# Why Your Kids Stop Telling You Things

An episode of [Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1082244480), 7 Oct 2026, 19 min.

Audio: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/b69b2795-5503-4de1-ac91-af460017906e/38df0650-a901-463b-a0e4-b4cd0074234e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a05f1702-0c0e-4b0f-8014-af460017907c

The more you monitor your kids, the more they might hide. Research on parental monitoring shows that knowing where your kids are matters far less than creating a relationship where they feel safe telling you what is really going on. Justin and Kylie Coulson unpack what the research says about disclosure, surveillance, rules and trust, and share five practical ways to help your kids keep talking when things go wrong. KEY POINTS • Why kids' voluntary disclosure tells parents more than surveillance • How negative reactions can lead to more secrecy • Why punishment can shut down honesty • How to respond when your child tells you something difficult • Why clear reasons and autonomy-supportive rules build trust • Why covert snooping can make kids sneakier • How to stay connected as children become more independent • The difference between emotion for your child and emotion at your child QUOTE OF THE EPISODE “Location apps will show you where they are, but only the relationship that you have will tell you how they are.” RESOURCES MENTIONED • Stattin and Kerr's 2003 research on parental monitoring and disclosure • Weinstein and Schabulski's research on autonomy-supportive parenting ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS • Take a breath before reacting when your child tells you something difficult. • Say, “I’m glad you told me,” before jumping into consequences. • Focus on solving the problem rather than punishing the disclosure. • Explain why your rules exist and give your child choices where you can. • Create regular opportunities to talk without turning every conversation into an interrogation. • Get curious, not furious. • Don't rely on covert snooping to find out what your child is doing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: How much do you know about what your children are
[0:07] Speaker 1: up to? What are they disclosing? How carefully are you
[0:10] Speaker 1: monitoring what is going on in their lives? Did you
[0:15] Speaker 1: know that the best parental monitoring tool is not actually
[0:19] Speaker 1: asking them questions as much as it is your relationship?
[0:23] Speaker 1: Snooping will usually tell you less than a chat in
[0:26] Speaker 1: the car. Your kids are really happy to tell you
[0:29] Speaker 1: stuff if you make it safe for them to tell you.
[0:33] Speaker 2: Today's Doctor's Desk episode on the Happy Families podcast looks
[0:36] Speaker 2: at a slightly older study, a study that was done
[0:40] Speaker 2: back in January of 2003.
[0:44] Speaker 1: It's 23 years old, all about parental monitoring, where it
[0:48] Speaker 1: goes wrong, and what we should do instead to keep
[0:52] Speaker 1: our kids safe. Stay with us. That's next. Hello, welcome
[0:57] Speaker 1: to Happy Families Podcast. Great to have you along for
[1:00] Speaker 1: another Doctor's Desk episode. We are Justin and Kylie Coulson,
[1:02] Speaker 1: parents of six kids. This is the podcast that gives
[1:06] Speaker 1: you real parenting solutions every single day.
[1:09] Speaker 2: Kylie, just before we talk about the Doctor's Desk, can
[1:12] Speaker 2: I tell you how exciting it is to see so
[1:13] Speaker 2: many people donating so much money for our Lift the
[1:15] Speaker 2: Load Challenge? If you've missed it and you've only just
[1:18] Speaker 2: tuned into the podcast, in two days.
[1:22] Speaker 1: I'm a bit nervous even saying it. I've been training
[1:25] Speaker 1: a little bit, but not nearly enough. I'm going to
[1:28] Speaker 1: put a.
[1:28] Speaker 2: 10 kilo weighted vest on and walk 50 kilometers in
[1:33] Speaker 2: one day. On Saturday, it's World Mental Health Day. And
[1:36] Speaker 2: I'm raising funds for Toploaks. Toploaks is a charity, a
[1:41] Speaker 2: not-for-profit that is all about helping our young men with
[1:45] Speaker 2: long-term mentoring. Because too many of our young men are
[1:48] Speaker 2: at risk and we want to help them. So I'm
[1:51] Speaker 2: walking 50Ks so I can raise 50K. I've asked for
[1:55] Speaker 2: 1,000 people to give $ 50. Somebody gave $ 1, 000 the other day.
