Coaching Your Family Relationships

Raising Confident Kids Without Hovering, with Kepler Knott

• Tina Gosney • Episode 197

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Episode 197 -  Raising Confident Kids Without Hovering, with Kepler Knott 

“How do I help my child grow into a confident adult without controlling their every step?”

If you’ve ever asked yourself that question, you’re not alone.

Parenting today’s generation is a whole different ball game. With the rise of social media, constant comparison, digital overload, and the fear of letting our kids fail, it’s no wonder so many parents feel stuck between wanting to protect their children and wanting them to grow strong and resilient.

In this episode of the Coaching Your Family Relationships Podcast, I talk with Kepler Knott, author of Raising Tomorrow—a powerful new book that began as heartfelt letters to his daughters and grew into a guide for modern parenting. Together, we explore how to raise emotionally healthy kids in a world full of noise, pressure, and expectations.

You’ll hear us unpack:

  • How to advise your kids without trying to control the outcome
  • The emotional cost of constant comparison for both kids and parents
  • Why technology can quietly erode confidence—and how to counter it
  • The surprising way that service and giving build resilient, grounded kids
  • Why modeling a growth mindset matters more than ever

This episode isn’t about perfect parenting. It’s about parenting with intention, humility, and heart.

Whether your child is pulling away emotionally, you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, or you simply want to build a more connected relationship, this conversation will give you fresh insight and practical tools to start showing up differently.

Learn more at https://www.raisingtomorrow.org/ 

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Grab your copy here: DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

Ready to learn how to manage your emotional reactions? Calm Core is your guide:

Being able to manage your emotional reactions to others is a vital step in repairing family relationships

CLICK HERE TO SEE CALM CORE

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Tina Gosney:

Parenting today's generation comes with a whole new set of challenges, between constant comparisons on social media, all the pressures of technology, and just our natural desire to protect our children from failure, it's so easy to fall into these patterns that keep them from developing confidence, resilience and this true sense of self, of who they really are. So in today's episode, I sit down with Kepler nott. He is the author of a brand new book called Raising tomorrow. So he started writing letters to his daughters, and then decided to turn them into a book, and I'm so glad that he did, because it has become a thoughtful guide for parents and even kids alike. His kids are reading this book already. So this is a series of conversations on growing up, and this these conversations invite us to reflect and to question and to reimagine how we are preparing the next generation for the life that they will live. Kepler and I dive into some big questions, like, How can parents advise without trying to control the outcome? What happens when we get stuck in comparison, both as adults and as kids, how does technology chip away at our confidence and our self esteem. How do service and giving actually build stronger, healthier kids, and why modeling a growth mindset is one of the most powerful things that we can do as parents. Now this is not about perfect parenting, because no one has that manual. It's about showing up, learning alongside of our kids, giving them the freedom to discover who they are. If you've ever wondered how to balance guiding your children without hovering, without becoming that helicopter parent, or how to raise a confident kid in this uncertain world, you're going to want to lean into this conversation. I really enjoyed this conversation that I had with Kepler, and I hope that you will too. I loved his wisdom, his insight. He has a great sense of humor. He just shows up trying to be a better version of himself today than he was yesterday. And with that, here's my conversation with Kepler. I want to welcome my guest, Kepler nott today. He's written a book that is super interesting, and I'm really excited to share him and the book with you. We're going to start off with a question I think that everybody is interested in. So Kepler, what do you think adolescents and young adults are struggling with today, and why and what role do parents play for them as they go through those struggles?

Kepler Knott:

Sure, yeah. And hello, Tina, thank you so much for having me. We've talked before a few times, so I'm very glad to be here. It's a real privilege. So and just for context, I know there'll be an opener to this podcast, but you know, there are a lot of people out there who talk about raising kids and adolescents, and what are the challenges for young people? What are the challenges for parents? You know, Jonathan Haidt is a big luminary. David Brooks, you are a luminary in your own right. But then there are regular folks, as I say, quote, unquote, like me, and for all this to come together at a societal level, so we can all benefit from strong kids, strong parents, strong families, strong communities. And really, you know, strength as a nation, I would say it's going to take all of us, sort of, we, the regular people, to make it happen. So I'm excited to be here to your question. Specifically, you know, younger people, all of us really get overwhelmed by the process of growing up, which, as you have alluded to before, is definitely a lifelong process. It also seems to be happening in some ways, for the younger generation at a slower pace, which is interesting, because everything else seems to be moving faster. So on one hand, kids have more than ever, and I realize that there are numerous demographics in this country, and that's a relative term, but in the United States, even compared to if you travel the world at all like we have a lot more information, more attention, more outlets, more choices to make, and not all of them are good. There's a chapter on technology that talks a lot about AI. You know, we used to worry about the internet and social media still valid, but AI is going to be a big deal. Everything down to like, there's 37 types of cereal to eat. So what gives I have a theory about life success, and I don't mean material success, although that could be part of it. But I share this with my kids. If you've got a family that does that makes good, like they come from one socio economic level, and they move up like their parents worked really hard. Chances are those kids like they inherit that work ethic because their parents haven't just told them, they've showed them, they've modeled it. You know, how to how to work, how to be resilient, and they pass that on when you get to a fourth or fifth generation of like family wealth. And this is not just. Families. It's communities and countries that kind of washes out. I tell the story in the book about Outward Bound, which is an outdoor experience survival program. There's lots of those. But at the turn of the last century, German U boats were sinking passenger ships in the Atlantic, and everybody was going into the water. And the people that were dying were the young people. I don't mean five year olds, I mean teenagers and young adults. And they had this theory that, why, you know, why those should be the strongest, able bodied people, and their their hypothesis that those kids were sort of giving up like they they weren't resilient, they weren't self reliant. And so if you extend that literal thing into a metaphor. I think that's a lot of what we have today. I think there's a lot to be said for letting kids be kids. Let them do trial and error, as the old biblical proverb says, you know, teach a man or a woman how to fish, don't, don't give them a fish. And I also think that reflects back on all of us as parents. It's too easy to intervene. It's the helicopter parent is alive and well, I've done it myself. I'm not perfect, but I try really hard to be a little more free range, because I want to give my kids that room to grow. So our kids have to learn to be citizens and leaders and followers and colleagues and friends, neighbors, partners, parents are so many roles that they're tasked to play, and they know that, right? And then along the way, they have to find meaning and purpose and all of that, but from the inside out, not having it told to them or it can be modeled. But you know, the internet's not going to solve those problems. And so the book at the end of the day is really about connecting parents and kids, as I try to do with mine, to inspire the next generation to have conversations about the things that really matter in life, which are the same for all of us, whatever your race, religion doesn't matter. You know, we all want what's best for our kids. I have not met a parent that doesn't so I you know, there's a lot of things for kids to struggle with, and it is ironic that we live in such success in some ways, and yet kids struggle. There's a lot of stats in the book on that as well,

Tina Gosney:

right? And let's just highlight your book for a minute, which is raising tomorrow, prepare our kids for what lies ahead.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, looks like that. That's helpful because more than one title, but yep, it's on it's on Amazon, and there's also a website for the book at raising tomorrow.org,

Tina Gosney:

and you have a Kindle version as well. I noticed

Kepler Knott:

absolutely Yep, and there'll hopefully be an audio version, and it will go out on other platforms, other than I've had more than a few parents asked me if they could buy it from somewhere other than Amazon. So yes, short shortly, I noticed

Tina Gosney:

that you said, this is not like, it's not like, it's not a book that you just sit down and read from front to cover. It's more like a reference book. So you've got different chapters on different subjects, and give what like, what are some of the examples of these subjects that you've covered in the book?

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, so the book started off. I mean, I mission is accomplished because I wrote that I read it originally for my kids, and it started off as a series of letters from my father to his daughter. So there are 15 chapters, each with a point or a point of view, at least, and considerations like ways to and things to think about. It's an interactive project, but I call it life's heavy topics, lightly roasted, as the website says. So you know, certainly there's a chapter on growing up. There's a track chapter on learning, on service, like to your community, on on parenting. Interestingly enough, because our next generation will be parents as well, on religion, on politics, a lot of the things that are hot, you know, third rail topics, and I'm not taking a stance in any one of those so much as trying to expose my kids to what's going on, what some of my thoughts might be. What are your thoughts? And what kind of questions do you ask? Because ultimately it answer those questions. So those 15 chapters are are self contained, and my kids will ask me a bunch of questions often. And I'll say, Well, go back and look at the chapter on so and so. And then let's talk about it. So they'll roll their eyes a little bit, but

Tina Gosney:

they'll do it well, your kids are at the age where they maybe eye roll

Kepler Knott:

a little bit. And for the audience, my kids are 12 and 14, so and going on 18, sort of right.

