Visiting Your Kids On Their Turf - E103

Rick Denton  0:00  
This week on the loud quiet, visiting your kids on their turf. Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the loud quiet. For those of you watching, you definitely can tell it's a different episode. Those of you listening may be able to hear the road noise back there. Clancy and I just landed in Phoenix and are on the road down to Tucson, heading to visit Tegan. We thought we talked this week. We've done this now several times several years with our kids. What's it like to go visit them on their turf?

Clancy Denton  0:31  
Yeah, I put out a question last week to our community about what surprised you when you visit your kids, either at their college or where they're living. When you visit on their church, what? What surprised you about those first few times that that you got to see them in their own space? And I put that out on our community, which we would love everyone to join our community that's listening. You can go to the loud, quiet.com there's a button at the top that says, join the loud, quiet community. Click on that, and that will direct you to our Facebook group. We really love the interaction that we're having lately, and we've added a bunch of new members, so it's been really, really great support system for those of us who are in that community. I wanted to do a little shout out for some of the group members that did comment on my question, and they had some really good observations. Ron talked about parents not checking grades, and shouldn't have any access to their kids grades. Joel talked about them eating new things that they wouldn't eat for 18 years when they were under your roof. Amy talked about the vacuuming skills that her daughter had, all of the sudden acquired. And Allison talked about how different your kids can be where one wants to spend the entire weekend with you, but the other one feels like you're a little bit intruding into their schedule and what they had planned. So we thought that we would dissect these a little bit and share our experience with these as well, as well, and add some things that that we observe, too. The first one that we're going to start with Joel, talking about them eating new foods that they wouldn't eat in your home for the past 18 years.

Rick Denton  2:32  
This is the, well, actually, a couple of them really made me laugh. But this one, I got a little bit of a snort laugh when I read this one, because it's so true. There's things that they have just absolutely resisted, not even didn't try, but just I am anti this, and then suddenly they get around people and they start liking new

Clancy Denton  2:50  
things. Is it that peer pressure? I guess they're eating it, so I guess I need to try it. We this was not a super big struggle for our kids. They will pretty much try anything that you put in front of them. But what we've really enjoyed is all of the restaurants that they have introduced us to in their towns. If you have been in the Phoenix area or in the Tucson area, there are some great restaurants that we've been able to try over the past. Well, now, I guess almost seven years.

Rick Denton  3:26  
It has been almost seven years, and actually, in all seriousness, y'all send us a message if you need any restaurant tips or things to do in either the Phoenix or Tucson areas, and most of those have been introduced to us by our kids and the experiences that we have done with the kids on these weekends when we're heading out there

Clancy Denton  3:44  
on the plane right here, I'm already thinking about which sandwich place are we going to go to in Tucson for lunch? Because there's, well, now there's four. We added a new one. There's about four that we keep on rotation. And so we'll, we'll let Tegan decide which one she wants to go to.

Rick Denton  4:00  
What did I say? I said, I really hope we go to this one, but I'll keep my mouth shut and see which one she chooses. So hopefully she chooses mine today.

Clancy Denton  4:08  
You know, talking about food that they're trying and restaurants and those kind of things. You know, we also noticed that our kids interests changed a little bit once they got into their own world with their new group of people that they were hanging out with, this is

Rick Denton  4:27  
what you're hoping for out of your kids when you when you send them off to college, you I know that we hoped that they would get exposed to different cultures, different cuisines, different experiences, and All of that would expand their horizon, and then we get to be the beneficiaries of a lot of that expansion, not just watching it through our kids, but then our kids bring that expansion back to us.

Clancy Denton  4:49  
You know, Tanner really found a love for EDM, which is electronic dance music, which, if you're our age, you. You know, this was the stuff that we heard at raves in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s. And he has gone to many, many festivals now that he just loves and that was something that in high school he never really was into. I had introduced them to a little bit of it, because I had some my old CDs from that genre, sending us videos this morning as we're landing in Phoenix of the concert that he went to last night. And it's just fun he can it's something totally out of his element that he has just found a love

Rick Denton  5:42  
of it's not just Tanner, right? Tegan has developed this love of plushies and key chains. If you looked at her strap, I don't even know what to call it, that she uses to carry her wallet with it is covered in these acrylic key chains that are really intricate pieces of art in a world that we certainly knew nothing about. We didn't know anything about that world, and watching her get into it has been kind of cool. Now, I will say the plushies has created a bit of a claw machine addiction that we need to work on.

Clancy Denton  6:16  
But now the plushies, that child has been obsessed with those things from the beginning, the plushies have always been in her life. There's several of them properly stored in the attic, but from elementary school on, she also has gotten into these figurines that they go to. There's a couple of stores in Tucson that they love to go to, and these all revolve around, you know, music artists that they love, their video games and shows that they watch. So yes, we're when she moves out, she'll be bringing back a lot of collectibles, of things that I don't know, where they're going to go, wherever she's living, not our place. So moving on the next one. Amy talked about the vacuuming skills that she didn't know her daughter had, and that really surprised

Rick Denton  7:10  
her, and she added to that and seems to somehow not have when she returns back home. So it's a very localized skill.