[1:59] Speaker 1: How generous is that?
[2:00] Speaker 3: That's crazy.
[2:02] Speaker 1: Amazing.
[2:02] Speaker 3: There's some really big hearts out there.
[2:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, really. It's so, so generous. Anyway, we're well on
[2:08] Speaker 1: our way to $ 50, 000, and we need your help. So
[2:11] Speaker 1: please go to lifttheload.org.au slash 50for50. au.
[2:16] Speaker 2: And donate what you can. If you can chuck in
[2:17] Speaker 2: 50 bucks, that'd be amazing. If you don't have 50,
[2:20] Speaker 2: whatever you've got would be great. If you can spare
[2:22] Speaker 2: a bit more, if you can go to 75 or 100,
[2:25] Speaker 2: that'll make such a difference as well. This is going
[2:28] Speaker 2: to be one of the hardest physical challenges that I've
[2:30] Speaker 2: ever done. Walking 50 kilometers in one day with a
[2:32] Speaker 2: 10 kg load is heavy.
[2:36] Speaker 1: It's hilly. It's not exactly a flat, simple, easy route.
[2:40] Speaker 1: And lift the load. It's happening on Saturday. So that's the.
[2:45] Speaker 1: That's the heavy thing that I wanted to talk about, Kylie.
[2:47] Speaker 1: Let's do The Doctor's Desk, which is one of my
[2:50] Speaker 1: favourite podcast episodes ever.
[2:52] Speaker 2: I love talking about the science because it makes such
[2:55] Speaker 2: a difference. What do you want to know about this one?
[2:57] Speaker 3: Well, you're hilarious. You're asking me what I want to know,
[3:00] Speaker 3: but you have no show notes for today, so I
[3:02] Speaker 3: have nothing to go on. I don't know what we're
[3:04] Speaker 3: talking about, but... You heard my intro.
[3:06] Speaker 1: It's all about parental monitoring, supervision, getting kids to tell
[3:08] Speaker 1: you what they've been up to, the unsafe, unhealthy stuff,
[3:11] Speaker 1: keeping them safe.
[3:12] Speaker 3: It's funny. We had friends over for dinner the other night.
[3:14] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[3:14] Speaker 3: And I asked each of the girls to share some
[3:17] Speaker 3: of the things that were going on in their world.
[3:19] Speaker 3: And it was so hilarious listening to one of our
[3:21] Speaker 3: daughters basically tell our friends all of the things that
[3:25] Speaker 3: she's been, I'm going to say getting wrong for want
[3:28] Speaker 3: of a better way.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Full disclosure. Full disclosure. Let me tell you everything.
[3:35] Speaker 3: And it was so funny because we're telling the story
[3:39] Speaker 3: after the fact, right? But living it with her. Her
[3:43] Speaker 3: biggest beef with us was, I just need you to
[3:45] Speaker 3: trust me. I can make good decisions.
[3:49] Speaker 1: And the whole way through, it's like, this is not
[3:51] Speaker 1: a good decision.
[3:55] Speaker 3: But what I love about that particular daughter and all
[4:00] Speaker 3: of our children is the idea that when you build
[4:06] Speaker 3: good relationships, it might not come all in one gush.
[4:11] Speaker 3: But having an open relationship where your children know that
[4:15] Speaker 3: they can come to you, even if it is after
[4:16] Speaker 3: the fact, there is so much power in your child
[4:20] Speaker 3: coming to you after the fact and sharing what they've learnt. Yep.
[4:24] Speaker 3: You know, as a parent, we want to stop them.
[4:26] Speaker 3: We actually want to stop them from making silly choices
[4:29] Speaker 3: because we can see that they're silly choices, right?
