Vince, Gina, and Nicole delve into the intricate world of young men's challenges. From personal transformation to evolving family roles and societal changes.
Hosts: Vince, Gina, and Nicole
Topic: Assisting young men in overcoming challenges through mentorship, coaching, and therapy.
Discussion Points:
Mission and Purpose of Causeway Conversations:
Personal Journeys and Motivations:
Challenges Faced by Young Men:
Parental Expectations and Evolving Social Landscape:
Advice and Insights for Parents and Young Men:
Closing Remarks:
Contact Information:
Email: info@causewaycollaborative.com
Social Media:
End Note:
Causeway Conversations emphasizes the collective responsibility to guide and support young men, advocating for patience, understanding, and active involvement in their development.
Welcome to Causeway Conversations where we help young men get their lives on the right track through mentorship, coaching, and therapy. If your son is stuck, you've found the right support.
Gina:
All right. We are going to rip a little bit. We will talk to the audience about why we're here. Why are we here, V?
Vince:
Well, the mission of Causeway as we've rewritten it, is to influence the lives of 1 million men and young men. I'm not going to do that by going to the office every day and sitting in a room in the back, and meeting with a kid one at a time. This is a chance for us to share who we are and what we've been doing for the last dozen years with as many people as are willing to listen. And come together and promote a different conversation about mental health for young men, and men. That's why I would say we're here. Nic, what would you add to that?
Nicole:
I echo that, and I think we're also here because we have very different perspectives that also marry so beautifully with one another. So we're going to be coming at things from a different viewpoint, all of us are. And I think that that really provides such a rich conversation, because what I have found is that so often we try to surround ourselves always with people who are like-minded, right? Because that's safe.
Vince:
Yeah.
Gina:
It's way more fun that way. Just keep everything chill.
Nicole:
Yeah. And I think that our conversations are going to be vibrant, because the way you see something is going to be different than the way I see something, than the way that you see something as a mom. So I think we're going to bring fresh perspectives. And I'm just excited to be sitting in your sitting room doing this. It brings such joy to my heart.
Gina:
So that's why we're here. So that's why the three of us are here in this room. Why is Vince Benevento here? How did we get to a point where you've lived a life such that it's worthy of hearing what you have to say? Why are you here?
Vince:
Well, first of all, I wouldn't be bold enough to suggest that it is, right. But that's for everybody out there to decide, that's not for me to decide. But I mean, I would say I've walked a path that most people don't. I was a fuck up when I was a young man. I made a lot of mistakes and had some pretty serious mental health and substance use issues for probably my mid-teens through my early twenties. And found a way to get myself back on track and learn some things along the way. And my work in life has been to share that with as many men and young men and then subsequently families as possible. Helping men is my life's work, and I've done it for a fair bit of time. So there's some information and some experience to share there for people who are interested in that.
Gina:
Why is Nicole O'Brien here?
Nicole:
Because he brought me.
Vince:
I found you, and brought you.
Nicole:
That's right. That's right. Gosh, I'm here for I think so many different reasons. I'm here because thankfully a colleague of mine introduced me to you, and to Justin and the Causeway team. And said, "Hey, we want to learn more about family dynamics because we're hitting a roadblock when it comes to the work that we're doing with the young men." And so I came in to do those trainings. I think there were two or three of them. And I know I've told you guys this story several times, but that I just walked in the door and I knew I was home. And that's the best way that I can describe it. I felt like I was home. And the heart and soul of the men that we work with as clinicians and just the culture of Causeway, it was like, "I think I'm supposed to be here," but I actually have a tenured position as a professor, so...
Vince:
A college professor.
Nicole:
But so I don't know. And so I said to the universe, I said, "Whatever is next for me, just show me the way."
Gina:
I love that.
Nicole:
And I just surrendered it and I knew it was next. And so when you called and said, "Hey, I want to have breakfast with you." In my mind I'm like, "Oh, we're going to talk about a job." But I'm like, "No, don't... Be humble. Humble."
Gina:
You can't leave your job as a tenured professor to go work with these guys.
Nicole:
I can't. I just met him. But it was history after that. I knew that I had to be a part of Causeway. It was like I found my brother, long lost brother. And you both know this, I believe so deeply in the family piece and its impact on the young men that you've been serving over the past decade plus. And so I want to be a part of that, because I think so much of the work that you do can only, it can be supported so much by the work that we do as family therapists. And so it's a beautiful synergy.
Gina:
So before we get into the kind of-
Vince:
Wait, don't you get to share?
Nicole:
Why are you here?
Vince:
Why are you here?
Gina:
Oh, I was really trying to get away from it.
Nicole:
Why is Gina here? I wasn't really trying to get away from it.
Vince:
No.
Gina:
Yeah. Why is Gina here? Well, I'm here because we started a podcast and I was directing, and from sitting on the other side of the screen, it felt like I couldn't get you guys to really shine through who you actually are. And professorial, and like you knew there were cameras in your faces. So I felt like we were selling the audience short. I felt like we were selling the podcast short. And so my role is to bring out the you, and you, in you both. So that's kind of why I'm here.
Nicole:
We're so glad you are.
Gina:
What do you want this to be? One year from now, you want to look back, you want to look at what we've done? What do you think this is going to be?
Nicole:
This podcast or Causeway in general?
Gina:
Start with the podcast.
Nicole:
The podcast, yeah. I want our conversations to be enriching. I want for those who are listening them to be enriching. I want them to be honest and transparent. I want them to be educational. I want people to take something away from this that they can infuse into their own lives. I want it to exhibit the type of humanity that I felt when I walked in the doors. And I want people to hear different perspectives on what is so challenging for young men, because I think that's shifted over decades.
You've been in this work for a couple decades, and so I think the ever-changing landscape is important to be able to navigate with people. I want us to feel like we're going on a journey together and that we build a community of people that can support one another and help them walk the path with the young men in their lives.
Gina:
For sure. All right. So let's do that. Right? So when you say it's hard for young men, I mean, what does that mean? Because having never been one...
Nicole:
Ditto.
Vince:
It's hard for young men.
Gina:
What's hard?
Vince:
Yeah. So I think it's hard for young men, period, right now. It's hard for young men because they're increasingly isolated both from one anothe r and from their peers, their parents, their collateral contacts at school.
Gina:
Wait, why are they isolated?
Vince:
Why are they isolated? They're isolated because there's an over reliance on technology that's characteristic of many, if not most young men specifically between the ages of probably 16 and 21.
Gina:
Well, I think it's probably, I mean, we have little kids on tech.
Vince:
Sure, sure.
Gina:
Their over reliance on tech. Honestly. I think during Covid, everybody was just like, "Do whatever you got to do. I'm surviving." So we're in our own house with an over-reliance on tech for sure. So what's that doing?
Vince:
I think it is limiting people's ability to initiate relationships.
Gina:
Specifically for young men?
Vince:
Well, yeah, in my opinion. So that's one piece. There's tech and the byproducts of tech and the isolation that comes as a result of that, and as a precipitant for that, because it's also that guys are isolated, so they're gravitating towards the tech. So it's one A, one B. Another piece I think is that from a rates of college success perspective, from an educational perspective, we see guys really declining and struggling in significant numbers. So like 50% of guys fail out of college after freshman year. That's very, very different for young women. So we see guys-
Gina:
And you're saying those factors are what?
Vince:
I'm saying, those factors are stunting the ceiling and the perspective progress that young men can make as they move through life, and accomplish developmental milestones. So guys are having a harder time getting jobs. Guys are having a hard time finishing high school, finishing college. Guys are having a harder time because they're not finishing high school, finishing college, positioning themselves well, mate selection is becoming difficult for young men in that. So they're hitting up against the ceiling relationally, interpersonally, educationally, and in terms of their ability to just move through life in a way that would've been customary in previous generations.
Nicole:
I also think about how young men are socialized, and because I think that's a huge part of it too, is that young men are socialized in Western culture to behave a certain way, to be a certain archetype. And when a young man falls outside of that archetype, it's very challenging.
Vince:
Totally.
Nicole:
So I think we also have to take what you're taking and place it in context of how young men are socialized. Because young men aren't socialized to be vulnerable, to be heart centered, to be feeling. They're not socialized to do that. And it actually makes me think of one other thing that really hit me when I walked through the doors, was that all of the guys embody that balance, of being able to be a man who can embody those characteristics. But I just wanted to add that because I think that social context piece is very important.
Vince:
For sure.
Gina:
Talk to me a little bit about how the social landscape has changed in terms of what parents are hoping for their young men, for their sons. When we started 10 years ago versus now, because I've witnessed it changing. So can you walk us through that?
