← Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
E85 - Jim Burns Author of two books for Parents of Adult Children and Empty Nesting
00:36:12
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- [00:01]
Jim Burns
It's hard. And that's why, in principle, one of my first principle is that, you know, you've parented your kids for at least two decades, pretty much day to day, and by the time they're teens, you don't know everything about them, but you still do. You're in control. And the first principle is you're fired as a. As your role as a day to day parent. What I find with that, which is unnerving but also comforting, is that we've never been the parents of an adult child, so we don't know what we're doing. Okay. And our kids have never been adults, so they don't know what they're doing. So there's these two parallel tracks of, you know, the mom and the dad and the son and the daughter and. Or daughter who they don't know what they're doing. So we're kind of learning this together. We actually had to have a couple of conversations with our kids when they were in the earlier stages saying, okay, now we don't exactly know how to handle this, and I'm guessing you might not either, so let's kind of create something together. And we found that when we did that, that was really helpful. What turned into what was at first awkward became really good. But we just sat down and talked to her like an adult. Sometimes that works. And obviously there were other times in our life with our kids, it doesn't work.
- [01:20]
Dave
Okay, everyone. Well, I have two books in my hand here, and if you're listening to the podcast, obviously you can't see this, but we will have this on YouTube as well. I have two books. First one here is doing life with your adult children. Keep your mouth shut and you're welcome. Mat out. And I have Finding joy in the empty nest. Discover purpose and passion in the next phase of life. Jim Burns is here. These books, Jim, have arrived just in time. Thank you for writing these. Jim Burns. Welcome to the podcast. How are you, Dave?
- [01:56]
Jim Burns
Great to be with you. I feel like I need to say A because you're my Canadian brother, but I'll just. I'll try to speak American English, although you all sound a lot better. I always say Canadians sound better than us Americans. We have all this crummy slang and you don't.
- [02:12]
Dave
Well, I love when I hear my American guests come on and they say, you all for y'. All. I like that. Sounds so cool. We don't have anything. We got a. We say A. I like a. I
- [02:22]
Jim Burns
think a's A. I like that,
- [02:26]
Dave
Jim. Thank you for writing these books. My wife and I are empty nesters. So we are your humble students.
- [02:34]
Jim Burns
Yes.
- [02:34]
Dave
Today my wife is at work. Today she is kicking herself because she wanted to be here. She had. She could probably hijack this whole podcast and spend time with you on her own. But when these books arrived, I mentioned to you, she snatched them out of my hands and she was into them, like, right away. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Tell me a little bit about you. Let's. Ivar, I know. I feel like I know you already, but our listeners are maybe hearing about you for the first time. Let's introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your story.
- [03:03]
Jim Burns
Well, you know, I have adult children, and my background is youth ministry, Dave. So I worked with kids all of my adult life. And as I grew up, I realized that some of those kids were growing up, and I used to think, wow, their parents need as much help as these kids I'm working with. Right. So I kind of changed what I was doing, and I started trying to help families succeed more. And I still wake up thinking about kids. You know, it's funny, you know, you never get out of that, literally. I'm 68 years old, and when I was 18, I was working with kids, but. And speaking. Speaking in Canada a lot to student groups, big student groups. But I thought the most effective way for me to help kids is to actually help the parents. And so I've given the later part of my life and career and ministry and vocation to trying to help families succeed. And so homeward. The organization I work with has four values. Strong marriages, confident parents. That's kind of where what we're talking about comes in. And empowered kids and healthy leaders. And so all of our content and the grid goes through that. And I've had the privilege to really. It's been a beautiful run. I've had the privilege to speak of Promise Keepers over the years when Promise Keepers was around, I've had the privilege to speak to mops. So, you know, I kind of run the gamut. But these two books have become really important to me because it's what Kathy and I are going through. So people have asked me, why did you write the books? And usually I just say, desperation on our own life. Kathy said, I didn't see this coming. Right. The empty nest or the kids becoming adults, actually in opposite order. And then I started doing research and realized there wasn't a lot out. And we've somehow hit a core because people keep reading the books and wanting more.
- [04:46]
Dave
It's amazing. Okay. So off to my side of the camera, I have my three kids up on the mantel above the fireplace here. All three of them have now left the house. We are surrounded by a museum of stuff that we are not allowed to get rid of. So we tell them that we have to charge them, like, admittance to get in. You have to pay to come into the museum of your stuff because they won't let us get rid of anything. So we're surrounded by this stuff, Right?
- [05:15]
Jim Burns
Yeah, it's us, too. Our garage is filled with our kids stuff, and they have. One daughter, has a bigger house than we do, but she goes, well, I don't want it over a thousand, so as long as it's in your garage, you're okay. And we're like, what is this? You're an adult, So I get it.
- [05:29]
Dave
So, yeah. So again, the timing of these two books, we. I got to be honest with you, Jim. We're. We're struggling right now, the two of us. The one thing I think that really hurt the most was Covid.
- [05:44]
Jim Burns
Yeah.
- [05:45]
Dave
In that it accelerated what was going to naturally happen and made it happen, like, within a week instead of happening over a year.
- [05:55]
Jim Burns
Yeah. Right.
- [05:56]
Dave
Because my kids are like, you know, listen, at one point here in Canada, you know, we couldn't have your social circle be bigger than your family. And I had to give record to my employer who my kids were with.
- [06:08]
Jim Burns
Yeah.
- [06:09]
Dave
You know, and as that circle got bigger and bigger, my employer was like, you can't do that. So if you want to keep working, you got to put your circle smaller. So we put it to our kids and said, listen, you guys, you can't be with your girlfriend. You can't be with your boyfriend. You have to be home. And that point they're like, listen, I'm 19. I'm 20. I'm 20. Whatever. I'm out of here. Right, right. Because I can't say no to them.
- [06:33]
Jim Burns
Right.
- [06:33]
Dave
I want to be with them, and I'm an adult. And everything kind of fell apart.
- [06:38]
Jim Burns
Yeah.
- [06:39]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Right.
- [06:39]
Jim Burns
You know, I thought, Dave, that I'd heard it all, but that's a new one for me because I didn't realize. I knew it was Covid. Issues were different in Canada. That's a tough one, because a lot of times what we saw was kids coming back home. They boomerang back because they were sent home from college or whatever. And they said, well, I'm adults, so I'm supposed to be treated like adults. You're going, well, we're paying for your cell Phone. We're paying for your college and you're not exactly acting like an adult. But when that comes, that's even more complicated because you were managing the amount of friends they could have or not have for your job. That's, that's a tough one. Honestly. You get the award for the toughest one I've heard for the last couple of months.
- [07:18]
Dave
And then now they've got themselves into different situations where they are now financially hurting, they've taken on an apartment they can't afford, they've lost work, they are in a relationship or a setting that's not positive and they want to come back, but they want to bring their significant other, girlfriends and whatever to the house and live here in my house together. And that doesn't fit with what we want as a, as a home.
- [07:46]
Jim Burns
Yeah, no, you're right. And I think it's hard as parents. One of the things I say in the book on doing life with your adult children is that they view tolerance as a form of loving. And so if we have a different kind of a worldview than they have, and we don't just embrace their worldview, they see that as not loving, when in fact that is not the case. It's possible to agree to disagree. But for your own home, my principle is that it's your home, so it's my home, my roles kind of a thing. And if they don't want to abide by that, then that's fine because they're adults, they can figure something else out. And we're dying on the inside because we're, it's breaking our hearts because we, we want them to. They violated our values, say, and they want us to, to, you know, to embrace that. And we can embrace them and we can continue to love on them, but we also have to say, but, but here's the foundation we've built on. And so I say to people all the time, you know, when they have a situation like this, do, do you, do they know what you believe? Yes. Do they know how you feel? Yes. Then don't be a one topic parent. They know what you believe and feel and so you've got to broaden it. And you know, I said to somebody the other day, because their son likes to play baseball and watch baseball. And I said, well, why don't you go to baseball, take him to a baseball game. And in the middle of it they're dealing with more. The son wants to move in with the girlfriend and the son smoking pot and you know, all these other things. And I Said he knows what you feel and believe and you've actually done really good setting some boundaries. Now it's time to go to the baseball game, which is hard to do because we want to just talk about that one issue. But it's hard. Yeah, I commit staying with it again today you're not the most popular, but long term they'll, they understand, they'll appreciate quite possibly down the road that you showed love and, and care and at the same time, you know, held your ground in terms of what, you know, you believe at your home. I mean, they know what you believe.
- [09:41]
Dave
So in doing life with your adult children, you talk about parrot with awe. And I love the story behind awe from your relatives and who you looked up to. Can you explain to this? Because I love that you said you have this next to your desk, this acronym, awe. Awe right here, right? Yeah, right there.
- [10:03]
Jim Burns
So it's just a little post it note. It's not very fancy, but it's there.
- [10:06]
Dave
I know and I appreciate that you have that there. Can you explain that?
- [10:10]
Jim Burns
Well, one day I started thinking about how do I relate to my wife, how do I relate to my kids, how do I relate to people here in my office? And I wrote down a period, W period, E period stands for affection, warmth and encouragement. So you do that on different levels. Obviously the affection for my wife is very different than for my. I have three daughters. My three daughters or my, you know, obviously with my, with my staff and team here at Homeward. But do I do. How do I express affection, warmth and encouragement? To me, that's the foundation for good communication. There was a man, and I didn't write this in the book, but there was a man named Neil Clark Warren. He's actually the founder of eHarmony.com, a lot of people would know of him and he's a. What they don't know. He's a marriage expert. He's a wonderful Christian. We went to the same graduate school, Princeton, him 20 years before me. But he's been a mentor in my life. And he said to me, communication is a learned trait. And that was a mind blower for me in terms of thinking about. I came from a dysfunctional family, my wife came from a dysfunctional family. So we just assumed we were carrying baggage. And we were actually. But what we realized is we could change that. And so for me it was this little acronym, ah, affection, warmth and encouragement. And I think a lot of how I'm doing with my kids is can I shower them with affection? Can I shower Them with warmth and affection isn't just kissy, lovey, huggy. Affection can be, I'm proud of you. I love you. When boys are 13, the dads give them a little noogie on their head. You can see for the people who are only listening, they can't see this. But, you know, there's not a whole lot of hair on the top of my head. And I think my dad caused that from giving me nookies. But, you know, I felt love from him. He was. He showered me with affection by doing that. He punched me in the arm. I'd walk by and he just give me a punch. Well, you know, that we don't. I wouldn't do that to my daughters. But that is something you do with boys. And then warmth. Warmth is more setting the tone. So I think this is where it gets complicated with adult children, is if they're violating values or they're making some poor choices. How do we set a tone in our home that's loving and caring and warm and inviting at the same time, saying, but you're not going to bring the girlfriend home to live with us. We want to meet your girlfriend. But no, they can't live in the same bedroom, you know, or whatever. And then encouragement. And I love the fact, you know, it was Mark Twain who said, I can live two months on one good compliment. And I think we have to encourage, you know, Jesus did this. Jesus looked at a man named Simon, called him. You know, he said, your name's no longer Simon, it's Peter, which means the Rock. So nobody was called Peter. I mean, nobody was called the Rock, but he became the rock because Jesus affirmed him and encouraged him and believed in him. And I think as parents, we can do that even when we are in a place. Again, back to, you know, maybe they violated our values or, you know, for a bit. But the years that you're in right now, now with the age of your kids, what we call emerging adulthood, and actually in the book doing life with your adult children, we talk about emerging adulthood and emerging adulthood. They're still trying to figure out who they are. So what we're finding is that some of these people meander toward responsibility. They meander toward even sometimes married. But once they get married, you know what the number one thing they want if you look at culture, they want to have a good marriage, and they want to have good relationships with their children. They want to be great parents. And that's interesting about the millennials and the Gen Z, because we don't see that at 20 and 21, they're not hardly even thinking about that. But once it happens and it happens later. I wrote a book called Getting Ready for Marriage and it's a premarital book that a lot of churches use for people who are going to get married. And I was focusing on a 29 year old and a 27 year old. And in Canada, marriage is even a little bit later than what we have here in the US but it's really, I mean, I got married right out of college and that was normal. I had other friends doing that. Not the case today. So they're meandering. We are seeing some good news that once they've meandered, now some of them carry baggage, but they come back to our values or you know, my daughter Christy said when she was graduating from college, she said I had to disown my parents faith to own my own faith. And you know, today I was speaking at a church yesterday, but my wife and Christy sat together at church and you know, she goes to our church and she's probably more involved in our church than we are. That's wonderful. But she's doing it on her grounds, not on our grounds. And that took a while for her to come back.
- [14:36]
Dave
That's a little unnerving. As a parent, you mentioned as well that, you know, for all of our lifetime with our kids, we know where they are, we know what they're doing, they're following our rules, they're under our roof. Right. And we have complete knowledge to most degree of what they're up to and what they're doing. Right. And now we're at a different stage of life where I have no clue where my kids are right now.
- [15:01]
Jim Burns
No, I know.
- [15:02]
Dave
I have no idea if they went to work today, I don't know if they had lunch. I have no clue.
- [15:08]
Jim Burns
I know it's unnerving, it's hard. And that's why in principle, one of my first principle is that you've parented your kids for at least two decades, pretty much day to day and by the time they're teens you don't know everything about them, but you still do. You're in control. And the first principle is you're fired. As your role as a day to day parent. What I find with that, which is unnerving but also comforting, is that we've never been the parents of an adult child, so we don't know what we're doing and our kids have never been adults, so they don't know what they're doing. So there's these two parallel tracks of the mom and the dad and the son and the daughter and. Or daughter who they don't know what they're doing. So we're kind of learning this together. We actually had to have a couple of conversations with our kids when they were in the earlier stages saying, okay, now we don't exactly know how to handle this, and I'm guessing you might not either, so let's kind of create something together. And we found that when we did that, that was really helpful. One time, our daughter Becca moved back into the house. And so we had a moment where he said, hey, let's talk about some expectations. And we said, you know, as an adult, your hours are a lot different than ours, but we're going to stay up because, you know, we're your parents. So we need you to text us at 11 o' clock where you are and where you're going to be, because if not, we're going to be up. And also, this is a bucket and it has. See this brush? This is how you clean a toilet. We're not sure you've done a lot of this, but that bathroom is yours and we'd love to have dinner with you once or twice a week. She goes, I can do that. And she goes, now do I get. Do I have some expectations? I have some expectations, too. And I didn't expect it, Dave, because I thought, she's not going to. She didn't have any expectations, you know. You know, it was our expectations, right? And she goes, dad, I want to bring my friends over. But you were a youth pastor, and so all my friends like you, and they think you're like a youth pastor. So you sit in the middle on the couch and you talk with everybody, and they all like it, but you're kind of stealing my thunder, so I need to invite you into the living room. And I'm like, wait a minute, I thought I was cool. You know what I mean, Dave? So it was really good because she had some expectations, too. And then we kind of created an exit strategy. What will it take for her to get back out on her own? Because she had been living with a friend of hers from college, a young woman who moved to another place. And what would it look like for her to get back? And how could we. We even, you know, look at the finances and all that. And it was a. It was actually a really. What? Turned into what was at first awkward became really good. But we just sat down and talked to her like an adult. Sometimes that works. And Obviously, there were other times in our life with our kids, it doesn't work.
- [17:42]
Dave
Yeah. Okay. So for those parents who might be listening to this, Jim, and they feel like maybe they failed or they haven't, maybe if they've done something differently, the results would differ, and they're not happy with the results they're seeing in their kids. Is our children and how they live their adult life a direct reflection on us as parents?
- [18:07]
Jim Burns
No. Well, we think it is as parents because we make it more about us than it really is. What I say to parents all the time, I say this to parents every week. Really good parents have kids who make poor choices. So there are times when, you know, people did really good jobs with parenting, and then they made poor choices. We were in a small group, and this one couple were just characters, their kids. You know, one is a youth pastor, another is a theologian at a Christian school. The other one married a pastor. And these people, the parents were just necessary, not necessarily altogether. And then we have somebody else who did a great job parenting, and their kids rebelled. So it's not the norm all the time. But. But I think we, as parents, you know, Kathy and I, when our kids would rebel, we'd say, wow, we should not have gone on that vacation over Easter break. They should have gone on the mission trip or as a family. We should have prayed more or we should have, you know, done this or done that. Maybe we should have homeschooled our kids instead of putting them into public schools. They got some weird ideas, whatever. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that you do the best you can. And then you look back and, you know, we were. We're now. Our kids are older now, during their later 30s, and we were at a big wedding experience recently, and Kathy and I were just sitting there and we were watching our kids kind of interact. And I said, you know what? I love these kids. I go, I'm not even sure I liked them when they were 21 and 22. But, you know, now that they're in their 30s, they've kind of got through that process. They're all married, they are doing well. We have three grandchildren. They're making good decisions about finances. They're making, you know, good. We not everything. We could disagree on lots of stuff, but I went, I like them. But we had to realize that there was a season that it wasn't going to be easy. Like I'll say to people, I'm speaking at the International MOPS Convention, which is Mothers of Preschoolers. And I always Say to them, you know what? Life's chaotic right now, but it's going to be chaotic. I mean, that's just how it is. Well, I think when you have younger adults, or what we call emerging adults, I think that's a real chaotic time for us because they're trying to figure it out. They're in what I call the experimental phase of life. They tend to come. A lot of them tend to come back to their roots, but they got to get through that stage. And what you hope and pray is that they don't come back with all kinds of baggage, with some real poor choices. And every so often you do hear that. You hear about the young woman who got pregnant outside of wedlock, and now she's kind of becoming responsible, but not that the child is a burden, but that the child has changed her life dramatically for the rest of her life. And it was in a. She doesn't have a dad. There's not a husband in the picture. Those are hard stories.
- [20:56]
Dave
So you touched on this already. But for parents who do feel like they've maybe lost a connection with their kids because they've gone down a path that you don't agree with or you just can't even imagine could be part of your future, just building that sense of awe and being there for your kids is one way to build a. I think so.
- [21:21]
Jim Burns
And I don't want it to be oversimplification because at the same time, you may have to go scream into the pillow and you need a support system around you. I talk a lot about that, both in finding Joy in the Empty Nest and in this other book. I talk about the need for replenishing relationships, who you can be open and honest with. It was easier for me as a dad than it was for Kathy. Kathy every Tuesday night when one of my daughters was in pretty good rebellion during college. The college was about an hour and 15 minutes away. And so I would drive there every Tuesday because my wife was involved in teaching on Tuesday nights. And so I would drive and we. And there were times when all we talked about was snowboarding or how crummy the teachers were or nothing that was of. I mean, I always had an. In my pocket, I had, like, a list. Are you doing your homework? Are you getting past this? What about this guy you're dating right now? You know, all that? Sometimes we never got to it. But what I found was I wanted to be her greatest cheerleader. Because if she crashed, and I actually thought she was going to crash, interesting enough, she did. But if she crashed. I wanted her to come back to me, not into the arms of a guy who promised her something that I wasn't going to promise her. So it kind of worked for Kathy. It was harder. And even the empty nest is, I think sometimes, and I'm being general because I think we all can experience something I call the empty nest syndrome. But I just went and worked harder. That's not positive. But what Kathy did was she was the center. I mean, she was the son. And the kids revolved around her. And even I kind of jumped in and revolved around her, her in our home. And all of a sudden she's lost this identity. And then what she's poured two decades of her life into is not working. She's like, wait a minute, what? This was not supposed to happen this way. And so I needed as a dad and as a husband to be. To be drawn to her. But for me, there was a season where I did more of the cheerleading with my kids than Kathy did. Not that Kathy didn't do that. Kathy's really good at that. But it was harder for her every time she would meet in this crummy such season. It was about a year with. With Becca. I remember she was. She was going to become a roommate of these girls. And we. We went into the house, we're helping her move in. And Kathy was just. She was almost paralyzed because she saw this house and she didn't see it as. I just went, it's an ugly house and these kids aren't keeping care of it. And these kids look like they're, you know, not the kind of kids we wish Becca would be with. Come to find out, Kathy was right. So she. It was hard for her to go to that house. And so we met Becca other places because she just didn't want to be in that house. I'm not burning on Kathy for that at all. I just. I realized my job was to come alongside Kathy. But also, Kathy knew that she had to still be Becca's greatest cheerleader. And that doesn't mean that she, you know, enables her or enables dependency. We weren't throwing a lot of money at her at that time, but we had to. She was going to become entitled if we. If we were. And so what we did was we said, you're an adult and you're making some adult decisions. That's with quotes, because we didn't think they were the smartest decision. And, you know, we can't tell you what to do, but we're also not going to bail. You out if you make some poor choices. And she did make some poor choices. Not horrible. Her story isn't the worst story, but she made some poor choices. She woke up, she graduated from college, and she went and became a missionary, you know, so, I mean, that's a neat part of the story, but she's not a missionary now, but she's a. She has a master's in clinical psych, doing great stuff. But that season was really tough. And we know people where their seasons are a lot longer than our seasons have been.
- [25:03]
Dave
Yeah, yeah, yeah. How. How can we keep the welcome mat out? What is some easy ways for us to do that?
- [25:15]
Jim Burns
Well, I think even no matter how they are acting, you know, we're spending a lot of times on kids who are related values. Not all kids are like that. But I think you keep the welcome mat out by spending time with them and time not on your time, but sometimes on their time. And so with adult children, you almost have to take their lead. And so I found with my kids, they all wanted food. They would eat okay. So I would. All three of them, I would say two of them lived pretty close in college and one didn't. But I would say, you know, hey, you want to go get a bite to eat? And honestly, I'm driving, I'm going. I can't believe I'm driving two and a half hours up and back to have a meal with them. That sometimes wasn't all, like, life changing, but I just wanted to keep in them. I would tell them I love them all the time. I'd send them little notes. I stopped when they were in high school. We. I was much more, you know, doing little spiritual things to them and whatnot. And I actually stopped doing a lot. I never stopped praying for him, but I stopped, you know, I didn't want them to see me as preachy and luxury because that was not going to work for this. They would have seen that as toxic. And so I had to let them, you know, out on their own. And so again, you're catching a lot of what our family was like. And it wasn't all bad, to be honest. But, you know, they had to in some ways, talking about faith, like I said with Christie, but they had to kind of disown our faith to own their own. But they also had to, you know, they had to figure it out. So experience is a better teacher than advice. So there were times, you know, you can't see this, but I have scars on my tongue because I wanted to give them advice all the time. And you know, they had to experience it just like when they were little. I remember our daughter Heidi gets on a bike and I'm going, no, not you don't do it that way. And she crashed and she skinned her knee. You know what? That was the best thing that could happen to her. To be honest, I'm not sure my wife would think that to this day because she was putting on the band aids and all that. Heidi got up, listened to me, learned how to ride her bike in about 10 seconds. Sometimes the crash or like, wow, this is not as you're talking about kids who have to. All of a sudden they're having financial problems. Well, if you always bail them out, then they're not going to understand that, hey, you got to work hard to make those payments and whatever that might be. Now, 75% of parents, parents of adults do help their kids out at one way or another sometimes with finances, but I think the bailing out isn't a good idea a lot of times because they need to learn on their own and it's hard watching them fail or fall. But again, that's how they learn.
- [27:51]
Dave
Yeah. So as well, we're finding joy in the emptiness. I love how you're addressing tips for empty nesters and couples, but as well, you also talk to single parent empty nesters.
- [28:05]
Jim Burns
Yeah.
- [28:05]
Dave
And I don't, I don't hear a lot of resources for them.
- [28:08]
Jim Burns
There's not a lot of resources. And if you look at empty nesters, I mean, I don't know, it's not half, but it's a huge amount in North America who are, who are single. And I couldn't find things. And so at first, I think my publisher wanted me to write a marriage book on empty nest. And I went, there's plenty of marriage books on empty nest.
- [28:25]
Dave
But.
- [28:25]
Jim Burns
And I do write on that. That's a major passion for me. But what I found with the single. And I interviewed single women and single men and what they were going through. And I came up with the fact that they had two losses because they had the loss of their kids becoming adults and now they're not in the home, the empty nest, but it was really quiet. But the other loss was that they were dealing with either the death or divorce of a, of a spouse. Sometimes they were so busy from this, depending on when it happened, but they were so busy and they were working so hard to get their kids out of the house and, you know, fed and all that, that once they went into the empty nest, that's when they dealt with the, you know, issues of this death or of this divorce. So they have two losses. Whereas with Kathy and I, we had one loss and we could kind of talk about it. Now, when I say one loss, we had three losses because of our three kids, but we had the loss. But then we could, we could but up and talk about it and work through it. And with the single parents, some of them didn't have that because they hadn't been putting as much time into replenishing friendships, partly because most single parents don't realize how good a job they are doing. But in doing that, they give up so much. And sometimes it's their friendships and their social life and all the other things, and it's complicated. I don't have an easy answer for them. But so again, I wanted to write to them and I wanted to encourage them and, and I wanted to recognize some of their specific issues. And I met some great single, you know, empty nesters, and they really helped me understand that, you know, there are some really healthy things that they can be doing. And one is understanding that they really, you know, lean into friendships. But also, it's not like you're losing your kids, you're losing their day to day. But I know a single empty nest mom who every Sunday gets together with her daughter and her husband, and the husband and the grandkids, and they have food at the house and they have fun and, you know, just this, you know, it's not a. It's just every Sunday it happens to happen. And then the other one that's away on about a monthly basis, she's, you know, connecting and she's actually doing the drive and meeting with the kids and with, with the daughter, and sometimes it's her friend, her daughter. When I said kids, I meant sometimes the daughter brings her friends, too. But, you know, she's, she's just changing the relationship the way it goes. And what you don't want to do is just go away. I'm lost, you know, and stay, you know, sitting, eating ice cream at home, you know, saying, when are the kids going to call?
- [30:47]
Dave
It's amazing, Jim. Like both of these books, I told you, they're so meaningful to my wife and I right now. I'm so, I'm so impressed. Like, I wish I could talk to you for hours and hours. You do have many things on your plate. But I do appreciate your time today. As we close off today, what would your message be to somebody who is on the doorstep of an empty nest? How do we prepare for this?
- [31:15]
Jim Burns
Well, first of all, I think you answered it, Dave. I think we have to prepare a little bit. What we did with hundreds of people that we talked to. And I wrote this book during COVID so it was on mainly zoom calls with loads of people me asking questions. What's going on is we realized that people hadn't prepared for the empty nest. And so once their kids were gone, they were preparing, getting their kids out of the house, going to college, going to the workforce, whatever. But they were doing that well, a lot of them. But all of a sudden it's quiet and they look up and they go, wow. Even in a marriage, we buried some things under the mat. So, gosh, we've got to deal with that. We have to reinvent our life. And I don't think. I think when you do it, when you're already in the empty nest, it's harder than if you kind of have been thinking about it just a little tiny bit. You know, it's kind of. Then you're preparing for it, if you would. But we found a lot of people didn't prepare, and that was a harder thing. And you know what? One of the things that happens is in the midst of all that, and especially if the kids aren't doing well, we have to understand that even for our kids and for our spouse, the big question is, even if they're violating values, do you still love me? And I think sometimes, like with Kathy and I, we actually had to reinvent our marriage relationship. I mean, we had love. We've been married 48 years and we speak on it. I write books on marriage. Right. But what we realized was that we had to reinvent our relationship now that our kids were gone, because so much of our relationship was based around our kids. And it got real quiet, real quick. And we're like, so what are we going to do? And for us, we had to even rekindle some of the romance. So it's a mouthful to your question, but a lot going on.
- [32:59]
Dave
Yeah, it's amazing. So, everyone, I'm going to show them again here. These are the books. Finding Joy in the Empty Nest. Wonderful book. It's perfect for my wife and I right now. And now as we go deeper with our kids. Doing life with your adult children. Two amazing books from Jim. Jim has more than this, and you can find that through the website. Jim, how do people contact you?
- [33:22]
Jim Burns
People can go to Homeward. H O M E w o r d.com and Homeward does some great things. We have over 2 million resources in print. We're the largest provider of parenting seminars in the US and we do a lot of stuff in Canada. I'm soon to be in Saskatchewan, and it's not exactly as easy to get to as where you live, Dave, but. But I have just found that the Canadian parents need the same amount of input as we need here in the US and it's really so similar. So the Homeward website is a great website. We do free webinars every month. People come on from all over the world and watch the live webinar. They can get it. People right now could go on our website and find under webinars, find the previous webinars. And we've got stuff for kids three to five on healthy sexuality. And we've got things for people who are, you know, with adult children. So we kind of run the gamut.
- [34:22]
Dave
Nice. Jim, thank you for making time in your day today. Thank you for writing these books and as your target audience speaking back to you. Thank you. Thank you.
- [34:33]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Thank you.
- [34:34]
Jim Burns
That's awesome. Tell your wife next time we're on, Dave, she needs to come on too. I want to hear her input too.
- [34:39]
Dave
I love the fact that you just said next time we're on. That just made me super happy, just so you know. But thank you, Jim, so much.
- [34:45]
Jim Burns
God bless.
- [34:45]
Dave
All the best to the family. Thank you to the grandchildren, to your wonderful wife and the girls. Thank you so much for everything.
- [34:51]
Jim Burns
Thanks. Take care. Bye.
- [34:53]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Bye. Hey, guys. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Jump over to living the next chapter.com our website, and you will see a spot where you can leave a voice message. We'd love to hear your feedback. We're trying to make it as easy as possible to hear from you. So if you want your voice on this podcast. Yes, that's possible. Go to livingthenextchapter.com. click the little icon, little microphone icon. Leave a voice message. We'll insert your message into the podcast. Tell us where you're listening from. Tell us your favorite guest. Maybe there's a guest we should have on the podcast. Maybe you should be our next guest. Leave us a message. Living the next chapter.com Again, thank you so much for listening. Please share this podcast episode with one person. It's all we're asking. Meet you over there at Living the Next Chapter dot com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. Love to hear from you. Till the next episode. It's coming up right away. Make sure you hit that subscribe button button. Thank you for being part of Living the Next Chapter. Thank you for supporting our guests. Great day.