[4:32] Speaker 2: It's well-intentioned and that's why we enable location sharing on
[4:35] Speaker 2: their phone or we check their messages. It's why we
[4:38] Speaker 2: ask them so many questions.
[4:39] Speaker 3: But, It's actually often in making the dumb choices that
[4:42] Speaker 3: they learn the lesson. You can't give it to them.
[4:46] Speaker 1: The words that I would use are the unsafe, unhealth
[4:48] Speaker 1: choices rather than dumb or right and wrong because kids
[4:51] Speaker 1: don't respond well to that kind of language.
[4:53] Speaker 3: Well, I'm not talking to kids. I'm talking to moms
[4:55] Speaker 3: and dads.
[4:55] Speaker 1: That's true.
[4:56] Speaker 2: And they are dumb decisions, let's be honest. So that's
[4:59] Speaker 2: basically what this study is all about.
[5:00] Speaker 1: Well done. Without the run sheet, because I was not
[5:03] Speaker 1: as organized as I should have been, I'm very impressed
[5:05] Speaker 1: with that.
[5:06] Speaker 2: Here's basically what happened. The conventional wisdom for decades has
[5:10] Speaker 2: always been know where your kids are, know what they're
[5:11] Speaker 2: up to, know who they're with. And then in 2003,
[5:14] Speaker 2: this paper was published by two Swedish researchers. And they
[5:19] Speaker 2: asked this really important question. How do parents actually know
[5:21] Speaker 2: what they know?
[5:22] Speaker 1: How do you know what you know?
[5:24] Speaker 3: We make dumb choices.
[5:26] Speaker 2: Well, how do you know what you know about what
[5:28] Speaker 2: the kids are doing? I mean, yes, your dumb choices,
[5:31] Speaker 2: but there's still guesses, right?
[5:33] Speaker 1: Whereas how do you actually get the info so that
[5:35] Speaker 1: you do know what is happening?
[5:36] Speaker 2: That's what they were looking at. So their names were
[5:38] Speaker 2: Statton and Kerr. And what they realized is that most
[5:42] Speaker 2: studies looking at what parents knew about what the kids
[5:44] Speaker 2: were up to were about parental monitoring. So you're assessing what.
[5:48] Speaker 1: Parents know, but not how.
[5:51] Speaker 2: They know it, not where they got the knowledge from.
[5:54] Speaker 2: And so they got 703 14-year-olds in central Sweden to
[6:00] Speaker 2: complete this study with their parents. And they basically separated
[6:05] Speaker 2: three separate sources of knowledge. You've got the source of
[6:09] Speaker 2: knowledge that comes from your child volunteering information, like our
[6:12] Speaker 2: daughter at the dinner table with friends the other night.
[6:14] Speaker 2: You've got parents soliciting information, hey, tell me what's going on.
[6:18] Speaker 2: And then you've got parents setting rules that require their
[6:22] Speaker 2: kids to report in other words you've got parental controls
[6:26] Speaker 2: being set up and what they found was that parental
[6:30] Speaker 2: knowledge mainly came from well which one do you think
[6:34] Speaker 2: again no show notes on this one which one do
[6:36] Speaker 2: you think parents requiring a report the child volunteering info
[6:40] Speaker 2: or the parents saying hey what's going on what are you.
[6:42] Speaker 3: Up to uh it's always going to be volunteering.
[6:44] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah disclosure like absolutely it's all about disclosure.
[6:49] Speaker 3: How often do your kids come home from school or
[6:51] Speaker 3: from an event and you ask them how things went?
[6:54] Speaker 3: They tell you nothing. But if you provide opportunities to
[6:59] Speaker 3: just be in each other's space without the pressure, all
[7:02] Speaker 3: of a sudden, you've literally got more information than you
[7:06] Speaker 3: asked for or wanted half the time. Yeah.
