Today's episode is about what it means to move the fence in your parenting and disciplining your kids as a smart dad.

Welcome to another episode of the smart dad podcast. Today we'll be answering the following question.

Why do I need to move the fence as a smart dad? Today, we're tackling one of the biggest struggles in fatherhood discipline, but not discipline in the way the world often thinks about it. Not just punishments or rules or enforcement. We're talking about discipline as leadership, how we train our own children to take more and more responsibility as they grow up so that when they become adults, they can actually handle real life. A huge part of this entire discipline process is knowing when to move the fence. Now, if you're wondering, Derek, what is moving a fence have to do with discipline? Trust me.

By the end of this episode, you'll see exactly why this phrase can transform the way you lead your children and your family. But first, let me tell you about something we do in our home called the 10 minute, 10 minute tidy.

Imagine think back with me. It's a Saturday afternoon right after lunch right before nap time seven kids age 14 15 down to one have been running in and out of the house up and down the stairs dirt shoes on shoes off balls in the house balls in the hallway balls out of the house dogs coming dogs going bones toys tossed.

Lunch is cleaned up, but the playroom. The playroom looks like a tornado just went off. A bomb went off, a tornado hit it, a disaster. Use your metaphor of choice. Let me tell you what it looks like. Daniel Tiger's entire family is scattered across the floor. His friends, his neighbors, they're everywhere. Magnetiles are half built and abandoned in one corner. Raggedy Ann is stripped half naked, upside down in the doll's stroller and tumped over on the side. Someone has left a masterpiece, a freshly scribbled crayon drawing right in the middle of the room. And that's just the stuff I can describe. There's just chaos everywhere. By the way, the laundry pile, it's just gained a few shirts from lunch with new spaghetti stains on them. And then of course I have to deal with the kid who suddenly disappears into the bathroom and another one who miraculously forgets how to pick up a toy, even though this is something we do nearly every day.

Now here's what's interesting. The 10 minute tidy isn't like our routine after meals. After every meal, each child has specific contributions that they can make so that we can finish a meal and move on tables, chairs, countertops, dishes, floors, trash, everything goes into reset mode and everyone does what they can do. Just part of our rhythm. No one questions it. No one complains about it. It's expected. It's how we run our family. But the 10 minute tidy, that's different. That's kind of like an audible at the line of scrimmage in football. I look left, I look right. I can't even walk safely through this room. That's where discipline, the kind that is training.

The kind that is consistency, the kind that is relevant, the kind that is patient really comes into play here. So here's how it works. I tell my magical device in the corner to set a timer for 10 minutes or I tell my phone or my watch and we say go and every child has a role. They've been trained and they are continually trained. So let me give you a snapshot. The one or two year old toddler doesn't really clean. This one's job is to pick up objects and hand them to someone older or to put them on a chair or a bench or a table at their height. Designated siblings will monitor them, encourage them and engage them to keep going. The two to three year old can pick up certain items, but not other items and only with very clear instruction. If I tell this child pick up all the cars, they'll do it. But if I say clean everything off the floor, their brain circuits out, they, they, they overload and they just do nothing. They play with the crayon. So we have to be specific. The four and five year old age, that's where the child can organize everything that the younger kids have gathered. See, they're piling these things up off the floor and then the benches and the chairs and the tables are a small temporary gathering that the four and five year old can say, blocks go here. Books get stacked up and things are prepared for the older siblings to put away the six, seven, eight year old range. Now that's the responsibility for actually putting things where they belong. Sometimes it's in the playroom. Sometimes it's clothes in the laundry. Sometimes it's clothes upstairs, toys upstairs, misplaced items. I found a sock. Everyone's missing a sock at some point.

So everything has a place and this is the one, this is a really nice bracket. You can see they're starting to catch on and this age group, six, seven, eight is also really great at encouraging 10 year old, 10 year old is a great age. That's the sweeper literally and figuratively clearing the floor, removing leftover items, making sure all the big stuff's out of the way, little stuffs, and then literally sweeping everything in with the broom, dust pan trash and doing that. Now in the 12 to 15 year old range, those are really great at junior managers. They oversee, they fine tune. They make sure things are actually clean and not just kid clean. If you know what I mean. Oh, I thought it was clean. Okay. It's clearly not clean. The 12, 13, 14, 15 year old kids, they can tell they can also pick up the bigger things that are heavy, can move things around and pretty much - it's a machine. Now let me tell you, this isn't magic. It takes years of training. We have a lot of positive peer pressure and positive role modeling because my older ones have had this and they passed it on to the younger ones who grow up and then they pass it on to the younger ones. I've had three decades of doing this. We've had dozens of failures, dozens of ineffective, inefficient 10 minute tidies, but now we've iterated it.