Tina Gosney:

I don't know if they get out of the eye rolling stage that at some point, if it happens, I don't know. I haven't seen that

Kepler Knott:

yet. There's that in the universal answer to any question which is fine, right? Like how even questions that don't seem that, where that answer works, they still say fine. So it's all good. We work on that.

Tina Gosney:

And I love that your kids are already referring to this book. You're still around. It's not like you've gone anywhere, still referring to the book.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah? Parents are still okay to hang out with.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you some questions about some things that you've just said, but first tell us a little bit about

Kepler Knott:

you Sure. So I, as I mentioned. And I'm not, I'm not a child psychologist. I'm not anything special, but what I what I've done, or what I've been doing, so I'm a writer. I've been a teacher of kids that are about my kids age, eighth grade, public school needs improvement, social studies, all the metal detectors, all that stuff that was more eye opening than probably any other job I had. I was a soldier for a while, and I spent some time overseas, and then for most of my professional, regular career life, I've been an entrepreneur and have started and run a few companies. I have a company now, but most importantly, I'm a husband and a father, at least in this context, and so having traveled across lots of places and jobs and classes and cultures, I had found that there are better ways of living to make life full. And I'm not saying I know the right way and others don't. There are often as many questions as there are answers, but the book aims to impart that journey and invite other parents and kids to do the same, whether they write a book or whether they just have a conversation, to do the same thing. So that's a little bit about me.

Tina Gosney:

Thank you. I think, you know, we are already discussed that we're the same age. My kids are a lot older than yours, so you got a life, a lot of life experience in before you, you know, settled down and had those kids. And I think that really shows in the way that you approach these subjects, that you were able to to gain some experience, and very lot of varied experience as well, like the teaching and the soldier, you know, being a soldier. And you said, you, I don't know if you just mentioned it, but I read it in your book that you spent was it a summer in the Soviet Union, or was it more than that? Yeah,

Kepler Knott:

that was separate from all of that. I was that was my major. So I did spend time studying and then ultimately working in what was then the Soviet Union and then became Russia. I was sort of straddled by sides of that. That was in the early 90s. That was interesting, too, a very different parenting style, but I have to say, I haven't met a culture yet where people don't love their kids.

Tina Gosney:

That's universal. I think that's just a human trait, and it's like

Kepler Knott:

the old sting song. I hope the Russians love their children too. I'm pretty sure they do.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, that might have saved us a few times. So you said a few things before that, I want to go back to you mentioned choices. Kids have a lot of choices. I remember, and I have thought about this a lot. I remember when I was a kid like you had, if you're going to pick out a pair of jeans, I think you had, like, three choices. We had three or four choices of TV channels, and it's gonna say cable.

Kepler Knott:

You had to get up. You couldn't use the remote,

Tina Gosney:

so that if you really, pretty fancy, if you had a remote, there was a family that I used to babysit that they had cable. It was, but it was not slider box, you know, yeah, channels, yeah. And that was pretty cool. If you could go babysit at someone's house, they had, that had cable but we didn't have a lot of choices to make, and it just made life more simple. And we would think that choices add fullness and richness to our life. They often add complexity. They often add overwhelm, and when we get too many choices, it can really shut us down, because our brain is not really designed to have that many choice, that many, that many varied choices. And if you think about it's not just jeans and TV now it's there are choices with just about anything that you look at. Yeah, this can

Kepler Knott:

are trying to sell you something behind that. So it's not always in the end users best interest, right?

Tina Gosney:

So no wonder we're all I think we're all struggling in the amount of choices that we have, and can we limit them? I was watching some just for fun, some dating show the other day with young adults, and they were saying that in this particular city that they live in, in Utah, one of them said it's really hard to date here, because you everybody thinks there's someone better that's right around the corner.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, the better deal,

Tina Gosney:

uh huh, the better deal. Disease, like just yep, that's just over there. So I can't settle, I can't say yes to this, because there's something better over there, and it's coming. It's right around the corner. So it's just so interesting how that can paralyze us. And it can, for sure, paralyze our kids, who are not, they don't have the amount of life experience, the the brain development, the socio you know, in emotional development that their parents do hopefully,

Kepler Knott:

and they often have a lot of energy to bang their heads against the wall. So they're really they're willing to try. Yeah, totally, totally true. Also, I'm sure you've talked about this before with. Your audience, but you know people's online lives and persona and their real lives are different, and realizing that you don't, it's the Keeping Up with the Joneses in whatever way you want to express that, not just materially, but who's having more fun, who's got a better this or that, who's happier? All that stuff is very elusive, and you can end up just chasing your tail. So we try to talk about that with our kids a lot, and there's a sense of gratitude that like as a group, as a country, even regardless, I think we have so many things to be thankful for, and that's very soothing, and that diminishes some of that complication and stress that you talked about right now, in the sort of sphere of public media, you wouldn't think that, because it's pretty can be pretty cutthroat and pretty divisive and uncivil at times. But if you peel that back on your sort of day to day life, and you go and talk to people and be with people like one to one interaction and interpersonal my kids will answer me from their room if I'm in the kitchen on their phone, and then we're like, no, no, that's not happening. Like, get up and come talk to me, because we'll, you'll have a better time and I'll have a better time, but I don't want to hear from you on your phone if you're in this house. Yeah, there it. Choices. Is a good point. It does cause a lot of stress, and, you know, that's just, I think that has to be worked through daily, right?

Tina Gosney:

You also were talking about, let me see if I can remember something to the effect of, like, we're all here, we're all making choices. And I wrote down, I don't know if I wrote down what you said or what my thoughts were,

Kepler Knott:

it might have been better than what I wrote, so I would like to hear

Tina Gosney:

it, just give that to you. But I wrote down like we're all here to figure out how to be a human being on the earth, who we want to be, what type of life we want to live, and how to be the best us. But often we're looking externally to try to figure that out. And if we could teach our kids because, because we as adults, too, are often looking externally and trying to figure that out. But if we can model for them and show them how to look internally, and you have this in your one of your chapters on identity, I really there's

Kepler Knott:

a chapter on meaning and on identity that kind of crisscrosses. That's exactly right.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, if we can look at that you and you talked about internal and external identity. And you said, looking at yourself honestly, respecting yourself, forgiving yourself, all while expecting the most of yourself. This all matters so much I love that. Will you speak a little bit more to that?

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, I mean, back to your point earlier about choices and being online like this notion or this, the ease with which we like to compare ourselves to others. And what's better, I think, can lead us, adults and kids, anybody astray. And it's ironic again, that if you looked across the entire sort of community or the nation, everybody's livelihood or lifestyles, and not in all cases, I realize, but we, you know, historically on the long game, it's gotten better, but people seem less content and more distraught, because we're always comparing and being asked to compare ourselves to others. So this notion or sentiment that I share with my kids about, hey, put all that away. You know, put your phone away, and think about what you like to do, what you're good at. Because every I tell my kids all time, there's like, eight ways to be smart. One of my daughters is extremely academic. The other one is also academic, very smart, but it's just she's not as excited by school as her older sister, but she compares herself to them, like you don't need to do that, like You're your own person. With your own inclinations and your own life. And at the end of the day, no one knows what it's like to live inside somebody else's head. I don't know whether I don't care if it's your wife or your kid. Everyone's their own person. We're all islands, but hopefully we're interconnected. So that notion of finding out and trying to figure out who you are in the context of all this stuff just flying by you, is, I think it's very hard back to your first question for anybody, but especially for younger people, because it's overwhelming, and you almost have to remind yourself, and I do try to help my kids remind themselves of that again, daily. So much of figuring it out or trying to is a process, right? It's not an event. It's not one thing. It's the accumulation of all the small things over time. But yeah, you know their identity is I lament the fact that we are so identitarian in our politics and culture because we are all. We share so many of the same things. I don't care. Again, what religion, race, class, everything, easy to say that, hard to manage that, but we kind of eat ourselves from the inside out in this country, often because we get wrapped around the axle about that stuff. And I'm not disparaging any one identity at all. I celebrate them, but I think remembering what you have in common with other people can be very, very helpful.