Clancy Denton  7:19  
This is is one, you know, we bought them little vacuum cleaners when they both moved into apartments. Teagan, I know for sure, uses hers Tanner. I don't know if they ever even pulled it out of the closet and it disappeared at some point. So I don't even know what happened to it.

Rick Denton  7:38  
You definitely, and that's this is about going to your kids turf. It's their turf. And so there were some times that you had to say, hey, look, the guest bath has to be

Clancy Denton  7:51  
habitable, yeah. And there are times that it wasn't. They were like, Oh, y'all can't use the

Rick Denton  7:56  
bath. And and then there were times that you had to just sort of bite your tongue and realize that's their way of living. It's not your way of living. We'd even text the question, is the apartment, the condo, the town of is it? Parent ready? Many times it wasn't. And so when we'd go to their turf, we'd just stay outside, pick them up and leave

Clancy Denton  8:18  
well, and this one kind of surprised me, because Tanner was always antique, and they were always fairly neat and and their rooms were put together. Tanner started shifting out of that a little later in high school, but, I mean, I was like, Dude, I can't even see the floor in your bedroom because it's just covered with clean clothes and dirty clothes. So how do you know? Now, I will say, Thank goodness the child has moved out of that. You know, probably two fold. He got a girlfriend and he hired a cleaning crew.

Rick Denton  8:55  
So so parents, there's hope for your messy kids. It can change. Yes, love the vacuum one. Thank you

Clancy Denton  9:03  
for sharing that one. Amy The next one. Ron posted and said, you know, parents should not be checking their kids grades. Totally agree with this. We quit doing that in high school. That was our decision to do that in high school. The universities make it a little bit trickier. Now, it's not like it is in in high school, where you could just log on and you have a parent log on, then you can get on and see

Rick Denton  9:33  
everything. Yeah, and I was thinking back to when we were in school, I think grades were mailed home, so there were a lot of times that probably my grades made it to the house before I did at the end of a semester. And so, yeah, parents had access to it. And it was probably, I don't really recall my parents opening it. It is interesting how, if you think of their turf being just their university experience in general, how universe. These really don't include the parent as an entity in that when it comes to things like we talk about grades, but it was hard for me to even get bills. If you're the parent that's actually the source of the funding for the college, you would think that the bills would just be automatically coming, but no,

Clancy Denton  10:20  
but that was our that was our experience. I know some schools are very good about it, but yes, it is, you know, just the other day we were, you were logging in for something on, you know, and you're like, what? Why is there a charge for, you know, $300 charge. I mean, I don't know how. Maybe they just let that stuff sit there, and then if you don't pay it by the end of the semester, then they're not going to release your grade. Oh, no,

Rick Denton  10:45  
no. Well, for those things, I know there was some, there was some, you're going to be late in 24 hours messages. And it was what I didn't even know I had a bill. Yeah, that is definitely something that surprised us about stepping into their sort of their ecosystem, if you go beyond just their turf that wasn't a parent's weekend or a weekend visit, just a university experience,

Clancy Denton  11:07  
most of you who've had kids that have gone through college are in college in the past. Now it's FERPA, so your child can give you permission, and I the only thing I use it for is to I print off their schedules, because I like to know when they're in class so I know when I can text them and that kind of thing. But that's the only I mean, I wouldn't even know what classes Tegan was taking if I didn't print off that schedule until she, you know, mentions them. So moving on to Allison said, when one child wants you to spend the entire weekend with you, and the other one is kind of, well, I had this plan with my friends, and I had this plan so, you know that's that's a hard situation for the parent who's visiting, and you're thinking, Yay, I get to spend all weekend with them. But again, wait, they're

Rick Denton  11:59  
thinking, Oh, I get to spend the whole weekend with them.

Clancy Denton  12:03  
You know, they've had their life now for how many of our weeks or months that you haven't been out there to visit? So they've got their schedules, they've got their friend group. So, yeah, I can see where that, you know,

Rick Denton  12:17  
and especially when you're visiting on a weekend that isn't a formal Parents Weekend or something like that. Like the one that we're doing this is just, hey, we wanted to come out this weekend. There's their friends aren't necessarily experiencing that same disruption. So their friends are still doing the things that would normally take place. They have their rhythms that the kid is like, well, I want to go do that. And I think I really do feel like we've done a reasonably good job of, oh, if you've got something to do, go do it. And I think by using food as a primary activity with our kids and inviting the friends to those meals, suddenly there are a lot more willing to join you when mom and dad are paying for the

Clancy Denton  13:00  
good restaurants. That's one thing. First of all, we are very lucky that we get to visit our children more than once a semester. I know some parents get to go once. Some parents don't get to go any right? So we are lucky that we can do that. And yes, we have incorporated their friend groups into our visits, and we're totally fine. I mean, from the get go with Tanner, okay, who's who's around, who wants to go to dinner. We do one group one night. We do another group another night. You know, it was good. We take them to breakfast. I mean, we spent most of the weekend with his entire friend group. And when they know, oh, the parents are paying, yeah, then yes, we want to go and spend time and, you know, and that's fun

