Apples & Trees: Mastering the Art of Purposeful Parenting
This week we start a brand new series entitled Parenting For A Purpose here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast.
From the moment you hold your child in your arms, a profound sense of love and responsibility envelops you. Parenting offers a unique opportunity to nurture, guide, and witness the growth of a tiny human being as they discover the world around them.
In this series, Daron and Julie Earlewine talk about the ups and downs of parenting and offer insight and wisdom from their journey. You don’t want to miss this! Let’s get started.
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Julie: I would say that if I looked back on parenting, if I could redo any season of it, I would redo the first eight years of I was a mom because I wasn’t, I didn’t really ministry and life and situations and a thousand other podcast stories that could be told I wasn’t. I really wa didn’t have a good level of emotional health
Tagline: Created on purpose. And for purpose,
Daron: Everybody, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine podcast. And, uh, finally after months and months of contract negotiations with her agent <laugh> and, uh, all of the talent, uh, casting people around her we’re able to get my wife Julie Earlewine to join us on the podcast. Crowd Goes Wild. Welcome, Julie <laugh>.
Julie: Hi. Hi. How are you? <laugh>? Uh,
Daron: Julie doesn’t have an agent except me. And, uh, there was plenty of negotiation, but it finally worked out. Julie agreed to come.
Julie: It was not negotiation. There was force <laugh>.
Daron: It wasn’t force. I just, I invited you to consider an opportunity and then scheduled it so that you would feel guilty enough that you would do it. That’s
Julie: Called manipulation.
Daron: No, it’s called Extra Motivation to be on a podcast <laugh>. When I knew about Julie, I know things. We’ve been married for 22 years. Yes. Is
Julie: It <laugh>?
Daron: We’ve been married for 22 years. Ah, can, what I know is anything I ask Julie to do, she’s always going to say no to begin with. Almost constantly. Hey, you wanna start a puddle? No fights me for two years, then finally does it. Greatest year of her life, give or take. Right? I knew that this was gonna be a great podcast series because what we’re gonna talk about is Parenting for a Purpose. And Julie and I are not parental experts. We’re not, uh, like parental or mari marital counselors. Uh, we don’t have any degrees in this. Okay? What we do have is 22 years of marriage that have been pretty good. I would say we’ve learned a lot about marriage and we have three boys and we’ve got them to 19, almost 17. By the time this podcast comes out, we’re really, really close to 17 and 13 years old.
Three boys, and thus far they’re pretty awesome kids. Um, and a lot of that is on them. Some of it though, I would think is on what we’ve done. So we’ve just been talking about could we come up with a podcast series that maybe, um, just comes up with some things, some principles, some sayings, uh, some guidelines, um, some dis values maybe that have guided our parenting over the past 19 years. And so, um, a lot of this is gonna be a conversation. We don’t have a ton of notes because we just kind of want this to flow. We hope it works well. And, uh, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see where, where it goes. So Julie, it just welcome the people to the podcast. Say hello for a second.
Julie: Hello, people. <laugh>. No, it is, I don’t really like to do these things. It’s outside of my comfort zone. I have a husband that’s front and center, and I prefer not to be, but I will say that if there is something that I feel like has been probably the greatest calling that God gave me, and the greatest opportunity to do was to raise my boys. So if there’s a tiny little thing I did that God helped me do, right, and I can share it with someone today that’ll help them feel like they were a success at something in their parenting, then today’s worth it.
Daron: Yeah. Yeah. And Julie, we’re not, like I said, we’re not licensed counselors or whatever, right? I’m a pastor sort of.
Julie: No, we pay a licensed counselor to help us.
Daron: We do. We, yeah. We have pay a licensed counselor, which we highly encourage. We do <laugh>, um, and we suggest that all our, we suggest her to all of our friends. Um, but Julia, you professionally, one of the jobs that you do is you’re a First Steps therapist, and so you get a chance to go in homes and work with kids zero to three years old. Yes. Um, so you do see a, a lot of, and some of those are more on the extreme side of things, kids that may have some developmental delays, some physical disabilities and things of that nature. But, uh, you do work with kids in that way. But we have, uh, like I said, we have raised our kids for 19 years. So we just wanna walk you through some things that, that we say often in our house, maybe some like values, uh, and some things that we hope that maybe if, if you, um, bring them into your life, uh, they could help grow and develop your parenting.