Tina Gosney:

Oh, for sure. For sure, because we have so much more in common than we don't,

Kepler Knott:

so much more that's 100%

Tina Gosney:

I think I want to go back to that original question that I asked, because I don't think that we covered one part that I wanted to go into, and that was how, you know, we talked about I asked you, like, what are kids struggling with? But then what are, what role parents are playing for them as they go through those struggles, and I think often in in what I've seen, we as parents also haven't really defined or really come to terms with our own internal identity. We're still trying to find that external identity by finding acceptance in our groups and the certain tribes that we belong to, or the religion or the family or the, you know, the place that we live, and we're trying to, like you said, compare and measure ourselves against those people. And do I fit? Am I measuring up? And in parenting, we identify so much of ourselves through what our children do, don't do how they appear, the boxes that they're checking, and we use that as a measure for ourselves. Am I doing well? Am I not doing well? Am I successful as a parent? Am I not? Because we judge other people the same way. So if we're judging ourselves that way, for sure, we are judging others that way, even if we don't realize it, we are. And so when we get stuck in that type of mindset, which the majority of parents are, which bless our hearts, we try our best. That's a great southerner. We want to do good by our kids, but we are sometimes so stuck in ourselves that we can't see what we're doing. And so I'm wondering what your thoughts are about any of that.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, first of all, I agree, and it's a very good point. So many things are a referendum on the quality of fill in the blank, parenting myself, like and parents get over attached to that. I do too at times. You know, I was at a, I don't know, it was like a four year old birthday party, and there was, it was like a comp, like you go to these parties and you do it when they're teenagers, etc, but, and it's like each one is in one upsmanship of the other, because people are competing. Which it can happen, right? I think it's unfortunate. What do we do so parents can be supportive of their kids, they can help their kids, or they can do things for their kids. And I think we're way too far over on that spectrum. And that's like natural reaction, I tell myself, and also my kids and my wife. I don't tell let me rephrase that. I make the comment. It's probably a better way to say it. But, you know, this is going to sound counterintuitive, but don't, don't be over attached to the outcome. I don't mean don't care about your kids. There's a certain detachment that I think goes with good parenting, which I again struggle with these things too. That says, hey, look, you're you, and I'm me, and I'm going to help you see how to be the best version of you as a parent. But if you did bad on a test, then you know, that's that's how that goes. And if you didn't study for it, that's what happens. That's the physics of life. And we talk about that a lot in our family, and you should not suffer from, but experience that, because that's how you're going to learn. And it's not my job to go call your teacher, tell him or her, Hey, my kid didn't get a good night's sleep or whatever. No one cares. Because when you get older, no one really cares. And again, they do care. But this notion of being not being attached the outcome, which is, there's a whole part of this in the book. The other thing I would say about that is, and maybe this doesn't apply to parents, which, but there are these rights of passes and crucibles that I think an older generation often had to go through. You know, they talk about the greatest generation, World War Two. Obviously, that was a rite of passage for many people. I think there are less of those today, and that if we can help our kids find them and figure them out, that will allow them to do things on their own without our involvement, that are self contained experiences that will help them. I just took three kids to the baseball park the other day to go play ball, and all the baseball fields were full and they were just sat on their hands. I'm like, Well, you can go to each field and find out when they're done. So we know whether to wait or go somewhere else, but I'm not doing it like you go. So the three kids each went to and one of them was quite young, the other one was a fair amount older, but, you know, giving them ownership and agency to do those things. But back to your question about parenting. I mean, it's, I'm amazed at what I read in the news, like parents helping kids with their college essays, like you're only hurting your kids when you do stuff like that, even though I know we mean well, when we when we step forward, sometimes it's good to be detached and not be let them fall down, let them pick themselves up. Because when we go to do that for them, we're just making them weaker. I mean, that's a. Dramatic statement, but ultimately, we're not letting them find the tools and put the tool kit together for their own life, because mom at the front of the book has four people walking across in the sunset, and in the future, there's two shadows. Well, those are your kids, because you're got you're not going to be there at some point, right? So you know, how do you make that work?

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, those are really good points. And in letting go of the outcome, as far as, like an age of what's age appropriate, because you've got a 12 and a 14 year old, which is completely different than letting go and detaching from like a five year old or an 18 year old, right? So at an age appropriate level, detachment, I think, lets us let go of our story for them and what they should be doing and how they should look, and it allows us to get really curious about who is this person that I'm, that I have in my home that's living with me. Can I let that unfold as I let them grow and experience life without me stepping in and interfering? Yeah, but it allows them to actually going back to identity, you know, find some of that identity internally by by some of that failure and picking themselves back up. I tackle what do you say?

Kepler Knott:

I was gonna say. So I think that's a great point. If growing up, for all of us, kids included, is a road. You know, there's a paved road, and then there is the side of the road that's developed, but not fully, and then there's, you know, the wilderness. It feels like, instead of letting kids drive the road and maybe run off the road a little bit, we've taken like it's like a bowling alley, we've taken and put them in the middle of the road. And so that's a safe ride, but it's not a full ride, and it's also not an experience that makes them ready to drive when they're older, so to speak. So I think you say is true, right?

Tina Gosney:

And if we're putting those bumpers on the, you know, the bowling alley, and not letting the ball roll into the gutter,

Kepler Knott:

they think they're great bowlers, and they're not. But

Tina Gosney:

that's not how life is, right? That's right. That's right. When we and you're talking really about over functioning in our kids lives, we are doing things for them that they are capable of doing themselves. But think about

Kepler Knott:

kids toast at the table when they're 12. I'm like, really, like, embarrassed. My mom would be like, What are you talking about?

Tina Gosney:

Well, if you think about, how do you develop self esteem? How do you develop confidence? It's through doing hard things, failing those crucibles, learning from them. Yep, it's that crucible. When we are taking away from our children the the opportunity to do hard things, we're actually stealing their opportunity to develop their own confidence and their own self esteem 100% Yeah, and that's a hard reality for parents to come to realize, because we're think we're being super helpful. Yeah, we're doing what we're supposed

Kepler Knott:

to be doing to be fair to parents today, parents didn't really even have that opportunity two generations ago because they were working and they had, you know, it was survival kids than they have today. Yeah, it was much more existential. And again, I know that's a relative term, but now, you know, they do and so like, how am I going to use that time? So that's a choice for a parent to make, or talk about choices like, I can go left or right, and being really thoughtful and deliberate, and thinking about that, which I have to check myself all the time, is again, a daily task. And once you it's like a muscle. Once you work it, you're like, Oh yeah, the next time becomes easier, easier. And then it becomes the modus operando of the family. And then your kids don't ask you to do things like cut their toast. That's a bad analysis or perhaps, but they just my kids won't come and ask me to do things, because they'll know. I'll say no, but then they'll go do it, and then they'll learn from it, and sometimes they'll do it better. I'm like, Hey, that's a better way. And you just figure that out. And they're like, so the amount of pride that they feel from that, even if it's something little, is significant, and those little You cruel those things over time, is what makes them have self esteem and self confidence and the willingness to stick their neck out and try things and not be cowed by, you know, all the external stuff. I think,

Tina Gosney:

yeah, I think that that self esteem and confidence is really built with the little things like you just described. We tend to think that it's built by these big, monumental things that we do. It's actually built on a day to day basis with tiny little things of showing up and figuring out how to do

Kepler Knott:

something. And the good news story for that, which I tell myself is, therefore, it's never too late. Like, I don't care if they're 25 or if they're 18 or if they're 12, it's like, you can, you can flip that switch, and maybe it's more like pushing it up and having it stick. But like, that's just a mindset. That I think a lot of us as parents would be we would better serve ourselves and better serve our children to adopt.

