[00:00:00] : Hey everybody, my name is Ron Evans and I am almost 50 years old, middle aged father of two teenage daughters, one is 13 years old and in the 8th grade the other one is 14, soon to be 15 years old and a freshman in high school and I kind of wanted to go over my life experiences being a girl dad and a parent of two teenage daughters. So I thought what better way to do it than to and record it and put it out on the internet for everyone to hear, maybe comment, maybe send some questions, maybe join me at some point on an episode and we can share war stories, so to speak. My goal is to hopefully come to you weekly. I'll do my best with that to come to you weekly. In any case let's talk about what's been going on recently with my kids and the parenting had a first Parent meeting today with the teachers of my 8th grader. Now she decided this year with a continued pandemic, that she wasn't comfortable going back to full in person school. And so we have something here in our area called virtual academy and they offer a hybrid option where you can go to school two days a week and you're at home the other three days. So we told her we would let her do it if she chose that option and not the full time at home option. Thinking that it was good to get her out and about and at least have her going twice a week to interact with other kids and not just lounging around in the bedroom, which apparently she does the other three days a week. Anyway. Anyway, so today she's been having some struggles. This is a kid who is super smart, super bright, super social and when she has in person school she gets A's and B's now that we're in this virtual academy, even though she's going two days a week to school, grades are a little hello sit and by low, I mean, not good, not good at all. And a lot of it just has to do with not getting homework done, not getting assignments done, not getting the tests done because all that stuff is done on your own pace with virtual academy. And so we met today finally trying to figure out some plans to get her grades up, maybe have some opportunity to make up old missed work. And we were all talking the three teachers and myself and my daughter was there listening, didn't want to participate in in the conference at all on her own. She just wanted to listen and you know, it all boils down to that. She's not on a regimented schedule that she's used to. And I never realized this how hard it can be for some people, not necessarily to be self motivated, but to be motivated enough to stick with something to know that you're just giving a list. You're just giving a list of tasks and you can do it on your own and to be able to do that? And right now this daughter doesn't appear to have that capability. I love her to death, love her to pieces, but it's apparent she's going to need to be back in in person school sooner rather than later so that she can be back on a mandated schedule because that's just what she needs. And I, well, part of me is a little bummed about it because I know that as she goes on in life, she's not always going to have the ability to have a job or have a career or have people around her to keep her on a regimented schedule. At some point, she's going to have to figure it out on her own. But I'm at a loss at the moment, Maybe someone can give me some advice, um, On how to kickstart that at this age at the age of 13. So that when she's 30 and out of school, god willing, she doesn't run into this. What type of problem again on her own that she's able to fix it on her own. So what you got for me on that, I will tell you one really funny story though at today's meeting, She didn't really participate in the meeting. We talked to the teachers. Um, and when we went to leave, they asked her one last time if she had any questions and she said, oh, I do have a question and it's not school related. And they said, okay, what's up? And she's like, have you guys seen this button on my backpack that's fallen off. That might give you a little extra insight as to what she was probably thinking about the whole time. We were talking about her. Like I said, I have two daughters, That's where I'm at with a 13 year old. I got a 14 year old who And just about a week is turning 15. And so there are 18 months apart in age. And I thought when they were little that they were going to be a lot of like because of their closeness and age, I was way off base. They couldn't be more different. My older daughter is a complete type, a alpha. She's very much a go getter. Pretty much a straight A student takes classes. The cheerleader, really active in church, loves her life group. Very, very social and outgoing. It's not perfect, not in any stretch, but they just couldn't be more different. She deals with more confidence issues. And on the surface you would look at this girl and see her circle of friends, her giant circle of friends and how active she is. And you would be wondering how does this girl struggle with confidence. But yes, she does. Life is just really funny sometimes, but I am getting scared with her because we're already dealing with relationships and dating. And at this point, I think she's had to breakup now and they have been ultra devastating. I mean, ultra devastating. It's something I didn't think I was going to deal with as a dad this early. I didn't date At age 13, 14, didn't expect my daughter to be dating that young. She kept the first one hidden from us for a while. The second one we tried to not necessarily discourage, but we weren't encouraging it because we wanted her to take a break. We wanted her to learn how to, you know, be happy on her own before trying to get involved, but she's very headstrong and she kind of forced the issue and it ended ended very poorly, probably worse than the first one ended, but I love both my girls. Don't get me wrong. I just missed the days and I don't get to talk to people about this stuff a lot. I just miss the days of coaching them and soccer, coaching him in baseball, taking him to dance practice, taking them to choir, practice different things and just being like the, the dad and the background. I was always involved. I volunteer a lot at their school. I do a lot of stuff but kind of coping with these teenage years. His finding to be a little more challenging than I was expecting. What are your thoughts? What are your comments? I would love to know, what's your advice? What's your dad do? I'm going to keep this initial episode pretty short. Just kind of giving you a little brush over of what we're going through currently. Again, I want to come to you guys weekly with my experiences. I'm really hoping that some of them end up being really funny and ironic. I'm gonna take better notes and being more thoughtful with my presentation, I promise you, but we're gonna leave it at that for right now. I hope I have given you at least a little bit of reason to come back and listen again. Even if you just think I'm a train wreck, you never know how this might go, how this might end. Thank you for listening.