And the goal really, and the reason we called the whole, you know, series of, of, of parenting for a purpose, is I think that’s what we want, you know? And if we have kids, we, we want to, to raise our kids to, to discover God’s purpose and plan for their life. And, um, we can pray for that to happen, which we all do. But there’s a lot of space between, I pray for God to help my kids step into his purpose for their life, and then day in and day out, hour in and hour out, minute in, minute out when your kids are little to understand what kind of environment do we create? What kind of relationships do we build, uh, what kind of routines do we do, we do, we, uh, bring into the, the, the rhythm of our home that actually can help foster this process.
And so, um, we’re gonna talk about that kind of stuff, see where it takes us. And you know, Julie, this is a kind of interesting time for us to have this conversation because we’ve just, uh, no crying, we’re not gonna cry on this podcast <laugh>, but we’ve just really been stepping into this really big time with our oldest son because he just left for college this summer. And we’ve had to over the past year really help him discern what is, what is god’s next step for my life. And I think that’s been one of the more fulfilling but even challenging parts of, of parenting thus far.
Julie: Yes, I would say that’s probably been, I wouldn’t know that I would say it’s been challenging as much, as much as it’s been like for myself. I feel like it’s been, um, like you feel a combination of excitement and pride and joy at the same time, and then wanting to know that they’re in the right place and trusting that you’ve raised them to be able to make that decision themselves. So for instance, as he’s walked through this journey, maybe there’s something I thought he should do, and maybe there was something that Daron thought he should do, but at the end of the day, we had raised him to trust God first and then to trust himself. And so he’s had to make the decision to put himself in the position that he is in right now. And as hard as that is, as a mom who likes to control and make sure that they’re gonna do the safest and best thing for them, it was really, really inspiring and really exciting to watch him make the choice for his own life.
Daron: Yeah. And I think one thing that Julie said there is that we’ve raised him too, right? And, and put God first, but then learn how to trust himself. And we’re gonna have a couple more episodes down down the, in this series we’re gonna talk a little bit about what do you do when your kids are young to actually allow them to learn to trust themself? How do you raise their kids to actually learn to think for themselves? How do you, you know, embrace that as a parent? Because we all wanna get to the place where our kid makes a great decision for their career or for their spouse or for their college. Um, and there is a process that we can create in our families that help them do that most, uh, naturally, I guess, that they don’t get to 18 or 19 years old and all of a sudden it’s like, oh my gosh, this is the first freaking decision I’ve ever made for myself.
How do I do this? I don’t know how to trust myself. No one actually let me make decisions and make mistakes as I was growing up. And we’ll talk about some of that. But the first thing I wanna talk about, Julia, we’re gonna start from the beginning. And actually before we talk about parenting, I wanna talk about us as people. So here’s the first episode title if you want, okay? Uh, is the first, uh, episode here is gonna be called Apples and Trees. All right? You say, dear, what the heck do apples and trees have to do with parenting for a purpose? Well, it’s this, uh, I think my dad said this, it looks like he stole it from, uh, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in 1839 said this, the apple never falls far from the tree. My dad said that all the time. Julie and I have said that a ton.
Oftentimes sometimes when we see something going on in the family and you see the kid, maybe they’re a little bit off the, the rails a little bit or something and just, you just pick up about a kid and then you meet the mom of the dad. And sometimes Julie Andal would just say to herself, we’ll just be like apples and trees. You know what I mean? Apples and trees. And it’s true is that if you look at a apple tree, the apples never fall far from the tree. You know, which apple goes with what tree? And this isn’t a fortunate and unfortunate principle in life when you start having kids, right? Because we have kids, we have all these aspirations and want them to be better than us and do more than us. And whatever our dreams and thoughts and specifically probably all the things that we have not yet figured out or really grown in our character, our personality, whatever, of course they’ll never struggle with that.
We don’t want them to ever be like that. We want them to be the little perfect little Johnny and Jane. There is. And then what happens is you start to realize apples never fall far from the tree. And my own personal, spiritual, mental, physical health matters absolutely foremost. Before we can even start talking about what I can do to or for my kid, it has to start personally, right? So here’s a quick little scripture I wanna throw out and then we’ll talk about this Jules, Matthew seven, Jesus teaching on just life, but the, it applies in this situation. Matthew seven, verse 16 through 20, I’m reading the New Living translation. It says this, you can identify them by their fruit. That is by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit.
And good tree can’t produce bad fruit. And a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes. Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit. So you can identify people by their actions, you can identify people by their actions, but you can also identify a lot of times kids by through their parents. And I’m not saying they’re the same person. Our kids are are separate from us, Jules, but, but we’ve experienced this in our life. There’s been plenty of times that you and I have seen something in the boys and realize, oh yeah, like they got that one from me. Can you think of something, maybe an early situation, Jules, where you were like, like that I, I’ll own that one. Like apple and tree right here.
Julie: I can think of an earlier one, but I can even just think about this morning we were sitting at breakfast and Knox and Daron,
Daron: No, we kinda need to bring up my stuff.
Julie: I’m not, I was asking, I’m getting ready to bring myself up too <laugh>. But Knox and Daron have a tendency to, when they both think something’s a certain way, because they have a similar response mechanism, they tend to create more tension or, um, frustration towards the other one. So this morning they were arguing about Knox his hair. Daron was telling him he should use a blow dryer to help his hair look better.
Daron: If for anything, if there’s anybody who knows, lemme just talk to the case.
Julie: Knox wasn’t,
Daron: There’s anybody that knows about how to fix hair.
Julie: Stop. Knox wasn’t wanting to listen about, he won’t listen the hair, he knows what he’s 13. He wants to do it his way because he’s 13, he knows how to do
Daron: Hair. 13,
Julie: He doesn’t know. So we should let him be 13. But I left and said, you’re not allowed to poke at me anymore. When Cole and I get into intense situations and we, and we, our strengths bear into each other. <laugh> and Cole and I tend to, like Cole and I are awesome at, um, when something needs to get done, we need to get a task. We see a goal, we see it, and we’re like charged forward ahead. So like this whole past year of his senior year, it was just like mom and Cole on a trail to like, we’re just, we’re gonna get there and get to that goal and we’re gonna get all the stuff done. Now if you get off the rails a little bit, then all, both of our emotions go really high. And we have to bring in Daron, who’s the peacemaker between the two of us.
But I can see it sometimes in Knox and Daron, um, that I have to come in between them two because they’re going that way. And then there’s Ty, our middle one, who honestly, I think God was like sweet blessing of all <laugh>. We need to give them one kid that’s like a Caribbean vacation. And so most of the time Ty is the one who’s helping in true middle child form. He’s bringing us like kind of all back to like perspective. And he helps us all kind of like relax and take a deep breath when we’re a little bit out of sorts. But I think one of the very first times I realized it is that I’ve always, um, I’ve always had an anxious tendency about myself. Um, I would say that God has really done some really cool stuff in my life in the past, like year, surprisingly.
So where the anxiety is going down. Um, and a lot of that has to do with like counseling and like trusting God and chiropractics and all of the reasons that I think that like my anxiety is getting better. However, I can see I’ve been, I remember when Cole was about eight or nine, um, some of the things he would do as an eight or nine year old that I remember doing and being like, oh, I see that anxiety in him already. Anxious tendencies, worry. Um, super high achiever, never wanting to let anyone down. Um, typical firstborn things. I’m a firstborn. So I think it helps to see the firstborn because I am the firstborn and he is, and I could see some of those things and I can still see those anxieties now in him. And those are the ones that sometimes I’m not, um, I’m not as sensitive to him about, which seems odd because what I tend to do is just want him to not have them so badly that I kind of get frustrated and just say, you’re gonna be fine. Which I don’t like for anyone to ever tell me I’m gonna be
Daron: Fine. Well, I think we see that first, right? Jules? Like, you see the thing in said kid. Yes. That is like you. And it’s like, like you’re right. I think I see the same thing I remember with Ty is when you see the thing about yourself Yes. That you’re not real proud of or that causes you struggle and don’t like about yourself, you don’t like about it, you see them in them. And I find like most of the time our initial reaction isn’t always compassion. No, it’s usually annoyance because it’s like it, and I,
Julie: It’s a thing we don’t like about ourselves.
Daron: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not, it’s not like we’re attacking our kid, but it, it makes the environment tense. ’cause you’re like, oh gosh, no, but I don’t know how to fix this and what do I do with this? And I wanna try to control you, make you stop doing that. But part of it is like, it, it’s a part of who they are, even sometimes genetically. Yes. So what, what have you, when you see that with, with Cole, like what, what has helped you begin to start taking ownership of some of that for yourself?
Julie: Well, I think one of the things I’ve learned is that your kids really are like your, they end up being like somewhat of your greatest influence. So I think when I could see the, the, that kind of stress in him, it would make me want to lower the stress level. ’cause if I lower my stress level, then his stress ible comes down, then ties comes down, then knocks has come down, and then the general stress of our home goes way down. And I realize that so much of the meter was teetering on Daron in our eye. Like the emotional tenor of our home really starts at the top. And sometimes we wanna think it’s the kid, but really if we, I used to be way more, um, abrupt and reactionary. And I realized that like abrupt and reactionary does not work well for any of them.
And it doesn’t work well for any of them in a totally different way for each of them. Like, um, you know, and Cole, if I challenge him, it pushes him to be more frustrated if I, if I get real aggressive with Ty or I’m too much to tie, it shuts Ty down if it’s knocks that it’s too much too if any of us are too much. And he’s extremely sensitive, so it wears on him. So I’ve had to learn to take down my intensity and really like get a good baseline in our home of reactions and responses that comes out of anxiety because, um, it changes the tenor of their ability to manage their anxieties or their worries or their stresses. Yeah. So allowing my tenor to come down, um, and working really hard at that ’cause it’s not easy, uh, I think has created a, a really good setting in our home for us to be able to talk openly now that they’re older about these kind of weaknesses in our lives, and then really celebrate the strengths.
Daron: Well, I love that. I remember, I remember us having that conversation years and years ago. I remember saying to you like, like, Julie, you are the emotional barometer of our family.
Julie: Yeah. I think God made us that way. Yeah. The heart of the home, the head of the home. Yeah. And I he says that in the word for a reason. Yeah. And I think most, and think that’s where it comes from. And you have to learn
Daron: Many
Julie: Times
Daron: To be better at that. That would be true about the, the woman in the relationship. There may be some other, there may be some, some relationships where that flipped. Oh, absolutely. And the, and the man may be the emotional
Julie: In our home. That’s the,
Daron: But I would say that the important thing in there is to, to figure that out. Who, who is the emotional barometer of your home. Yeah, absolutely. And what I love that, that you said, babe, that I don’t want people to miss, is like, you worked hard on growing and becoming more emotionally healthy yourself. Like you, you know, you got into the word, you opened up with people. You, you worked on it, you know what I mean? You went to counseling, like we talked about it. Like it was a main focus for you to say, I know I have to become a more healthy emotional tree, if you will, so that the apples, you know, can, can grow the way they need to. And I think that the tough thing, and what we wanna encourage you on is that sometimes when we notice this, like in this situation or, or even other ones, you notice it first in the, in the inappropriate or undesired, uh, reactions and and behaviors of your kids, right?
Like they’re being this way and what’s wrong with them and why can’t they and why are they so crazy? Or why can’t they, and you think they’re, you can think they’re the problem. We’ve gotta fix what’s wrong with them. And you never actually stop and think and realize, wait a second, how am I contributing? Or how am I modeling this kind of environment that’s getting that kind of action? And that takes a ton of humility to realize, man, I’ve got to really grow in this. And I think that’s one of the things I just want to encourage, you know, if, you know, if you’re watching or listening is if you’re at that place, let’s say you’re thinking about having kids right now, let’s say you’re not, you’re not even in a serious relationship, but in your brain, you think at some point I’d like to have kids start now to become the most healthy version of yourself you possibly can spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, all of those things.
If you just got married and you and your husband or your wife are talking about, you know, starting a family, like that’s the process. Like yeah, save some money, you know, get, build a crib, whatever, but start becoming the healthiest tree you can possibly be. Uh, if you’re in there right now, maybe you’re in the throes of, of, of, of raising toddlers. And it just feels like freaking chaos at all times. <laugh>. And maybe it feels overwhelming for us to say, Hey, you might be the problem. Um, but it mixture of grace and truth. Somebody needs to tell you this right. In, in a loving way, but it’s not, you might be the problem. Like you are <laugh> part of the problem. Your kids are are half genetically, our kids are half Julie, half me genetically. Like, they can’t not be like us, right? Um, and, and then they’re, they’re being raised in the environment that we’re creating. And this is one thing I wanna share with you, Julie, and just as an affirmation. So I reached out to a couple of moms that, that you have, you know, influenced their life through the time. I’m trying to make me cry. I’m not gonna cry, I’m not, I’m rude right now. Not their names, my kids to went to college names. I’m not gonna use their names. So you won’t even know who
Julie: It’s, I’m probably gonna know based on how close they’re to me, what they said.
Daron: You might, but
Julie: I’m gonna know who said.
Daron: So I reached out and I was just like, who? You’re, Hey moms. I’m like, I know Julie has had a, you know, a role in, in your life. What’s something that that stands out to you that you’ve learned from her? And then, so throughout some of the episodes, we’ll just sprinkle these in with little seasoning and just kind of help the moment. So one of your friends said this, Julie has taught me that my emotional health is most important in order to serve my family. And my husband Julie gave me wings and is one of the major reasons I’m flying today. So that’s something you have done <laugh>.
Julie: I who said that
Daron: <laugh>, that’s something that you have done in someone’s life and and they saw that and they’re, I mean, translate like I’m, I’m a healthier tree because Julie told me that my emotional health, you know, mattered. I
Julie: Would say that if I looked back on parenting, if I could redo any season of it, I would redo the first eight years of I was a mom. Mm. Because I wasn’t, I didn’t really ministry and life and situations and a thousand other podcast stories that could be told. I wasn’t, I really wa didn’t have a good level of emotional health. I wasn’t like a bad person or whatever. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I loved my kids. I love, I loved our marriage, I loved our life. But I was, I was realizing that I had not taken care, I hadn’t been raised to take care of my own emotional health mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, um, and so if I could go back and be where I feel like God and my counselor and my family has helped me get to today, I’d go back and read to those first eight or nine years of parenting.
’cause I think my response to my children would be different. I think my listening skills would be different. And I think just learning to see, to allow myself space to see me for who I really am and to see others for who they really are. And in that meeting, my kids, my husband, like knowing who they are, um, it would’ve been a better, a better first half, um, you know, than it’s been the second half. And so I guess if you are at that early stage of you’re parenting or you’re thinking about it, like, you know, it’s just like you go to premarital counseling, you know, like sometimes you need to go to pre personal counseling as you get ready to invest in a little life and you’re the tree that’s going to produce an apple that’s going to then become another tree that’s then gonna become another apple. And so I hope that the, and I come from great parents. Daron comes from great parents, but with every generation, I think there’s a greater opportunity mm-hmm. <affirmative> to make the world and your little humans that you’ve been given, um, better than, than we had it or better than we were. And um, so that means a lot. I know who said that Keyword wings know who said it? <laugh> <laugh>.
Daron: Well, I love that you just shared that, Julie, and like I said, we want this, this series to be fun. We want it to be, you know, light lighthearted, but, but it’s at the same time, it’s, it’s really serious. And I love what Julie just shared and, and I wanna encourage you as it was to close this episode out of like, to, to maybe spend some time getting compassionately curious mm-hmm. <affirmative> of where, where am I right now in my spiritual, emotional, mental, physical health. Am am are my roots growing down deep into who God is and who he’s created me to be? Am I, am I nourishing myself so that I’m becoming the kind of tree that produces healthy apples? You know, I, i, am I at a place usually where I’m, where I’m getting irritated that my kids are like they are and I can’t figure out what the issue is.
Julie: That’s, don’t act like they are kids, don’t I irritate us?
Daron: No, they irritate the crap <laugh>. No, I’m saying they a lot of times. But, but, but I think what I’m saying is,
Julie: So we love you guys. We do, but so we do.
Daron: But so often some of the things that irritate them, but you’re saying it’s like you, you’re like, yes. It’s like I’m dealing with myself here, right? Yes.
Julie: Very much so. So,
Daron: But I know there were, and I agree with you, there were times when we were more immature and we were younger in the process. It’s like you’re, you start seeing your kids as like they’re the problem or they’re causing the problem. And it’s takes a ton of self-awareness and a ton of humility, which is everything the Holy Spirit can bring us to stop and, and go, okay, how am I contributing to this? And how much is this just an apple in a tree? And if I can start right now saying, I’m gonna do everything I can to, to work on me. Because another thing this rejects and we’ll talk about in a later episode is rejecting the myth that other human beings can be controlled. Yes. You cannot control another human being. The only person you can control and you don’t do a very good job at it, let’s be honest, is yourself.
And so as you’re looking to that going, I’m not gonna try to make my kids or fix my kids or, or do this, so I make them become who God wants ’em to be. No. What you can do is become who God’s created you to be. What you can do is take control of your own health and growth and development and then you’re beginning to set an example and create an environment that can give your kids the best chance to do it. And that tees us up for what our next episode is. It’s kind of in the same vein, uh, but the next episode is gonna be called, is gonna be called, uh, more is caught than Is Taught. And we’re gonna talk about that, uh, next time. So do the first episode Wasn’t too bad
Julie: <laugh>. We’ll see when we watch it.
Daron: I tell you what, let’s do three more. No, tell you what. Just kidding. Here’s what we need to do. If you guys love this episode, I need you to start emailing. You know, you can email me always daron@blackbirdmission.com. You can hit us up on the socials, let us know what’s going on, and you can always text 317-550-5070. We need a good little, uh, momentum of how much you love Julie, the podcast because we’ve talked about these four episodes. But what I really would like us to do is eight, because I’m an Enneagram seven and more is better. So we’re shooting for eight. We’ll see if we can’t, um, manipulate Julie into doing that. And it should be great. And we will talk to you guys next time on the Daron Earlewine Podcast with special guest Julie Earlewine. And remember three things, God’s for you not against you. He’s near you, not far away, and he’s created you on purpose and for a purpose. We’ll talk to you guys next time on the Daron Earlewine Podcast.