It's to the point where the kids know what to do. I don't even have to be the one to do it. It can be grandma. It can be Kelly. It can be even the babysitter. So the kids all jump in and they get going. It's phenomenal to see. And then my favorite, I sit back and I tell everyone to look around the room.

Enjoy your work because God wants us to do good work. Simply cleaning a room is actually doing the work of God. God is a God of order, not a God of chaos. So how is it possible to get all these kids to do that? Am I a militaristic dictator? No. Am I constantly micromanaging them? No. I am constantly training and raising kids around here though. I tell folks, who may wander into our house, you are entering an active training zone. This is an active parenting zone. I can't parent on my butt. I get up and I walk across the room and I pick something up. I show the child. I talked to the child. I get on a knee, eyeball to eyeball, whatever it takes. We build into our family discipline, not as punishment, but as foundational and organizational structure. So, that's a key lesson for today because just like the 10 minute tidy, which works when everyone knows their role boundaries work and they work best when they're clear, they're well defined and they grow with the child. I just showed you what I have seven children at once. You may have one or two and you need to move the fence as your child or your children go from age to age. Okay.

So that brings me to the idea of moving the fence. Some dads, you know them, they set the fence way too close to the house. They're overly strict and the yard is tiny. The kids can barely take three steps outside and the fence is right there. And then they never adjust. Even when the kids grow up, other dads set the fence posts so far away. It's like on the farm and you look and you can't even see the end of your property line. And that's where the fence line is. That's where the fence post is set. There's no structure, complete free reign, no expectations. Again, metaphorically speaking. And then they wonder why chaos follows, but smart dads, smart dads are trying to apply what nature and science calls the Goldilocks principle. They set the fence based on what they see in the child and then they move the fence with purpose. So when they're really small, you start with super close supervision like a baby in a crib or in a pack and play, or you have a fenced in yard for your toddler. As the kids grow, you metaphorically expand the boundaries. Hey, we go to the street, watch out for cars. We go to the neighbors' yards. Go in the neighbor's house. We go down the street. We go ride our bicycles around the block. We get a car. We drive around. We continue to move the fence. We continue to move little by little as the children turn into older and older people because we want to raise adults. Remember you're not raising children to stay children. You're raising children to turn into adults. What's the key here? Boundaries shift with maturity, not with emotion. A fence that never moves frustrates kids. A fence that's constantly moving confuses kids, makes them insecure. Smart dads adjust the fence strategically, not randomly. Okay, so today I want to cover three discipline principles for smart dads. Are you ready? How do we actually do this? How do we discipline in a way that teaches instead of punishes? I want to break this down into three key principles. Here they are. One, rules change with responsibility. Two, connection before correction. And three, consistency matters more than perfection. Okay. Let's dive into these one at a time. Rules change with responsibility.

Moving the fence doesn't mean removing the fence. It means adjusting it based on trust, based on maturity and based on proven responsibility. Maybe doing so along major and easily identifiable milestones that you figured out. Maybe it's along accomplishments or you say, Hey, when you can do this, tie your shoe, jump rope, run a mile, whatever you decide.

That might be how you do it. This is where you have your personality. For example, my four and five year old’s bedtime looks way different than my 14, 15 year old’s bedtime. My 14, 15 year old doesn't want me to read a story. Doesn't want me to tuck him or her in. My four and five year old wants never ending stories. Doesn't want to go to bed. Wants to wiggle and wiggle and not be still because fatigue will take over instantly. Okay. You get the idea.

The same framework goes with contributions, curfews, levels of freedom on technology and more. Okay. One of the biggest fences I had to set as a dad was around the topic of driving. Historically, when my kids turned 16, I had a system. I'd buy them a reliable car that they could take themselves and others around in.

It was about $15,000- $20,000 range because it had to be big enough to haul some people. I would cover the insurance, the gas and any regular maintenance, but there was one condition, one rule you might say. The driver had to use that car to serve the family. Now, not last minute, I'm taking over your schedule, making you cancel your plans type stuff, more like I need you consistently to drive your younger siblings to pre-agreed upon destinations as part of your contribution to this household. For some of my children, my teenagers, this worked beautifully. For example, one of my daughters, who shall not be named to protect the innocent and the guilty. She made herself an integral part of our transportation team. Always available, always on time or early seat belts did a great job. One night, her car was stolen right from in front of our house in the middle of the night, totally out of her control. Terribly frustrating to compound the matter very soon after that, while she was safely driving my Mercedes as a loaner car, she was sitting at a red light and she was rear ended by a driver speeding on a rainy day. That driver destroyed the frame of the car, totally knit. Now, would you give this child consequences? No, there's no discipline needed. She needed support. She was, she needed a hug. She needed encouragement. She wasn't injured. There was no physical damage, but emotionally she was a wreck. She had done nothing wrong. And as her dad, I was there to help her navigate this frustration and this loss, repeated loss. Then there was my 16 year old son-who shall not be named to protect the innocent and the guilty- he was driving his massive lifted diesel F two 50 in Texas. So he fit right in this truck had over a hundred thousand miles and it had survived a lot. It was built to withstand just about everything. Huge tires. It was fit for him, but instead of respecting the responsibility that came from driving a vehicle like that, he was apparently texting while driving on the tollway, lost control and smashed into a concrete barrier, breaking both the axle on the truck and damaging the barrier so much that both of them required payment from me to be repaired. I had to fix the truck and the county sent me a bill to fix their freeway. What was his reaction? He told my best friend it was my fault for buying him such a powerful vehicle.

That was the moment the fence had to move and it moved way in. As you can imagine, while my daughter had demonstrated responsibility and needed a hug, my son had shattered trust and he didn't just wreck a truck. He wrecked his own credibility as a driver, as a contributor in our family. told him he would never again be allowed to drive one of our vehicles. He definitely would not be transporting any of my other children until he turned 18. I immediately had to move the fence in for safety, for discipline, for love. So I told my friends over the next few weeks and months the story and you know what they told me? yeah. I've seen him driving up and down this road, texting and kind of swerving and drifting all over the place. And I thought, wow, thanks. Why didn't you tell me that before he crashed? But needless to say that just verified.

We're just glad nobody died and it was just a vehicle. So what's the key takeaway? Moving the fence doesn't mean overreacting.

It doesn't. You, you're going to have emotion, but you have to match the boundaries and the responsibility. One kid crashed a car, lost trust. Another kid had two cars do it destroyed, stolen, taken, had no consequences for me. So the rules will evolve with maturity, not age. Smart dads are going to discipline with wisdom, not emotion, but trust me inside these were constantly emotional every time.

So, as a little side note, moving the fence only works if all adults involved in raising the children are on the same page. I wasn't always given that support. Sometimes the decisions I made as a father, like revoking driving privileges, weren't upheld on the other side. And that's a hard reality because when one parent is trying to enforce responsibility and the other one seems to be undermining it, the child learns to play the system instead of learning accountability.

And let me tell you, I got a lot more to say about that. But that's a podcast for another day. Hey, by the way, let me know if co-parenting with your ex-spouse, your spouse, your partner, your ex-partner is something you want to hear about in the future. It's a great conversation. We can talk a lot. Okay. I've got a Goldilocks tip for you here. Do a little self-reflection. Ask yourself, is there any new evidence that I may be giving this, I may be giving this child at this age too little responsibility, too much responsibility, or is it still just right for where the child is today? Do that. See what you come up with. All right. So second story, second concept connection before correction. Here's the deal. There's a big difference between discipline that corrects and discipline that connects before it corrects.

As dads, we have to remember rules without relationship equals rebellion. Relationship without rules equals chaos. I remember a time when one of my boys who shall not be named to protect the innocent and the guilty, right about nine, 10, 11 years old, was really struggling with emotions. One day the weather had been bad and thrown off the exchange between his mother's house and my house. And you know, that kind of disruption really always made it hard for him because he had a great time here. He had a great time there, but the friction of transition he didn't like. But at this moment I wake up and I didn't realize what I was walking into. I'd been sick in bed for almost 10 days, barely functioning. So I kind of rejoin the land of the living.

And I see my son sitting at the computer. say, Hey buddy, what's going on? I'm texting mom about drop off and pick up and exchange. And, and I said, well, let me see what y'all are saying. And he had had this long conversation. He's trying to control things on his end. He didn't talk to me. Obviously I was in bed sick. He didn't talk to mama bear his bonus mom, my wife, Kelly. But what caught my attention is after I talked to her,

He'd already lied to her about it. He lied to her about what he was doing. He lied to her about his emotions. He lied to her about why he was doing it. Isn't it like the zebra and the African planes trying to cross the water and the reptile in the water, huge teeth, alligator, crocodile, I'm not sure what's in Africa, waits for one slip and then just grabs them.

That's what I feel like. I just woke up and I'm just ambushed by this emotion, this nine, 10, 11 year old and my realization that he hasn't been telling the truth. Now I could have gone straight into punishment mode. He lied. He broke a rule. He was sneaking behind our backs, but something in the situation felt off. I don't know. Maybe it, maybe I had a little more sensitivity ‘cause I had been ill.

This wasn't his normal behavior. Normally he's happy and he's happy to go lucky. So I said, what's going on? I stayed calm. said, why, why did you feel like you had to try to manage and push this on your own? As we talked, I'm clicking through the conversation and scrolling back. Okay. This conversation started at this day and at this time and okay. Whoa. What is this? I stumbled upon a landmine.

I realized he had been having ongoing conversations with total strangers on the internet. Now that changed everything. My heart started racing. My blood began to pump. I was, it was boiling. My instinct as a protector and as a man jumped up and tried to take over me fight, flight or freeze. What would I do? What would you have done? By the way, here's another key point.

I looked at the time date stamp on those threads. Those entire conversations had started and ended online while he was at his mother's house. They appeared on this thread because it's the same login for him, the same account, same password. It's all in the cloud. Now I don't know why a child that age needs any access to this feature, but I do know when he's at my house, he followed our systems and our rules and only used it to message his mother.

Still this opened up an even bigger conversation about internet safety, personal security, and why you never really know who's on the other side of a screen. Even if you think you do, here's where things got tricky, right? At my house, we're very security conscious in my MBA. I internet cybersecurity and I studied all these things and I realized his mother just doesn't have the same level of security enhancements as I do. Again, instead of saying you broke the rules and blowing up at him because it's triggered by drama and my realistic fears. Took a breath. Called my wife up and then I explained to him why these rules exist, how talking to strangers in person and online can lead to a really bad situation, but not just for him, for his sisters and for our entire family.

By the end of the conversation, there were tears, but it wasn't about “dad caught me and now I'm in trouble.” It was about understanding trust and learning from the mistake. Kelly and I sat for a long time. We sat there. We listened. We affirmed his feelings. I told him what I generally say to my children, my kids about their feelings. Your feelings are real, but they may not be reality. I talked that truth through with him.

I helped him understand that he couldn't possibly fathom all the dangers because as a child we didn't want him to be involved with that. At the end we hugged, he apologized for the deception, he apologized for deceiving us, he asked for forgiveness and we decided let's make a plan now going forward. Okay, so what's the takeaway here? I mean, first of all, I just want to say…

I always handle situations exactly like this. I never mess up. No, of course that's not true. I wish - that's my goal. There have been times where I jumped to conclusions too early. I reacted or overreacted too fast or I just was kind of mediocre and average and just kind of meh, but I aim for this standard that I'm telling you about today. And the more I practice connection before correction, the better the results seem. Okay.

So here's another Goldilocks tip. When you correct a child, first affirm your connection. So before correction, affirm your connection. Try saying the right words at the right time in the right tone. Something like, man, it looks like you're really frustrated. Is that how you're feeling? Okay, that's what I see. Listen, I'm on your side. I wanna help. I love you. Let's figure this out together and try to stay calm.

Okay. Now the final point, consistency matters more than perfection. Okay. So this is our contribution over chores mindset in our house. I picked up an idea of language and words matter and precision matters. And so we don't use the word chores. We use the word contribution or contributions. That's just how we do things. That's how we roll. How do kids contribute? We kind of talked about with a 10 minute tidy, but it evolves as they get older. One of the biggest lessons I've learned as a dad is that our kids don't need perfect parents. They need predictable parents. If your discipline changes what you dole out, if that changes based on your mood, your fatigue, your energy, your long day, whatever, your kids won't respect the rules. But if they know what to expect nearly every time you're going to get way, way better results.

So a great example of this for me is our Friday night routine for literally decades. As my older daughters grow up, they look and they, and they see that I want to take my wife on a date every Friday night. So they have a standing contribution that we expect from them on Friday nights. They watch their younger siblings and put them to bed after pizza and movie night every Friday while I go out on a date. They know it's expected. It's consistent.

There's no last minute scrambling. There's no negotiating. There's no guilt tripping. This is their contribution so that I can have a strong marriage. We don't generally pay them. I don't know that I have ever paid them. It's a contribution, but we do reward them. Surprise them. We tell them, thank you. Of course all the time, but you know what? Bringing back a nice steak and veggies or a full order of chicken Parmesan or dessert. They appreciate that we bring back foods they like.

And they don't just do these as chores. They do these as investments and we try to show them appreciation and invest back. Okay. My final Goldilocks tips of the day, tip of the day, if you've been inconsistent, if you've been too far to the heart and then too far to the lacks and you've gone to the extremes, reset expectations, go to your child and say, listen, I realize I haven't been very clear. I haven't been doing it the right way in this particular area, I'm going to work hard to try to hit it right down the fairway to try to thread that needle and be a little more consistent and a little more measured.

All right, dads, here's your challenge for the week. Where does the fence need to move for your children? It might be in the right spot. Let's think about it. Is there a rule that's too strict for where the child is now? Has this child grown up and maybe moved past a rule?

Is there a boundary that's too, too loose? And you go, you know what? This causes me lots of trouble. This device that this child is on, or this friend, this child hangs out with, maybe you need to tighten that up. Have you been consistent? Do you need to reset expectations? Think about those things and remember discipline is not about controlling. It's about training. It's about leading. It's about moving the fence with a purpose.