[7:09] Speaker 1: They just keep on talking if you've created the environment
[7:12] Speaker 1: for it. Tracking and surveillance in this study is not a–
[7:18] Speaker 1: useful prescription for parental behavior to understand child behavior. I
[7:23] Speaker 1: made a mess of what I was trying to say there,
[7:25] Speaker 1: but get this. They found this correlation basically between child
[7:28] Speaker 1: disclosure and delinquency, like police reports, police contact, getting in
[7:33] Speaker 1: trouble for doing the wrong thing. That is the less
[7:35] Speaker 1: your child discloses to you, the more likely it is
[7:36] Speaker 1: that they're going to get in proper trouble. They're going
[7:38] Speaker 1: to be.
[7:38] Speaker 2: Doing things that are really challenging. And there was a
[7:44] Speaker 2: companion paper the same year with nearly 1,214 year olds
[7:48] Speaker 2: and their parents and they found that children's spontaneous disclosure
[7:53] Speaker 2: quote explained more of the link between parental knowledge and
[7:56] Speaker 2: good adjustment than parents tracking and surveillance efforts did so
[8:00] Speaker 2: after the break we're going to talk about how we
[8:03] Speaker 2: can get our kids to open up to be willing to.
[8:05] Speaker 1: Disclose that's the great challenge and that's coming next We're back.
[8:17] Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families podcast. How do you get your
[8:19] Speaker 2: kids to open up and sit there and want to
[8:23] Speaker 2: tell you stuff like our daughter did at the dining
[8:25] Speaker 2: table the other night?
[8:26] Speaker 1: What a perfect model.
[8:28] Speaker 3: I try to remind myself that this is a good thing,
[8:31] Speaker 3: but I'll be in the car with a friend. And
[8:34] Speaker 3: in the time that we drive from point A to
[8:36] Speaker 3: point B, I have talked to six children and usually
[8:40] Speaker 3: you two or three times.
[8:42] Speaker 2: I know this because we recently went, we had to
[8:45] Speaker 2: drive down to Brisbane and And I was so looking
[8:47] Speaker 2: forward to being able to talk to you. And almost
[8:49] Speaker 2: from the minute we got in the car, the phone
[8:50] Speaker 2: rang and then it.
[8:51] Speaker 1: Rang again and then it rang. And it was each
[8:53] Speaker 1: of the kids just ringing.
[8:54] Speaker 3: To check in. And now our granddaughter, we add her
[8:55] Speaker 3: to the list because she's the one who calls.
[8:58] Speaker 1: And they all called to disclose. They all called to
[9:01] Speaker 1: talk to you about stuff. Here's what's going on. Here's
[9:03] Speaker 1: what I'm doing today. Here's what was happening in my life.
[9:05] Speaker 1: I just had a chat with this boy. I'm going
[9:07] Speaker 1: for this job. Like the level of disclosure. It's a lot.
[9:11] Speaker 3: It's a lot, people.
[9:12] Speaker 1: I'm like– I need a prescription for overstimulation. I just
[9:16] Speaker 1: want to talk to my wife. Can you kids all
[9:18] Speaker 1: leave us alone?
[9:19] Speaker 3: I need some space. So one of the kids in
[9:21] Speaker 3: the family thread sent this little meme. Mom, you shouldn't
[9:25] Speaker 3: have been such a good mom if you wanted space.
[9:29] Speaker 1: Bit of a flex.
[9:32] Speaker 3: But to me, this is actually about building the relationship.
[9:36] Speaker 3: So I remember when our first daughter turned about 16
[9:40] Speaker 3: and I started to see a shift in our relationship.
[9:43] Speaker 3: We had a really beautiful relationship, but she started to
[9:45] Speaker 3: make choices about what independence looked like, right? Because that's
[9:51] Speaker 3: where things actually start to get really tricky. When our
[9:53] Speaker 3: kids want more independence, they want to be able to
[9:55] Speaker 3: make their own choices. And we create stories about what
[9:59] Speaker 3: that means. It's actually got nothing to do with us.
[10:02] Speaker 3: It's about them. And if we can work our way
[10:05] Speaker 3: through that, then our relationship continues to thrive, recognizing that
[10:09] Speaker 3: they're not going to tell us everything.
[10:11] Speaker 1: Nor should they. Like how much stuff did you keep
[10:13] Speaker 1: from your parents? I kept so much from my parents.
[10:15] Speaker 3: They're not going to tell us everything. And yeah, they
[10:17] Speaker 3: might be making some silly choices every now and again.
[10:20] Speaker 3: But if we've got a good relationship with them and
[10:22] Speaker 3: they know that if everything hits the fan, that we're
[10:27] Speaker 3: a safe place.
[10:27] Speaker 1: Okay. I want to wrap up this podcast with some
[10:30] Speaker 1: practical tips.
[10:31] Speaker 2: So first, a little bit more science because this is
[10:33] Speaker 2: a doctor's desk episode and then five things that we
[10:35] Speaker 2: can do.
[10:36] Speaker 3: Do we have to do doctor's desk?
[10:37] Speaker 1: Yes. But this is really important. Okay.
[10:39] Speaker 2: So there's a researcher named Tilton Weaver and colleagues in
[10:44] Speaker 2: 2010 did three.
[10:45] Speaker 1: Waves of longitudinal data. involving nearly a thousand youth. And
[10:49] Speaker 1: here's what they found. Parents' negative reactions. Parents' negative reactions
[10:56] Speaker 1: were associated with youth feeling more controlled and less connected, which, surprise, surprise,
[11:05] Speaker 1: predicted more secrecy and less disclosure. Positive reactions predicted feeling
[11:10] Speaker 1: more connected, which predicted more disclosure. So kids tell us
[11:15] Speaker 1: things in proportion, to how safe it felt the last
[11:19] Speaker 1: time they told us stuff if they've done something unsafe
[11:22] Speaker 1: and unhealthy and unwise you don't have to respond with
[11:26] Speaker 1: candy canes and balloons and rainbows and unicorns and confetti
[11:32] Speaker 1: but if you respond with negativity if you come down
[11:35] Speaker 1: hard on them if you look at them with furrowed
[11:36] Speaker 1: brows and frustration and consternation and all of those things
[11:40] Speaker 1: and if you become a little capricious in your response
[11:43] Speaker 1: then there's a good chance they won't tell you stuff
[11:45] Speaker 1: in the future Whereas if when they tell you stuff,
[11:50] Speaker 1: you say, well, I'm really glad you told me that.
[11:52] Speaker 1: It sounds like we have a bit of a challenge
[11:54] Speaker 1: to work through here. Let's grab some food and see
[11:58] Speaker 1: if we can puzzle it out together. If you can
[12:00] Speaker 1: respond with positivity and warmth and connection, the kids go, oh,
[12:05] Speaker 1: I can trust this person to act in my best interest.
[12:07] Speaker 1: I should tell them stuff more often. They're my ally.
[12:10] Speaker 1: They're my advocate. They are not my enemy.
[12:13] Speaker 3: I'm going to push back on you a little bit.
[12:15] Speaker 1: Oh. Only because- I felt like I said that so well.
[12:18] Speaker 3: You did. You said it so beautifully. For any parent
[12:21] Speaker 3: who has sat with their child when they have told
[12:23] Speaker 3: them something that is really either heartbreaking or disturbing, to
[12:28] Speaker 3: be told that I'm supposed to sit there calmly and
[12:31] Speaker 3: let them know that they're loved, it feels a bit unreal, right?
[12:34] Speaker 3: I'm not going to. And as you were sharing, I
[12:36] Speaker 3: was thinking about a really, really challenging situation that we
[12:39] Speaker 3: had with one of our children. And I remember as
[12:42] Speaker 3: she shared what had gone on for her. And the
[12:46] Speaker 3: immense emotion that both you and I felt in that moment.
[12:51] Speaker 3: And then how you specifically expressed, and it was a
[12:57] Speaker 3: lot of emotion. There was a lot behind it for
[13:00] Speaker 3: so many reasons. The difference is, do we come in hard?
[13:06] Speaker 3: I think it's really important for parents to understand it's
[13:07] Speaker 3: okay to have emotion. It's okay to feel something really big.
[13:12] Speaker 3: But our children need to understand why, the why behind
[13:16] Speaker 3: the really big. You weren't getting her in trouble, but
[13:18] Speaker 3: you were showing her just the depth of emotion that
[13:22] Speaker 3: comes from a parent who desperately wants to protect their
[13:26] Speaker 3: child and knows that they can't. And now how do
[13:29] Speaker 3: we move forward? And I was talking to that particular
[13:32] Speaker 3: child the other day, and she was so emotional about it.
[13:34] Speaker 3: And she just said, when I think back to that
[13:37] Speaker 3: time and those things that I had to share with you,
[13:40] Speaker 3: she said, I am so grateful. that I had parents
[13:44] Speaker 3: who loved me through it. In the moment, I was like,
[13:47] Speaker 3: she's going to hate you. She's never going to talk
[13:49] Speaker 3: to you again because there was so much depth and
[13:52] Speaker 3: emotion shared in that moment. But she saw that for
[13:55] Speaker 3: what it really was. It wasn't, you weren't angry at her.
[13:58] Speaker 3: You could easily take it at that in the moment.
[14:01] Speaker 3: But because you were able to work through that with
[14:03] Speaker 3: her and talk her through why you were feeling the
[14:06] Speaker 3: way you were, and it wasn't emotion at her, it
[14:09] Speaker 3: was emotion for her and with her. and there's a difference.
[14:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great distinction. It's not emotion at the person,
[14:15] Speaker 1: it's emotion with them and for them.
[14:17] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[14:18] Speaker 1: So let me run through five simple strategies. Simple to say,
[14:22] Speaker 1: hard to do.
[14:23] Speaker 2: The first one is to watch your reaction. I think
[14:25] Speaker 2: that it's probably the biggest lever in the research. If
[14:28] Speaker 2: you can take a breath before you respond, if you
[14:30] Speaker 2: can say, thanks for telling me. Even when they've said
[14:33] Speaker 2: something that's really, really hard to hear. Or if you
[14:35] Speaker 2: can say, okay, this is really hard to hear. And
[14:39] Speaker 2: I'm having a really big emotional reaction to this. I
[14:41] Speaker 2: can feel myself having it, but it's not because I'm
[14:43] Speaker 2: angry at you. It's because I love you and I'm
[14:45] Speaker 2: wanting the best for you. And we can work this out.
[14:48] Speaker 2: Like being able to communicate that as I recall doing
[14:51] Speaker 2: something along those lines with that daughter. The second thing
[14:54] Speaker 2: is I think that we've got to keep punishment out
[14:58] Speaker 2: of the conversation. Like if honesty, if your child owning
[15:02] Speaker 2: what they've done and coming to you and telling you
[15:04] Speaker 2: what they've done is going to trigger a punishment, then
[15:07] Speaker 2: they're going to stop being honest. What we need to
[15:10] Speaker 2: do is we've got to deal with disclosure in such
[15:13] Speaker 2: a way that we can say, okay, I'm so glad
[15:15] Speaker 2: you told me.
[15:16] Speaker 1: And then we move towards problem solving rather than punishment.
[15:20] Speaker 1: That's always going to be better. The reality is if
[15:22] Speaker 1: they're telling you, there's already something going on for them
[15:25] Speaker 1: where they're going, I need some help with this. This
[15:27] Speaker 1: is not working out well. They're not saying, oh, guess what?
[15:29] Speaker 1: I did this, this, and this.