Rick Denton  13:45  
in that same vein of, you know, we're lucky and that we get to come out here. We also are lucky that our kids chose a state, Arizona that has a lot of fun things to do. So when we say we've come out to see our kids over the weekend, we see them in the moments, but if there are also moments that sometimes they have homework, sometimes they have activities, we go off and do our own thing and make a trip out of it, it also look we're adults. They're kids, they're young adults. Let's say that they have later evenings than we do so frequently, that balance works out where it's we go to dinner, and then it's the kid is off to do their regular evening without

Clancy Denton  14:29  
us, and that is works out. Now, what's interesting about that, though, is with Tanner, we would continue with them in the evening. What I love when we come to see Tegan is that I know we're going to be back in that hotel by 839, o'clock, probably because then she and her friends usually just go back to their place or somebody's place and watch movies or play video games and hang out. We were still out partying with his crew.

Rick Denton  14:59  
That's true. Oh, it's a little it's Casey Moore's. You're right. Casey Moore's after dinner was made for some very late nights.

Clancy Denton  15:08  
And you know, while we're on the subject of friends, that's another thing that, you know, I've really, really enjoyed seeing our kiddos embrace totally different friend groups than maybe what they had in high school. They both went to very large universities, so they are exposed to all different kinds of people,

Rick Denton  15:33  
and people have so many different slices of who they are and their individuality elements, even just some of the basics of geographic distribution that having friends that are from California, having friends that grew up in Kentucky, having friends that grew up in Chicago, the East Coast, those are all things that it is amazing, the differences of what family traditions look like, what meals look like, what food There is, and that's been fun to experience through their eyes, and then experience through our eyes when we get to visit them.

Clancy Denton  16:06  
Yeah, and hearing, like you said, all the different family dynamics from where people come from, and just different cultures, it's just been really fun. And I've enjoyed seeing them make new friends across all different categories, whatever category you want to throw out there. We've got it all covered.

Rick Denton  16:29  
There's another thing that we've seen that almost feels like it's something you see when you are on their turf. It's when you get to see them acting like the adults that you hope they become I don't want to say it surprised me, because I think your question originally on the group was what surprised you? I think it is more it encouraged and reinforced what I had hoped was happening. So I can't say surprise, but when you see them, even something as simple as when we go grocery shopping, because, of course, when mom and dad are in town, we'll pay for that, that grocery run,

Clancy Denton  17:07  
even, should we pay for their groceries? Anyways? I don't understand why it makes a difference. I guess that's money that they don't have to take out of their funds for them.

Rick Denton  17:15  
Yeah, the grocery budget gets reallocated to some of those key chains that I mentioned, or other activities, yeah, even something as simple as watching her navigate through a grocery store, and it gives you that sort of vibe of all right, they've got this. And even as early as freshman year, watching her navigate campus, even you realize this is kind of cool to see them becoming the young adults that you hope they become.

Clancy Denton  17:46  
Yeah, it's great to see when we lived in Frisco, or when she lived in Frisco, you know, she drove to school and she grow drove to places that were in Frisco. She never really ventured out of the Frisco bubble very much. She didn't like the highways, yeah, at all. Now, being out here, she's driven to Phoenix several times when she was home this summer and a friend came. She drove all over the metroplex. She does that now with her other friends. Yeah? So even that kind of skill, I would say that really surprised me, because she did not, yeah, want to even get on the Tollway when we lived in Frisco. So when she moved out here, it really forced her hand that if you want to go places and your friends want to go places, you gotta learn how to drive on some of the bigger roads that she did, and now she's great on. I mean,

Rick Denton  18:36  
even because we zigzag through an exploding tire right now, am I kidding? There's a tire in front of us that reminded you of a story as we were driving through that, yeah,

Clancy Denton  18:45  
last week, she and her friends had gone up to Phoenix for a concert, and as they were driving back, she said, Well, I conquered another fear. The 18 wheeler in front of them blew a tire and it went over her car, and she said I handled it. She said the car went silent. But she said I just got over into the next lane. The 18 wheeler moved off. And she said, you know, that was how she handled it. She handled it exactly as she should handle it. And we both even said we that's never happened to us. And then, yeah, we just drove through somebody's shredded Tiger.

Rick Denton  19:22  
It didn't explode in front of us. She actually had the explosion.

Clancy Denton  19:27  
Yeah, she said it was a really, really loud sound. So, you know, those, those are some things that surprised us and also surprised our community members that contributed again. Thank you, Amy, Ron Allison and Joel for contributing. We really appreciate it. You'll get a shout out too. If we put out a question out there and we have an episode revolving around it, I like

Rick Denton  19:50  
that. A little bribery. Yes, and if you didn't hear it at the beginning, the best way to get to the community is head over to the loud, quiet.com right at the top, you'll see the loud, quiet community. That'll. Take you right into that. I hope you all enjoyed. Well, sometimes you use the metaphorical ride, but we're actually on a literal ride together. So Thanks y'all for joining us on another ride on the loud, quiet

Clancy Denton  20:11  
I'm ready to go have my sandwich.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai