5 Easy Tips to Reduce Conflict With the Ones You Love | Mel Robbins Podcast [ENCORE]

(ticking clock) (upbeat music) You ever noticed that right before you're about to go on vacation, there is a mandatory screaming match that you have to have with one another as you're loading the car? It begs the question, how do you get to the point where you can have open communication with your family? How can you express your boundaries? I thought it would be pretty cool if I took you behind the scenes into a private conversation that Chris and I had with our three kids. (upbeat music) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Woo! I don't know why I was all excited in that open right there. I even threw in a "Woo!" 'Cause I'm a little (laughs) annoyed right now. I wanna talk to you about this phenomenon that happens with your family, probably happens with your roommates too. Have you ever noticed that right before you're about to go on vacation or you're going on some sort of family road trip, there is a mandatory screaming match that you have to have with one another as you're loading the car? Have you ever noticed that? That you're about to take off and go do something amazing together, we're about to go down to one of our favorite places on the planet and spend some time at the beach, and it never fails. The night before we leave, it is a complete shitshow, to the point where you question whether or not you even wanna go on vacation. And I don't know what this is about, so let me tell you (laughs) what happened. So last night, we were busy packing up the house, and, um, I don't know how your family does it, but I like to stage things. So, I turn the dining room table and the kitchen counters, uh, into the kind of landing strip for all of the things that we're gonna do, and I also, uh, feel like I need to take everything that is in the cabinets with us, and in the fridge, like the half-drunk carton of milk, because I figure, why buy it down there when we can just load it in the car and finish it up? So, I'm kinda busy doing that, and of course, we were trying to, uh, record a bunch more podcast episodes, so I'm running up, uh, the stairs to the studio, and then I come back downstairs and pack a few things, and, um, that's how the afternoon was going. Everything seemed to be fine. You know, my kids are packing their stuff up. Chris is packing his stuff up. Uh, we're starting the pile for all the dogs' things, their crates, their leashes, their dog bowls, the dog food, and we sit down to have dinner, and Chris, who is, thank God, the trip leader and the planner in our family, goes, "Okay, so let's talk about logistics tomorrow. Uh, we can take the house that we're renting over at noon. It's approximately four-hour drive from, you know, where we are, so what time do people think they want to leave?" And so, Oakley and Kendall, our 22 and our 18-year-old, immediately go, "We wanna leave at nine o'clock in the morning." And Chris gives them that sort of blank look where his mouth is wide open, and you can see him calculating, "There's no way in hell you're leaving at eight, nine o'clock in the morning. That's not happening," 'cause first of all, you sleep until 8:45, so you're not leaving at nine o'clock. And so, he starts to basically say, "That's fine, but I'm gonna have a long list of things that we need to do in order to kinda leave and to get ready and to pack up the stuff." Wait till you hear this. (laughs) And all of a sudden, Kendall turns to me. I love you, Kendall, if you're listening to this. But she turns to me, and she says, "Can I just say something?" Um, "Sure." "Um, if you're expecting us to, to, to load your car, Mom, then, uh, you gotta have all your stuff packed up tonight." And I just paused. The old me would have erupted back and started arguing, because I had not been practicing any of the nervous system (laughs) regulation we talk about on the Mel Robbins Podcast. I just took a deep breath. I witnessed her getting agitated, and I said, "Okay," and then I said something smart. "I don't believe I asked you to load my car." And she said, "Well, you know, what ends up happening all the time is that, you know, you ask us to do stuff in the morning, and then you're not ready, and then we're all waiting around for you," (fast-forwarding sounds) . And I couldn't help myself. I couldn't help myself. I had to tug back. You know, like, in a tug-of-war rope game thing, it's, you know, it doesn't feel like a game when you're doing the tug of war in life with words, but I yanked back, and I was like, "Listen, I'ma tell you something. I am the one that writes the check for the house that we are renting, and the person that writes the check does not do the same damn jobs that the unemployed college graduate and high school student are doing. So, please, do not tell me what I am supposed to be doing in order for your life to be easier, because I have a different job than you have." I gotta give her some props, 'cause she didn't back down. You know what she said? She said, "Mom, money does not define your value, so do not throw that money in my face, and by the way, you rent the house and write the check because you wanna be there too. So, that is not a fair argument. All I am asking is that you get yourself ready tonight so that if you want our help tomorrow morning, we are ready to help you, because Oakley and I are leaving at 10 o'clock." Now, it was really interesting, because...I gotta hand it to her. I did not appreciate being sort of snarked at, but if I step in her shoes and I give her credit, I know that what she was doing is she was looking back on past experiences, and the truth is, as I have admitted to you a bazillion times in our conversations on this podcast, I'm a complete shitshow when it comes to managing my own time. I have time blindness, one of the symptoms of (laughs) ADHD in adults, where I just have a hard time, uh, organizing myself. I am always the last one in the car. Her complaint is valid. There have been oftentimes where we have left for this vacation and I'm still in the house packing. In fact, today is that day, because my kids left at 10 o'clock this morning. Chris is still running around downstairs, um, getting things together. Thank God for Chris, and I am upstairs above the garage finishing work that I should have finished yesterday, and have I packed yet? No, I haven't packed at all. In fact, I still have laundry to do. I might not even drive down to the place that we've rented at this point tonight. I don't know what the hell's going on, and I'm not worried about it. And, oh, by the way, it's like 4 o'clock in the afternoon. (sighs) Okay, I'm glad I got that off my chest. So couple things about that story I just told you. Uh, it illustrates something about our family. We, for better or for worse, have very open communication. As you noticed, Chris was extremely proactive. He called this informal family meeting over dinner the night before we're all supposed to leave in order to try to understand everybody's needs. Second, our kids, they speak up, sometimes not in a tone that I really like, and I will talk to Kendall when our emotions are not triggered about how we can be better at advocating for what we need without barking at each other. Um, the other thing that you'll notice is that our daughter had no problem basically calling me to the mat, which I think is a really good thing. I would never have done that to my mother, and I still don't do that to my mother. And if you can do it in a respectful way, I think that's a good thing, because we've gotten to the point with our kids where, like, we don't own them. They have to be able to speak up when something bothers them. They have to be able to point out something that doesn't feel fair, and if you consider the example that I gave you, I'm right when I say I'm not gonna have the same job as you. You're an unemployed college graduate, and I'm the person that has a full-time business to run, and I'm writing the check and paying for this vacation, so I'm not going to have the same job. However, I actually hadn't addressed her question, because all she had said, if you take the emotion out of it, is, "If you want help in the morning, Mom, you need to be packed tonight." And I got offended, because I'll be honest, I knew there was no way in hell I was gonna be packed at night, and so I felt like I was getting called out and made wrong. I did not hear it for what it was, which is somebody expressing boundaries. "I can help you, but only if you're packed tonight." And so she was right to call me out and say, "Mom, money does not define worth. That's not what we're talking about," and she stood her ground, and I respect that, because I wasn't ready last night. I wasn't ready this morning. I'm not even ready right now. Those kids, they left at 10 o'clock, just like Chris said they could. They did everything that Chris w- wrote on three different pages in terms of lists and things to do, and they're already down at this place we rent. Me on the other hand, it's 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I have not packed, I still have laundry to do, and I'm sitting here recording a podcast episode for you. (sighs) That's why families argue, I guess (laughs) . Oh, God. So it begs the question, how do you get to the point where you can have open communication with your family? Um, how can you express your boundaries? So many of us are at a time of year where you're gonna be going on vacation with them. My family, my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and their two ki- they're showing up in a matter of five days. My parents are rolling in just six days from now. We're gonna be a family of 11 under one roof for an entire week. Wouldn't it be nice to know how to have boundaries, how to have open communication? And so here's what I thought. I thought it would be pretty cool if I took you behind the scenes and I invited you on the couch, in the TV room, into a private conversation that Chris and I had with our three kids. You're gonna hear from our daughter Sawyer, who's 24, our daughter Kendall, who's 22, and our son Oakley, who is 18, and Chris and I are gonna ask them, what did we fuck up as parents? What did we do that seemed to work, and what kinds of things have you witnessed in your friends' parents that caused your friends to stop talking to their parents and to stop trusting them? That's what we're gonna cover and a whole lot more, and so without further ado, let's head to the couch. Oh, and you, you're not going to the couch until I ask you and beg you to please subscribe. I can bring you these videos every single day because of the ad support that we get from the ads that roll on this, so please, please, please support this channel and just hit subscribe. It's free, it helps us, and it helps me bring this to you every single day, and I profoundly, profoundly, profoundly appreciate it. And this is, after all, gonna be about asking for what you need, right? And so I'm asking you for what I need, and, uh, thank you. Hit subscribe, and I love you, and now, you ready? Let's go to the couch.It was such a huge hit when Oakley introduced me, so we thought it would be fun for each one of us to introduce somebody else. Okay? So I'm sitting here with my husband, Chris, of 26 years. He is our rock. He's our spiritual center. You're the foundation.