Tina Gosney:

And are we as parents getting outside of our comfort zone and pushing ourselves to do things that we might fail at, because we are models for our children as to like, this is how you're an adult in the world. So do you stop growing, you know, turn 18 or 25 or, you know, whatever age. But lots of adults don't push themselves. We just kind of get settled into our comfort zone and we stop doing hard things,

Kepler Knott:

absolutely? Yeah, I use movies a lot to demonstrate. Like, we'll watch a lot of family movies, and there's one in particular. I forget the name of it, or the the dad gets on stage and he can't sing and he can't play music, but he does it to show the kid that he's willing to do it, and then the kid who actually can sing and play comes out, does the same thing and realizes that, oh, this is something that I could do. So just little things like that. Don't be afraid to embarrass yourself, not at the expense of somebody's safety, perhaps, but just just just in general,

Tina Gosney:

yeah, I'd love I and I don't, I didn't write down which chapter I got this from. I'm going to guess that it was maybe growing up. But you said growing up is a lifelong process. We're growing up with our kids. We're just and I'm saying we're just like, in a different stage of growing up than they are,

Kepler Knott:

yeah, oh, I tell my kids don't be confused between growing up and being an adult. Like the law says you're an adult when you're 18, or if you're in the car rental business 25 but there are people who are 30 that don't act as grown up as people who are 17, and a lot of that's your life circumstances and parenting. You know, they coined this phrase, maybe a half to a full generation go adulting, and people will talk about doing things that, you know, our generation might be like, well, that's what you're supposed to do, like, move out of your parents house and pay your rent and do things like that. And now they're celebrated as, like, major accomplishments, and I'm not making light of them, but like those, there's just you have to do those things, and we have to, as parents, make our kids or refuse to do those things for our kids as much as we can, I think, because they will grow up faster as a result, regardless of their age. But I totally agree. I mean, look, it would be arrogant for me to say that I'm all grown up, but we're all still growing up, right? And that's okay, and it's okay for our kids to know that too. Like, hey, like, we didn't pick my daughter from camp. I think I mentioned that to you in a prior call, and she really wanted to come home. And we had our reasons. Like, hey, you're going to stick it out. We paid a lot of money, whatever, right? That might have been a mistake. And normally I would say I would never do that, but in her case, like, it was pretty acute. So I said, Hey, I'm sorry if I made a mistake. I'm still learning, and I, you know, and now that I've said that we don't need to talk about like, you can, you know, you can feel how you want to feel, but I've said what I'm gonna say, and let's move on. So, you know, it worked pretty well, but we're all still learning and growing up. Like, I don't want to, I would hate to think that I was arrogant, so arrogant as to tell my kids I had it all figured out. Like, I don't know, is an okay answer, but I do also, this is in the book. You know, there is not on meaning there's not one single way to figure out life. Like there's no single silver bullet the city slickers was the movie reference in there, when the old cowboy says there's just one thing in life you got to remember. And everybody says, what is it? And he's like, that's for you to figure out, right? Yeah. But you know, letting our kids know that that's okay and that it's the effort and the attitude to try and go, persevere to the solution, whatever it is, whether it's a big life problem or a small one, where they get to try that and experiment and and by the way, your parents are doing the same thing, because this is the first time you've been 14 and a half. Young lady. I don't know what I don't know what 15 looks like. I mean, I have God children and nephews and nieces and stuff like that, but it's, yeah, it's important to to model that for our kids. I think,

Tina Gosney:

yeah, I think, like, I've never been this age, been married for this many years with that age group of children and grandchildren, and I'm trying to figure it out what that looks like for myself. Each year,

Kepler Knott:

I had a boss and a mentor with someone that, hey, you changed. I mean, your body literally changes. You know, you are not the same physical corpus today as you were two years ago. I mean, literally, every cell you know is regenerating. That's a little bit of a metaphor. But he said, every 10 years, like you, you are markedly different. Bill Gates once said, we underestimate the amount of change, or we overestimate the amount of change every two years and underestimate the amount every every 10 something to that effect. That's a technology example, perhaps. But same with human beings, and so kids knowing that their parents are changing and their needs are changing and their interests are changing, and same with kids, and that is an ongoing that road goes on for everybody until it doesn't right. So I think that's really important for everybody to realize, because then everybody gives everybody a break and and we can consider and accept and forgive and. And celebrate all these different things along the way. That's the fun part. I guess,

Tina Gosney:

hopefully, yeah, sometimes, right?

Kepler Knott:

I tell my kids, like, Hey, you're you're not supposed to be happy all the time. Did you know that? Like, yeah, like, there's a part about this in the book. Like, focus on being content. I'm not saying like, downgrade from happiness, but happiness is a feeling, and it's going to come and it's going to go, if you're sad, be sad, and some things are worth being sad over, and if you skip that part, then you're depriving yourself of that experience and that learning, like we want to skip out, like we just want them to not be unhappy. And I try, I mean, I want my, of course, I want my kids to be happy, but I try not to get too zealous about that, because sometimes you're going to be upset, and you're supposed to be and that's okay. You should experience that, and you should move on from that and not dwell on because there's you wrote about this or talked about it one of your podcasts, but there's a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is like in the moment. It's what happens, and it hurts. It hurts. It hurts physically, it hurts emotionally. And then suffering is as much how we handle that, because you can suffer for a long time, and that a lot of that can be self inflicted, or you can put it up, but you have to process it to be able to do to do that. I think so. And and cheating our kids out of that opportunity, I think to your good point earlier. It hurts them, makes them, you know, less ready later on.

Tina Gosney:

Right? It's pretty common for parents to say, I just want my kids to be happy, right? If we think about, you know, if we're trying, we're always chasing happiness. Then we're constantly trying to arrange all the small pieces in our lives to line up just, you know, just so and if we're even able to do that, ever able to achieve everything aligning at the same time, it's very fleeting, and it might last for a few moments, and then it's gone, and then we're trying to chase it again. But our life is actually happening while we're chasing the happiness. So if we can see, like, actually, life is much more full than just happy, like you said, there are times where you want to be sad. Something sad really happens. It's appropriate to be sad.

Kepler Knott:

And you can be strategically content and tactically sad, if I can say it that way and still, like you've got that baseline behind you. So you know that, I mean, it could be something really traumatic, like war or the passing of a loved one, like those are, you know, you're going to be sad, but if you have that backdrop of sort of psychological, spiritual and mental organization of contentedness, that is a huge buffer against all of that, that allows you to move through that process, it all that kind of thing.

Tina Gosney:

Well said, Very well said. So if we go into sometimes we as parents, we like to get into the like, I know what's best. Let me tell you how to do this. I've been there before. So we get into this teaching, like, authoritative mode with our kids. If we're going to shift to co learning and growing up with them, what are your thoughts about how to shift from like, Hey, I'm doing this for the first time too, trying to figure this out. I know a few things. Let me share that with you. And then let's, you know, let you sit with that and see what you think. And we like, we're learning with our kids, instead of just being the authoritative, like, this is how it goes, and this is what you should be doing, follow me kind of thing.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah. Well, you know this better than I do. I'm guessing anybody with older kids, but I want to hear your perspective, yeah, so Well, I was gonna say that telling kids as they get older works less and less. And some things are like, Hey, take out the trash. That's not a life question. That's just, hey, you have a chore, but showing them, or, to your point, sharing stories about I, one of my children was having struggling with something, and instead of telling her how to make herself but I just told her the exact same thing, or very similar that happened to me when I was little, and what I did and didn't do, and how that didn't didn't work. And she was fascinated by that. And it wasn't saying you should go do the same thing. It's just saying someone else experienced this. This is what they didn't, didn't do, but they had to fix some choices and take some actions, and so that the older they get, the showing and sharing stories. And because every parent, I think parents discount their own experience a lot, because they're by definition wiser and more experienced. I mean, they just are. And so unpacking that for your kids, it shows their humanity, it shows their vulnerability, but also shows their stick to it and this and perseverance, like I did something about that, and I think those stories are marvelous for kids. There's a whole chapter on learning and education, not Biggie, just literally, because there's, again, I tell my kids, there's lots of ways to be smart. School is just a part of that. But the the why I tell them of learning things is super important for them to be a whole person, and so every time I'm sharing something, I'm just trying to educate myself and them and invite them to do the same thing. And my kids push back all the time, and that's great. I don't want, I mean, there's limits to that, but I. You know, if you got you want to say something, I want to hear it, and then what we can talk about it. So those are, you know, this notion of teaching versus co learning, as you say, I think is a very good one, because we all parents especially want to be right and tell their kids what right looks like. And again, I think sometimes that's appropriate, but other times it's, it's, it's an interrogative, as opposed to a statement. And this notion that you've talked about today before, about being a continual learner, a student of life and relationships and meaning and all those things, you know that those are, we're all just driving down that road again. So I, you know, I work in a business where my job is to tell people things, because that's how I get paid, and so I have to turn that switch off. I think a lot of parents come home. My wife is a trial attorney. And you should, you know, dinners in our house, you know, it's like, okay, counselor, like, you know, it's not zero sum. Someone doesn't have to win so someone else can lose. Like, we can all win, or we could all lose, perhaps. But I do think this notion of how you are in your day, as a grown up adult, in your work, and how you are with your kids, there is some overlap, but there's also you have to turn some of that off to be able to deal or be useful as useful as you can to your kids, and that takes some humility and some self awareness that I'm still practicing myself.