Vince:
I guess the easiest way for me to do this is give you first kind of a thumbnail of what a typical kid would be like 10 years ago. Is that reasonable?
Gina:
Yeah.
Vince:
So 10 years ago, I think the kind of guys who we would get would be stuck young men and men. Which meant that they were probably in high school, 17, 18, played a sport, had a girlfriend, but were getting kind of shitty grades and maybe drinking too much, partying too much on the weekends, and fucking around in ways that were problematic. But they still had benchmarks of progress. They still had benchmarks of connection. They still had connected relationships with people. They still had friends, they still went out. They still did things. So they were college bound, dare I say.
Now, the guys who come through with great significance and frequency, are not doing anything. Literally not doing anything. There's a significant cohort of our guys right now who are not enrolled in college. If they are enrolled in high school, they're either underperforming or school refusing and literally not even attending. They have little to no friends, no pro-social engagement, no extracurricular activities, aren't really substance using other than maybe marijuana in some kind of small amounts, but just don't have connectivity to the world around them.
Gina:
So how are they filling their time? What are these young men doing?
Vince:
They're playing video games and really not doing shit. They're messing around on YouTube and TikTok and social media and what have you. And I guess there's some substance and some value in there because there are connections to other friends who are virtual in other parts of the country, kids they meet when they're gaming and stuff like that. But I mean, the overwhelming majority of guys that we see right now are highly isolated, not productive. From a health and wellness perspective, are very unwell and very unhealthy, experiencing clinically significant degrees of both anxiety and depression, report low satisfaction with their family system, and very limited future prospects. And that's very different than 10, 12 years ago. Because we started the business 12 years ago on the backs of Futures, all I did was Futures, which required-
Gina:
Well, what's futures? Because our audience doesn't know, sorry.
Vince:
I appreciate that. So thank you for the clarification. So Futures is a service that I created over a decade ago, which is essentially just career and academic support. The curriculum that I developed-
Gina:
Well, let's not sell it short, right? It's career and academic support with a therapy lens, given that you're an LPC, right?
Vince:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll get there. But it's all good. So yeah, so career and academic support rendered by a clinician through the lens of mental health, because that's obviously important. So basically we would be meeting with guys in therapy and partner with a local therapist, and basically they would send us their clients so that we could move them forward with respect to their ancillary pursuits. So job, school, service work, college applications, college transfer, all that stuff. But it required a vision for one's future. The precipitant was a kid who had an idea about who he wanted to be and the shit he wanted to accomplish as he moved through his life.
Gina:
And he was just coming to us because he was maybe stuck.
Vince:
He was coming to us because he was stuck, but he was interested in accomplishing something going forward. He had to have that vision, or at least that willingness to cultivate that vision, to participate in the service. It was kind of, you needed at least that to get in. Now, the majority of guys who come in have absolutely no clue what they want to do with their life, are completely overwhelmed by the possibilities in front of them, and just can't step plan and step sequence around what to do first, second, third, fourth, fifth. And those limitations, I think come from an overabundance of options. So now there's so many inputs, so many options, all the things, and it just makes it really confusing for people to find a sense of what a path ahead would even look like.
Gina:
Too many options sometimes feels like there's no options. It's an analysis paralysis, for sure.
Nicole:
It sounds also like 10, 12 years ago, what you're saying is that the young men who came through had motivation. There was this motivation to work towards a goal and what have you. And would you say that's the same now? Or are you saying it's totally different? The guys that are coming in just don't have the motivation either?
Vince:
So I've always been a firm believer that everyone has motivation, everyone. It just hasn't necessarily been capitalized on. I think what we see now is, I think that we've seen regression in terms of people's self belief. And I think people think that the prospects for the future are far bleaker than they were 10 or 12 years ago. And I believe Covid was a significant hinge point, a fulcrum point for a lot of the young people of this generation around what the future looks like and around the forward prospects, because it was so bleak for so long. And whether it's that influence in isolation or other factors, there's probably a bunch of other factors too. But I think men in this country and younger men in this country, understand that their opportunities are lesser in number, and that there seems to be... They believe there's a ceiling for what they can accomplish now. And I think there's a lot of confounding messages that bring them to those conclusions.
Nicole:
That's really interesting to me, that young men and men would think there are fewer opportunities for them. I think about it just as a woman, I am like, "Really? That's interesting. Come over to our world, and talk about limitation."
Vince:
No, no, I'm comparing them to them.
Nicole:
Yeah, yeah I know. Totally.