[15:29] Speaker 2: How awesome am I? They're usually telling you because they
[15:32] Speaker 2: know that there's a challenge there. The most important thing,
[15:35] Speaker 2: and there's so much data on this. One of my
[15:37] Speaker 2: favorite studies comes from Netta Weinstein and Andy Schabulski over
[15:40] Speaker 2: at Oxford. They did a study with a thousand or
[15:44] Speaker 2: so British adolescents. And they found that if you set
[15:50] Speaker 2: up rules in a really controlling way, you trigger what
[15:55] Speaker 2: psychologists call reactants. In other words, the kids blow up
[15:58] Speaker 2: and it undermines trust. But if you can set up
[16:00] Speaker 2: your rules in an autonomy supportive way, it increases that
[16:03] Speaker 2: feeling of trust. So what we really want to do
[16:07] Speaker 2: is provide really clear rationale for our limits, explain where
[16:11] Speaker 2: they're coming from and why we're implementing them. And it just,
[16:14] Speaker 2: it makes a huge difference. Give reasons, acknowledge their perspective,
[16:17] Speaker 2: offer choice where you can. That's the three E's of
[16:19] Speaker 2: effective discipline in a nutshell. And that's what the research
[16:21] Speaker 2: continues to point to.
[16:23] Speaker 3: All right, do you have anything else?
[16:25] Speaker 2: Just a couple of others. I'm always saying get curious,
[16:27] Speaker 2: not furious. I think that's really important. Don't do any
[16:32] Speaker 2: covert snooping. If you discover it in a covert way,
[16:35] Speaker 2: like because you've been snooping, what you've taught them is
[16:38] Speaker 2: that you don't trust them and that you're going to
[16:39] Speaker 2: find out things and then they're therefore not going to
[16:41] Speaker 2: tell you. They'll just get sneakier. I think that those
[16:45] Speaker 2: are probably the last couple of things that really stand
[16:47] Speaker 2: out to me. This idea matters so very much. Location
[16:51] Speaker 2: apps will show you where they are, but only the
[16:55] Speaker 2: relationship that you have will tell you how they are.
[16:58] Speaker 3: What you just said actually breaks my heart a little bit.
[17:01] Speaker 3: As a parent, having a child come to you after
[17:04] Speaker 3: the fact and tell you that there was a time
[17:09] Speaker 3: where they weren't safe, but they chose not to come
[17:12] Speaker 3: to you because they didn't feel you were a safe
[17:13] Speaker 3: place for them. They didn't feel like you were open
[17:16] Speaker 3: to being a part of that part of their story
[17:19] Speaker 3: is probably... That was the biggest and the hardest learning
[17:23] Speaker 3: experience for me as a mom. Because I don't ever,
[17:28] Speaker 3: ever want one of my children to feel like they
[17:30] Speaker 3: have stooped so low that I wouldn't be there for
[17:34] Speaker 3: them in that moment. No matter what. No matter what.
[17:38] Speaker 3: No matter what I've taught them. No matter what values
[17:41] Speaker 3: they have, you know, kind of disregarded in that moment.
[17:46] Speaker 3: I need them to know that I will be there
[17:49] Speaker 3: no matter what.
[17:50] Speaker 2: We will link to Staten and Kerr's article from Child
[17:54] Speaker 2: Development from 2003. For those who are curious about knowing more,
[17:58] Speaker 2: we really, really hope that this podcast has prompted some
[18:01] Speaker 2: ideas for you around how much you surveil your children
[18:03] Speaker 2: versus how much you build a relationship with them so
[18:06] Speaker 2: that you can learn not just where they are, but
[18:08] Speaker 2: how they are. The Happy Families podcast is back tomorrow
[18:12] Speaker 2: as we continue.
[18:13] Speaker 1: To celebrate Mrs. Happy Family's birthday week. Please join us
[18:16] Speaker 1: for an I'll Do Better Tomorrow special as we talk
[18:19] Speaker 1: about Yet another of our daughters. That and more tomorrow
[18:25] Speaker 1: on the pod. Sound and audio for the Happy Families
[18:28] Speaker 1: podcast from Justin Rulon at Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides
[18:31] Speaker 1: our additional support. If you'd like more info to make
[18:34] Speaker 1: your family happier, visit us at happyfamilies.com.au.

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