do want to softly weave it in or make a suggestion, just calmly. You might want to do this or just real soft. My father was the opposite of that and I remember playing. We had a pool table at home and he was a good pool player and I always wanted to beat him, but I had a different hand grip on my forward hand, which would be my left hand, that I liked an open finger grip. He liked a closed finger grip and he used to tell me put your finger over the top of that and then you'll do better. Your finger over the top of that and then you'll do better. And it just made me not want to do it more and to this day I don't do it that way. It just pissed me off.
Speaker 2:So you don't want to be too direct, it's just more subtle. It's basically an image of the feeling wheel. It's a very classic picture. I have it hanging in our offices. I think it was done in the 80s. I don't remember the person's name who did it, but if you look up the feeling wheel you see it and it's basically the six primary feelings that we have in the middle and then it radiates out into more subtle feelings and so, like anger, then radiates out into six different versions of anger and those radiate out to six more, even more subtle feelings of anger. And as you move to the center the colors are more intense and there's fear. Happy, surprise, peaceful and sad are the six core. So it's three circles around each other with all these different emotions. Three circles around each other with all these different emotions.
Speaker 2:So my associate Nathan, when explaining backgammon, he came up with a different way to do it. And backgammon is a game of skill and it's also a game of chance, because dice are involved. Anytime dice are involved, there's always an element of chance and you basically I don't even know how to explain it you put your players on a board in a set pattern and the goal is to move your players around towards your side, to your bottom right corner, and get them off the board first. And whoever gets their players off the board first wins, and it's all involved with the dice. And then if you land on another player that's uncovered, they have to go to the center bar and they have to start over again. It's really quite a bit of fun.
Speaker 2:But what he came up with is so, if you look at the feeling wheel, one dice, so, let's say, the person you're playing, rules are four or five and you can use two different colored dice. I call it dice and so the four on that dice tells you which feeling in the center of the feeling wheel you're going to get to, and so, on this analogy he sent me, he labels on the feeling wheel, like which one's, number one. So he had fears. Number one, happy, number two, surprise. Number three, peaceful, four sad and an angry. So if the child or you roll a four that puts you at peaceful, then you go on. The second die, you go one through six. On the next feelings that are next to peaceful, in this case you go from calm, loving, affectionate, trusting and to relaxed. So at that point the players in your playing, including the therapist and the client, would have to tell you, would tell a story about a time they felt relaxed.
Speaker 2:And he scores points. You get one point for defining the emotion and three points if you can tell the time you felt that emotion or how you feel that emotion in your body. So it's great for emotional awareness. And then he gives bonus points if the student can tell a coping skill they used for that emotion. So they're playing this very fun, very competitive game but at the same time the emotions are built into it and he does it about every three roles. So they have a couple roles, each move their players and then on the third roll they count the dice, they look at the feeling wheel and then it might be another example that if they rolled in his analogy, if they rolled three, double threes, the feeling would be shocked and surprised, is the feeling. Or if they rolled a 5-2, or let's do 5-3 is sad and it goes to lonely a time they felt lonely. So you can target all the different human emotions just based on chance and having fun playing a game, and then he keeps track of the scores for talking about their feelings to see who wins.
Speaker 2:I was just delighted. I thought it was very creative. So with that, I hope you all had fun with your board games and active games with your kids and families. It's a great way to connect and it's a way where they're feeling relaxed. They tend to be more open. Kids tend to be more open when they're just having fun and having fun with you and then you just weave stuff in as you move along and queries always work great. I'm wondering how you were thinking about what happened the other night. I'm wondering how you're feeling about that. It's just query and you just work it in and then you go back to having fun and not making it too hard. Okay, real quick.
Speaker 2:Our legit parent of the award this time goes to my hairstylist, even though if you look at my hair. Right now it's pretty out of shorts. I am going it out. I'm going for the Patrick Mahomes look. That's trendy now. But I asked her about her holidays and she said oh, they were great.
Speaker 2:The boys were doing this, they were playing all the time, except for my older one fifth grader. He decided not to do his homework the last week before break. So two days before holiday break was over, I said he chose not to do it the week before school. So you're doing it now on break. I'm like good for you, that's what you do. He has to learn his lesson and he didn't get to play and got his work done. Learn his lesson, and he didn't get to play and got his work done. So Amanda is the best. She is no nonsense. And finally, under things of beauty make me cry.
Speaker 2:Christmas Eve at our church service they always sing every year oh Holy Night. It's a very famous song about the birth of Jesus and in telling you the story I want to be clear. This is not a statement about my faith or religion. This is about a son's love for his father. That's what this is about.
Speaker 2:Old Holy Night happens to be one of the songs my father used to sing in the church. He was on Broadway for a couple of years singing the church. He was on Broadway for a couple of years, sang in the opera and the smartest thing I ever did in my life when I was about my age now 65, maybe 60. No, he was that age. He was 65 at the time and I didn't have much money. But I hired a pianist, I got a recording studio and I had my dad record two songs, o Holy Night and the Lord's Prayer and it's the smartest thing I ever did. And fortunately they were done on digital tape. It was the first rendition of digital. And then CDs came out and I had them transferred to CDs and I keep it in the safe deposit box at the bank and every Christmas we play it.
Speaker 2:On Christmas Eve they started singing Holy Night, which just triggers in my mind. My father and both my wife and my daughter were hugging me the three of us together and I was just bawling and comforted by the two of them. And then the next day, on Christmas Day, as our tradition and my wife's parents were over, we put it on the Bose radio and played both songs and again I cried and they were amazed. My dad had just an amazing voice. So, in honor of my love for my father, we have recorded or Sidney's recorded the playing of O Holy Night and I would like to share that with you and hope you enjoy it. And we'll end with O Holy Night and my daddy, and before that, I hope you enjoyed the program. If you did, please share it with a friend and remember, like what the mom on the podcast me told the other day, just relax, you only have to be this side of good enough. Thank you.
Speaker 4:O holy night. The stars are brightly shining. It is the night of the dear Savior's birth, the Savior's words. Long lay the world in sin and error, pining till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. The thrill of hope, the weary worry rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. A new and glorious morn For onion is O hear the angel voices. O night divine. The night when O night divine