Tina Gosney:

I think that's a that's a lifelong process, and learning to be humble and to to give up our brains desire to be right about everything that

Kepler Knott:

we well. And this is cliche, but it's true. Do you want to be right or do you want to get along? You know, people say that about marriage, they say that, but all relationships, really, and back to not being attached to the outcome. Like, my only outcome that works for me is I'm right and you're wrong. That ain't gonna that might work sometimes, but it won't. It won't. It's not sustainable. And you even know that in your heart when you're doing it, but you just can't help it. I mean, we see ourselves doing these things, and we're like, ooh. And it's never too late to, like, hit reset and be like, Hold on. What I didn't mean when I said or I'm wrong. I've told my daughter I was wrong the other day, and she just thought that was the greatest thing ever. It wasn't even something big. I'm like, are we still talking about it? Or do you want to move on? She's like, Okay, we're done, right? So, but that got let her be right that time, I suppose, right?

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, well, we'll often give up long term relationship equity, like in our bank account, we're like, we're giving up long term relationship Goodwill for being right in the moment. We're pressing that being right in this moment, right here we're it comes at a really high cost. We might not see it. We are going to pay for it later, for sure.

Kepler Knott:

And then what will happen is you that's a pattern that once your children learn that, and it can be undone, but once it becomes a pattern, however many times that takes or days or time or incidents, however you want to measure that, then they just operate that way with you, and then they probably willingly or no adopt that same modus operandi for how they deal. And then we've just taught them something that we probably didn't even mean to teach them, because they're, you know, you can tell your kids things, but how you act and talk or don't talk is they pay so much more attention to than I think I would have imagined they would when I first became a parent. But they're pretty clever.

Tina Gosney:

Oh, they're super clever. It's human nature for us to model ourselves after who we have examples of Absolutely. We teach them like, this is how you're in relationship with other people. And then we teach them like, you know, to have to be right, to be the win the argument. And then we wonder, like, why are we struggling with relationships and trying to get along? And well, actually, we're the ones that created that, and we were, it's not, probably we were not the ones that it started with. It was passed down to us, and it was passed down to our parents. And these are intergenerational patterns that we see that are passed down.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, this is a little tangential, but related. So there's a chapter on marriage, and the most popular article in the history of, I think it was the New York Times. Maybe it's the Wall Street Journal ever was why you will marry the wrong person. And the point was not that it was like you you gravitate towards things because you're comfortable with them, or you're familiar with them, and so pros and cons. You lock in on those things, and then you find yourself five years later, 10 years later, whatever, wondering what the heck has gone on. But if you step back from that, you realize that none of us are perfect, and we all, we all have to hit reset, and it is not something to your point. You know, we we fill holes with things where needs have been created at prior times in our lives. And that's just, you know, that's Freud, perhaps, but being aware of that, and you know, that's why studying that stuff, whether you get a good grade in or not. To me. Very important for my kids, so they can be self aware. Because we all struggle with our self awareness, especially when the heat gets turned up on a busy day or busy life or trauma, whatever. So

Tina Gosney:

for sure, for sure, that's a difficult thing to other people see us better than we do, and when they're trying to tell us what they see, we don't want to listen. It's very hard for us to hear so our teenagers are super good at showing us who we are and and we see ourselves coming out in them. And part of being a teenager, part of their self development, is to start to pull away from their parents and to want to push them away, and it's part of the actual just human development of that age group so that they can, you know, move on when they become older and are able to live on their own. It's hard as a parent to to be pushed away, especially when those younger usually those younger elements,

Kepler Knott:

they needed you so much before. Now they don't need

Tina Gosney:

so much, and they're so excited when you're there. Happened to my baby? Right, right. What's the matter with you? But actually, that's

Kepler Knott:

a very natural, a very natural thing to your point, yeah.

Tina Gosney:

So how can we keep showing up with humility, like we're talking about here. When those teen years are happening. You're in the middle of this now, so, and you've got years ahead of you too, because you have a 12 and a 14 year old.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, I mean, my 14 year was sort of there already. So at the very beginning of this book, I tell a quick story about my doctor, and he has three or four kids, and every year of their lives, he would ask them to write a letter to their dad. And you know, age 578, Dad, you're the greatest blah, blah. Age 16, you know, wasn't a one line, I hate you, but it was definitely of a different tone and content. And his point to them was, hey, I'm the same dad. I mean, we all change. We've talked about that, but you're changing, and that's okay. And I think that logging that so the implied point for parents is like, Hey, you just show up and be you, recognizing that at one age you're going to get one reaction. At another age you're getting another, but you might modify your tactics some, but like, if they don't want to, like, I don't make my kids talk if they don't want to talk, especially in the morning on the way to school. Like, that's lost cause, but if they find something they want to talk about, you can bet you're going to hear about it. So letting that happen as opposed to forcing it has been a good lesson for me, but showing up the same way that you are recognizing that the thing that's different is not the parent, it's the kid, and we all know that intellectually, but it's easy to forget emotionally, and then we try even harder, and it makes it worse for everybody,

Tina Gosney:

we tend to get stuck back in, like, what they were doing, how they were when we liked each other, right? We want to, we want to, like, what's the matter with you? Why can't we just go back to the way it was? They're trying to push and form a new identity. We need to let them push that, because that's something that they need to do for their own development, and we just kind of need to figure out ourselves around where they're taking us, but also having some guidance for them that they're not doing too much damage to their selves or other people along the way.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, you know. So we talked about happiness versus being content, like as two, they're not opposites, but they're related, but different. And then I talked about this idea of being detached. I think that, like I tell my children, hey, it's not my job to be your friend. I will try to always be friendly, or even if I'm firm about it, if I have a parenting thing to do, but my job is to be your dad. So if you don't like me, I don't care. I mean, that's a I've said that, but that's not like an everyday conversation, but I am here for you, and I'm you know, you can skin your knee and drive off the side of the road, but there's limits to that, but you should explore those limits. And so I think parents a lot, they want to be friends with their kids, and I look, I am friends with my kids, and I want to be friends. And as they get older, there's so many things that they teach me that are fun to hear and listen to and talk about, but it's not my job to be their friend, and that sounds like counterintuitive, but it's my job to be their parent, and that helps with my detachment in a good way, because I'm not looking for emotional attaboys from them. You know, if I don't get that hug because my daughter didn't feel like talking to me, Hey, that's fine. I mean, I don't carry it around, but I just let it go. So I think it's one of those things that's daily can change, especially as they're teenagers. I think that happens a lot.

Tina Gosney:

I think this is also you're reminding me of what we talked about a few minutes ago in like, when we are. Are counting on them liking us, or talking to us when we want to talk to them, or giving us a hug and not taking a step back and saying, this is about them. This is about where they are. I need to be respectful of you know who they are and who they're trying to become. We take it really personally and then like that's feeding into, I'm a bad parent. What have I done wrong? How can I fix this kid? It's back into that finding our worth through our children and our relationship with them, which is not ever going to lead us to be acting in their self interest.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, it's a that's a good point. You know, I find that kids who grow up with as a teacher, I saw a lot of this a sense, a feeling that they're loved unconditionally, which doesn't mean that their parents are always nice to them or don't punish them, or don't speak harshly, or whatever. Those are tactical. Sometimes they're missteps, sometimes they're intentional and rightfully so, but when they have that sense, then they can hack a lot of things. They can deal with a lot of things, because they have that in them. But that's not a that's not a feeling, that's a back to your point about happiness, that's fleeting, that's an understanding, I tell my kids like there's nothing you can do that would cause me to not love you. Now, if you go out and murder somebody, you're going to jail, and you should, but that doesn't mean I don't love you. So I mean, there's, you know, there's, there's emotional and physical and spiritual aspects to all that. But I think, you know, my I have family members by marriage, my wife, I should say it that way, as you know, her parents were very loving, but they probably didn't tell her they loved her all the time. That was just their stop. But she knew she was love because they showed her. Some parents tell their kids they love them all the time, but they don't show it. And so the talk, the talk walk, the walk thing, I think matters a lot, and that's really easy, at least for me, to sometimes lose sight of that I have to remind myself about. I mean, it is a never ending game of trying to figure oneself out and your kids in in parallel. And if you, if you let it happen and make it happen, it goes better if you're always trying to make it happen. It creates a lot of friction. And I know that's a very nuanced point, perhaps, but there's times for letting go and there's times for grabbing on, and everybody's different, and everybody's life is different. We have to figure this out, and

Tina Gosney:

we're going to make a lot of mistakes along the way.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, yeah, that's my saying. I'm sorry. I was wrong.

Tina Gosney:

I think parents apologizing to their kids, cannot be under overstated, because I think that it's important for us to acknowledge, like, I made a mistake, yeah,

Kepler Knott:

self preservation and for no other reason, just like, Hey, I can't fix what's happened, but I can tell you, I acknowledge it, and I'll try to do better next time. And by the way, that muscle movement, you should practice that too, right? Like that's for all,

Tina Gosney:

because all of us make mistakes. We're all part of this trial and error human life, doing life on the Earth thing, yeah, yeah. We live in this information age, right? We call it the Information Age. There's so much information. And this goes back to our choices too. Like everything at our fingertips, what we don't have is a lot of wisdom. And I look at wisdom is like learning, the like the learning of knowledge with the ability to know what to do with it, and how do you use it? So how do you think? How do we parent in this age where, like, my kids know so much more than I do. They I say something like, Hey, did you hear about this? And they say, well, actually. And then they expound on it, like 10

Kepler Knott:

they're aware of something you weren't aware of. Or they just know something that, like is a new fact to you, or both,

Tina Gosney:

both, but they have all this knowledge, but sometimes not the wisdom. As they get older, I'm seeing the wisdom come into play, but sometimes very wisdom, poor. Yeah. So, you know, trying to parent this, these kids who are so whip smart and how and can find anything out at a moment's, you know, just at the finger at their fingertips, but don't have a lot of wisdom to know what to do with it. Like, what are your thoughts about how to parent in that this type of environment?

Kepler Knott:

I think wisdom comes to all of us with age and just by the physics of life, if you're 12, you're not 25 and if you're 25 you're not 55 and hopefully we all become more wise, like the things that bother you, you know. So when you're younger, you go to a party and you say to yourself, gosh, I hope there's somebody here that likes me. And when you're older, you go to party and you say, Gosh, I hope there's somebody there that I like. Yeah, it's a joke, but it's a good example of, like, being more comfortable in your own skin. A lot of the thread and what you just said, too, I think plays into technology, because all that has evolved so much faster than our primitive sort of monkey brain. You know, this can sound really tactical, but don't. Don't give your kid a phone when they're 10. It would be one of my things that I learned. I mean, our kids didn't get them till later, but all of this technology is pretty agnostic to our kids. Well, being that is changing, but it's not going to change fast enough. I work in technology, so AI is going to take everybody for the wildest of rides. It'll be much bigger than the internet or social media. But I tell my kids all the time, hey, AI is very smart, but it's not always wise. So what's the difference between knowing stuff and then knowing what stuff means and what it means for you only you can figure that out, and it's not nobody else's job or privilege or obligation to do that. And so parsing it that way with my kids makes them quite you know, they're better fact checkers for it, don't read everything you hear on the internet, right? That's an old one. But, and then I also just think, you know, people to people interactions like we're very lucky in my family, and I didn't grow up this way. I wasn't traumatized by not but we've got three generations, so my kids will hear and listen to things that my parents have to say that they won't hear from me, and that's a slow down generation. My mom still struggles with her email on her phone, right? But there's so much value in those people to people, in person, interactions, those moments and again, like you said before, it's an accumulation of those things. So making that a practice to slow down, spend time, you know, cliche but true, go outside, you know, put your phone away. But I do think technology makes all of that harder, because, as you said, it's very information rich, but it's it often is can be wisdom poor, and training our kids to realize that for themselves, as opposed to us always having to police it because, you know, we have, for one of my kids a bark phone, which will wake you up in the middle of night if your kid gets on their phone. I don't want to be woken up, but, but they're going to have to learn that for themselves, and they don't really teach this well in school. And our kids have been to public and private schools. I've not seen it anywhere. But like dealing with all that as a human being, is a life skill that among all the other life skills that they're going to have to learn in a way that you and I probably didn't have to, it's sort of too late, in a good way for us. We know better, but they don't, and that's a very scary thought, but that's something that you know, you can read about, talk about, insist on in your schooling, and it'll happen. I just think, like back to the monkey brain part. We just catch up so much we're just laggers behind all this technology that is inundating this.

Tina Gosney:

I heard something the other day, and I'm probably going to say it wrong, so I'm just going to paraphrase it. But there's two industries that classify their customers as users, right the the the technology industry and the drug

Kepler Knott:

dealers, that's what I was going to say, Yeah, yep. Users,

Tina Gosney:

true, right? Yep. And I didn't know that you were in technology, so you could probably speak more to that, like, what's how addictive these devices are and how young brains that are just forming can be changed and shaped by the ways that they use that technology.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, brutal, like our kids, phones don't have apps on them for that, because I need to call them or text them. That's a useful utility for everybody. And where are you? I can't find you to pick you up or whatever. But yeah, I mean, you and me talking about this, and I'm despite working technology, would never call myself an expert on this. It's like sweeping back the tie with a broom. And aside from parenting and how we do that as parents, like, there's going to need to be policy, and I'm not a big regulation guy, but like, we're going to have to put guardrails for systemic levels of technology that are so engineered. I mean, you just can't as a single individual or a family. You can't fight that. You can take everything away. But then, you know, it's like binary. You've got to figure that out. I just think that takes a lot of time and energy and attention on the part of parents and their need to imbue that to their kids as another one of those life skill muscles they used to teach Home Ec, which I wish they still did this, our kids have to wash their own clothes, right? It's like I'm not doing that for you anymore, but teaching how to deal with all that. I don't know what you call that. It's certainly technology based, is really important. I wish I had a simple answer for how to thwart that, but it's that's that scares me a lot, just not for my kids only, but just for the next generation in general.

Tina Gosney:

I have a lot of respected my kids did not come of age in the time that is not. Now, I don't think that my older kids got smartphones until they were in college. Yeah, they weren't even a thing, really, until then. And my younger ones, there were phones in high school. We didn't they were, they were high school before they had phones, but they weren't smartphones until they were closer to the, you know, graduating, but now my like my four year old grandson, he's autistic. He's an expert. He set up his own YouTube playlist on his dad's phone. His dad doesn't even know how to do that, but they did it, and I watched my 18 month old. He just sees my phone and makes the swiping motion with his finger. My

Kepler Knott:

kids used to do that to the television. They would go swipe it. I'm like, huh, that should work that way. But it does it. Yet it does now me,

Tina Gosney:

yeah, so it's just like, I didn't have to parent in that. And I think it just throws another really difficult something to figure out right there into parenting, because that is such a part of their culture, and in fitting in with the kids their age, and be in belonging in a group, it's so important to them, yeah, then not having have a parent, having a parent say, this is not something that you can do, can cause a lot of issues and friction between parents and

Kepler Knott:

children. Yeah, there's a few places in the book that where the book talks about this. It's a little bit philosophical, but the most valuable thing, one of the most valuable things on the planet, and I'm not talking about people, it's a thing, even a concept is our attention, yes, and the competition for your attention, the the the assault on your attention, you know, if you drive down the so I do a lot of brand advertising type work in my world now, you probably get, I don't know, 4000 impressions a day from people, whether you know it or not from looking at your phone, reading the newspaper, driving down the street, and that's you know, come That's an order of magnitude greater, and will be in five more years, another order of magnitude greater. And so one of the things that we try to instill in our kids is like, Hey, you should value your attention like your soul, because wherever your attention goes is where the rest of you will go. So you can feed this wolf, or you can feed that one, and whichever one you feed is how you're gonna that's the road you're choosing. And so it's not overly philosophical, even for an eight year old, much less an 18 year old, to be very mindful, to use a Buddhist term of of your attention and to slow it down, because we all know, like, when you wake up in the morning and you're just starting your day, your mind can be very clear, like you can you can organize things, and then the day starts and you're lost, like but that state of mental that mental state, is achievable throughout your day. I'm not this is not a podcast on meditation. I realized that's just one way to do it, but the notion, the concept of attention, I think, is really important to handle all this and valuing your own attention and being not stingy, but very deliberate about where you put it,

Tina Gosney:

I completely agree. And there's someone that I follow, someone who's a mentor of mine, that likes to say, pay attention to how you pay attention. Yeah, that's very important to watch where your attention goes and to make sure that you're directing it to where you want it to be going, instead of just letting it just grab on to whatever it wants

Kepler Knott:

to Yeah. What I had a was I didn't mean for this to be a life lesson, and I certainly would not want this person to be harmed. But we watched a grown up cross the street the other day at a major intersection on their phone, literally moving across a crosswalk and almost get run over. And that was like a perfect like, that's what happens when you don't pay attention. Oh, by the way, that's technology

Tina Gosney:

to technology pulling your attention right where it wants you to go. Yeah, well, we've covered quite a few things today. I think I want to go into this on boys chapter that you have, okay, because you've got girls. So I'm a boy. Let's go to the on boys chapter. And I think you're, I love your quote there, of all the animals, the boys the most unmanageable. Yeah? Plato, right, yeah. Tell us about boys,

Kepler Knott:

you know. So I wanted what I know, or think I know, my own species here to be useful to my own girls. And you know, any father to daughters has got this split brain about being protective as well as just letting their kids figure it out, you know, and boys in general, just to be fair, I think they're being not ignored, but left behind in some ways. I. Um, they're all They're sometimes not allowed to be boys. I think they get denigrated for boy things, but many of those boy things, like protectiveness or properly channeled ego, are useful commodities, if I can say that in our world, to grow families and to help other people so but they seem to be struggling more than girls on a lot of levels. I mean, teenage boys are four times more likely than girls to drop out of school in the United States, 75% of the children placed in special ed programs are boys. That's not because they're less smart, although I think sometimes they are. I think boys struggle with communication, sometimes more than girls. But in my book, I list out literally, like 10 things, I'm like, Hey, let me tell you, just because this is, like, the one topic I feel somewhat qualified to give definitive perspective on. Here's 10 things about boys, and they're neither good nor bad. They can be good or they can be bad, depending on how they're used and how they're received. But, but those are realities, and in today's identitarian world people like to erase some of those things. I think those are real things. They're evolutionary. They're biological. Doesn't mean we have to accept them all. It's never okay for a boy to tell you to do something you don't want to do. And you know, should that happen? We've got something for you. But, you know, male brains don't function on thoughts. They function on hormones, which I'm overstating that, but you know, it's, you know, they turn 12, and then they die. And in between that whole time, they are, they are of a certain mindset. And again, that is an excuse bad behavior. Boys handle that, or men with, you know, varying degrees of grace, humor and horror. But that's one aspect of boys that I talk with them about, but at the end of the day, you want them to get the most out of their relationship with, I think in my case of my girls, at least with a member of the opposite sex, in the category of romance and relationship, these are the traits of boys. There's a lot of joking in there, because I don't know how to get through a chapter on boys without making a lot of jokes, because it's, it's can be painful. But, you know the affection, love and care of a partner, romantic partner, is a wonderful thing, and you want that for your kids. If a girl or my girls, I tell them, Tina, if you learn to pay attention, enjoy companionship responsibly, and treat people the way you want to be treated, which is a non gender thing, that's just humanity, then you'll have a good approach to boys, because boys are just people too, just like girls. But there are certainly differences, and I think sometimes we diminish those differences and even again, denigrate them, when, in fact, it's okay, like it's okay to acknowledge that, like my little girls were so much more clever verbally at age three than I ever was, and they would ask me a question or say something sweet, like, I love you, dad. And then not the next question, but five questions later, asked me for the thing that they wanted. I'm not being manipulative. They they just had gamed it out, like they their communication skills. And I think today, women and girls like typically higher EQ, in a world where thankfully and hopefully, violence becomes less acceptable and prevalent, like you have words, and words are very effective tools. And, you know, women, I read, and it's in the book, speak like 7000 words a day and then 2000 it's a stereotype, but that's the statistic. So boys have a lot to learn from girls, and my girls, hopefully, and vice versa. But I, you know, turning down the gas or the heat on some of that, I think for all of us, would be helpful just to say, Hey, you're different. I'm different. We're the same a lot of ways. And we can celebrate some of those differences, some of them we have to watch out for. You know, if you're a teenage girl, I haven't quite gotten there yet, but I have teenage in their 20s now, goddaughter, and so I've already lived through that a little bit. But, yeah, it's coming.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, yeah, and you're just entering that, that age of your girls maybe being interested in boys or paying attention, or maybe having Boys pay attention

Kepler Knott:

to them totally, oh yes, yeah, yeah. We had Yes. One of my one of my girls, is more interested sooner than the other, and that's fine. That's just them as individuals. Yeah, and they'll, they'll, they'll have to figure it out on their own, because I'm not the one getting married. I tell my kids, hey, a wedding is an event. A marriage is a process. And there's a whole chapter on marriage like but if you're going to navigate that, there's some things to know about boys and yourself that are going to make this a lot less stressful for you and hopefully more successful.

Tina Gosney:

Well, you know, we have so many examples of like, a toxic masculine these days that it's celebrated. And I think it's important for girls to and and boys to have examples of what a strong masculine looks like, or we can

Kepler Knott:

get toxic, but can still be strong, right? And women too, right? I mean as the monopoly on strength, and there's lots of ways to be strong. My 97 year old grandmother is so strong in so many ways, but can hardly get out of. Chair kind of thing, right? So we, hopefully we recognize that stuff.

Tina Gosney:

Well, we also have really a lot of examples of a toxic feminine examples in our world. So it's good to just have examples of what, what does like your grandmother? What does a strong feminine, a strong woman, look like and a strong masculine look like, and then to realize we actually all have feminine and masculine traits within us, and how do we balance the two? Because that's that's a more balanced human. But I have the I have the suspicion that you're probably a pretty good example of what a strong masculine looks like to your girls and that they will be able to take that and how they who they decide to become involved with as they I hope so, seniors,

Kepler Knott:

yeah, and in my family, I mean, we teach my wife and I tease each other. I'm more likely to go ask my wife how she's feeling, and she's more likely to like, hey, just get on with it. Like there's these stereotypical male female models for communication and vulnerability and things like that. And so we joke about that.

Tina Gosney:

Well, you said she's a trial attorney, so she's probably right, very to the point,

Kepler Knott:

watch your words, yeah, I tell her she's an egg because she's super hard on the outside, but soft on the inside. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of toxicity in general. Gender aside, in our current public sphere, we haven't talked about politics. We that's probably its own podcast. But I mean, I think there's a lot of great models for men and dads out there. I just think they the things that get amplified, are the things that produce outrage, and going back to the digital world, and that we don't see a lot of the stuff that's that actually is there, and that's unfortunate. Like, there's no good news channel, right? Like, you can go watch the news and if it's 30 minutes, 28 minutes, or the sky is falling in two minutes, like, oh, but one good thing happened today, right? Lots of good things that happen every day. So I like, I appreciate your compliment. I think there's a lot of folks similar to you and me that that model strength without being overbearing or arrogant or always right, you can model strength and still be vulnerable, because only then can you get stronger. And I think that's that's a harder point for men generally than women. I think women are better at that. And again, I know I'm stereotyping in my disfavor, but I think that's a true, true thing. So yeah, they'll have to figure that out. And I don't know what men look like in a generation, or women, for that matter, but it's changing faster. It seems like it he's on the face of it, then, then, in a surprising way. I mean, it's the hockey stick, right? Like it's it's not arithmetic, it's geometric. And how things change, and a lot is driven by the external world, and technology is a big part of that. And at some point we're gonna have to get our arms around that to slow it

Tina Gosney:

down. Well, the the loud, the loud shock factor stops the scroll and gets the attention. Yeah, and so those are not really the examples.

Kepler Knott:

Get elected by their polls, but they govern, hopefully by the center, again, trying to open up Pandora's box of a political discussion. But, but now they just, they haven't gotten to like it's just all the polls, right? And so you know, you know, if you don't trust something, you don't like it, if you don't like it, you can hate it. If you don't, if you hate it, you can kill it. You know that. Mean, that's a long road, hopefully for all of us. But there is so much toxicity regardless. Again, gender right now, swimming around that we're swimming around in that it becomes very hard to, like, get your attention out of that and refocus it. And that's that's a hard thing for everybody. I think really is. But we all love our children, and so if it's worth doing for their sake and helping them figure out how to do it, that's worthwhile

Tina Gosney:

for sure, for sure. I like your chapter on service, and you said giving back is not so much about what it does for the other person, but about the power of what it can do for you, which is kind of a flip on what we think service is, yeah, but I would love for you to expand on that, because I totally agree that we gain so much from serving others.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, that that, I'm sure more than one person has said what you just well articulated. And there's a version of that in the book that that was from a woman in my community who runs a nonprofit, but giving back is not so much about what it does for the other person. It's what it does for ourselves. I think what's happening so we as a family could probably do a better job of being more service minded, but in general, and we do things, you know, I I took time out of my professional career to go teach, same with the military, so those were forms of service for me. But there's so many more, not more mundane, but just. Simpler things that we can do with our time or our treasure or our talent, and I try to, we try to instill that in our kids. I'm sure lots of families do that, but it's also a mindset. And little s service, like being of service to somebody else, is a mindset more than any single action or process. So how you treat somebody on the street who's homeless or like I tell my kids, if I have anything to say about it, you will work in retail, because you will know what it's like to serve the customer, because we are all each other's customers in life. I don't care what class, race, whatever you are, and the more that we have that attitude, the better off we all are. And so that mindset, that chapter, has a lot of that in there. I you know, if I could push buttons, and I were king for a day, I would have universal service in this country, where for a year or two or six months, you would go do, I don't care if you're in the military, you're a teacher, because one thing that would reduce some of the toxicity is that people don't mix it up with each other. Like civic mindedness and civics is not, I don't even there's some stats in the book on how it used to be taught and how it's not so much talk today, but that notion of mixing it up with other people who aren't like you, and learning from them, and then learning from you, because people yell at each other online because they don't know each other, but put two people in front of each other the chance of violence aside, which is real too, perhaps, but they when they deal with each other, they deal with each other much better. And you know, in this country, we're hyper focused on the individual and what's in it for me, but everyone seems to like the personal freedom part of getting to be a grown up. But sometimes we tend to forget about the personal responsibility, which is the flip side of that same coin, and we have responsibilities to each other through all walks of life, in our family, in our community, online, whatever. And you know that's that that sentiment is suffering a great deal right now in our sort of national dialog. Right?

Tina Gosney:

It is, and I don't really want to open up politics, that would be a whole nother podcast to go into politics. Politics are really divisive in families right now, causing a lot of problems in families.

Kepler Knott:

Yeah, imagine that right in your own family.

Tina Gosney:

Yeah, families that were really, really strong, cohesive on surface, but then politics comes in, and it's that, that wedge that has created a lot of issues in families. Thank you so much for this conversation. I wonder. I'm wondering, like, what have we not covered that you think is really important, or something you'd like to leave the listeners with today,

Kepler Knott:

maybe two things. So I think you asked me once, or we talked about this before, what's one thing that young adults can pursue or do to develop a better sense of self and better relations with themselves, with those around them? And I think I referenced that city slicker story earlier, which is, hey, there's just one thing. And it might be two or three, but the act of trying to figure that out, I can't tell you that, but you have to find it out for yourself, for the inside out, because there's lots of things, and it's not what the movie is telling you, it's not what social media tells you. But there's a certain adaptiveness and flexibility coupled with perseverance and stick to itiveness that I think will stand our children and our parent and us as parents well. You know, we live in this, this world of instant gratification that's so much part of our everyday lives, from Amazon deliveries to Facebook likes, but most things that make life rich and rewarding, they take time and they take energy and focus and remembering that, I think is extremely useful. The second thing I would say, just for anybody who's interested, because it's a conversation, I'm just one person in it. But the book raising tomorrow is on Amazon. The website raising tomorrow.org, has a forum for people to comment on any chapter, any topic. There's a facebook group page, so I encourage that, and we're all we all have busy lives, but having these conversations, whether you write a book or not, is not the point with your kids. That idea thrills me, that more of us regular people do that more at a time, because all boats rise on a rising tide, and so I have great hope for the next generation. I know there's a lot of challenges for it too. So we should have this podcast again in 10 years and see what we think.

Tina Gosney:

That would be an interesting thing. Let's put it on the calendar. If this podcast still exists in 10 years, we'll see. I don't know if I have that much. Maybe retired by then. Tina, maybe I don't know. Well, thank you for bringing up the book, because I was going to ask you that next like the website is remind me again raising.

Kepler Knott:

It's www dot raising tomorrow, all onward.org. Is the website, and the website, you can get the book there, but it's about what the book's about. So you can even download the first chapter. You know, I mean, I didn't do this to sell books. I did it because it was heartfelt. I like selling the book because it means more people are reading the book. That's great. But. Um, I would be glad to send somebody to book, either digitally or otherwise, but the easiest way to get the book is on Amazon. At present, I think it's, it's just launched recently, so it's very discounted on as an ebook. And then I like hard copy books, so I tend to pass these out, yeah, paper print too. And then again, there's a Facebook page, which we haven't promoted a great deal, but the website does a lot of that. So, you know, it

Tina Gosney:

was on the website, but I didn't see the Facebook page, so I'm gonna have to go back and look again and get on that.

Kepler Knott:

We probably haven't done a good job of organizing our hierarchy of access points. That's probably largely due to my day job and being distracted

Tina Gosney:

from other Oh, you have things to do, things to do. And you've got,

Kepler Knott:

I'm so thrilled to have had the privilege and opportunity to be here. This has been a lot of fun. And thank you for what you do and for allowing me to have this conversation. And I hope more people have more of these kinds of conversations, because, again, that's, that's what makes the world go round.

Tina Gosney:

Well, it was my pleasure to host you today, and to, I mean, you say you've said a few times, you're just a regular person, I think you're a really special regular person. Oh, thanks. So I appreciate your wisdom. But I think there

Kepler Knott:

are a lot of special, regular, regular people out there, but we get, like, celebrity them, and those people's lives are no less or more fulfilled than others. That's that was kind of but thank you

Tina Gosney:

for saying that. Yeah, well, thank you for all that you shared with us today.

Kepler Knott:

Cool. Thank you so much, Tina. I really appreciate it.

Tina Gosney:

I hope you enjoyed this conversation about parenting the next generation. Now you can find a link to Kepler's book raising tomorrow talks to prepare our kids for what lies ahead. A link for that is in the show notes, and there's a link to the website too that we referenced, if you want to then go ahead and join that Facebook page, continue that conversation there on Facebook. This next generation is growing up in a time when they need confident, encouraging adults who can model what it looks like to be a good human being on the earth. So whether or not you are raising children right now, you probably know someone who is share this book with them, share this podcast with them, and let's start preparing our kids for what they're going to face. Thanks for being here and until next time, take care of each other. You.