Vince:
And I think that's very different.
Gina:
Tell me more why it's hard to be a man in America. Tell me more.
Nicole:
Made me laugh.
Vince:
So think about it though, right? Think about it. And again, this is skewed population, right? So you remember-
Gina:
Also, this is safe place, so go ahead.
Vince:
But really we're talking about a clinically significant population of young men who are typically socially ostracized. So that was the cohort 12 years ago. That's the cohort now. I think one, like I said, those guys academically speaking, those guys are fucked. They never recovered in a post Covid landscape. Their transcripts look like shit. They're not going to good schools. And so they're kind of cast aside. That's number one. Number two, they can't get laid. Now everything has completely shifted to technology in terms of dating and engagement for these guys, for romantic relationships. And so it's when you're somebody who is already slightly isolated and has a bleaker self concept to begin with, it's going to be harder for you to put yourself out there, harder for you to initiate. And when you only have one through line, where by the way, people aren't interested in you anyway because of what your picture looks like, and because you haven't had the social skills built over the last 10 or 12 years to get you to a place where you feel comfortable initiating in those ways, there is that hit to the self concept.
And lastly, it's easier to hide in plain sight. And what I mean by that now is, again, I'll tie it back to Covid. I don't think this is in the entire story, but I think because of Covid, we became much more sensitive around both mental health and people's wellbeing. And so because of that, we leave people the fuck alone. And because we leave people alone, they sit in their room isolated. And so we allow that to progress to the extent that the skill erosion happens, and these guys completely lose the ability to communicate well with other people. And so 12 years ago they didn't have that option. Guess what? Now they do. And in many instances, they don't really get the kind of push, and they don't really get the kind of appropriate support that can help them move through it despite their own discomfort. I think parents have become far more lenient about what they will accept and tolerate in favor of their son's mental health.
Gina:
So what are you seeing parents tolerate? And then Nicole, I'll bring it to you. So what are parents tolerating, and then how do they fix it? If I'm a mom, I am a mom, listening to this podcast, thinking about my 12-year-old and 10-year-old, had to think about it. I'm thinking, how do I help my son avoid that isolation? How do I help my son avoid that? So what are you seeing parents do, that you would recommend otherwise?
Vince:
What am I watching? I think it depends on the parent. And so, not everybody's the same.
Gina:
All right, but give me an example. Let's make it juicy. So you were sitting in a room with a client, and a mom told you she allowed something, or dad. What's the most ridiculous thing that you've heard a mom do that's actually stunting her young man, versus protecting him, which is what she thinks she's doing?
Vince:
All right, well, I had a mom a couple weeks ago, met her and her husband in a consult. First time I was meeting with them. This kid was just not going to school. One of those middle finger guys, who just had decided that he didn't want to go to school. So now they moved him out of district, so he didn't want to go to school at the regular high school. Fine. They moved him out of district to go to a school which will remain nameless, but allows a much more flexible approach and a much more flexible profile and lets kids kind of come and go as they want to. Which obviously I think there's a really good place for in certain situations.
But suffice to say, the kid basically said, "It's Tuesday night, I want to go see my girlfriend. It's 11:30. I'm going out to see my girlfriend." Mom calls him 11:30. "Hey, you got to come home." "No, I'm not coming home. Not coming home." Now this kid does have a girlfriend, which I'm a promoter of, right? But he says, "Mom, all right, well if I can't stay out till 1:00 o'clock, I'm not going to school tomorrow." And then the mom says, "All right, that's fine."
Gina:
Come on.
Vince:
Yeah, "That's fine."
Nicole:
Can I tell you if I did that to my parents back in the day that... It wouldn't even have occurred to me. It wouldn't even have occurred to me.
Gina:
No way.
Vince:
And so it's not even that, which is outrageous. It's her framing, which was "I just can't," what did she say? "I just can't stomach seeing my son upset." And I think that is the guiding frame around which all shitty parenting decisions are built. If you care more about your son being happy than you do about what's in his best interest, you're not being effective. You're not being effective. And I can say that-
Gina:
But I feel like we need to just sit on that statement for a minute, because as a mom, that's a tough one to swallow. I think as a parent in general. In every single one of the intakes that we've ever had, and we ask parents, "What do you want for your son?" "I just want my son to be happy."
Vince:
But at the expense of what? But at the expense of what? Right? And so if you really litmus test that, and you really push back on that, I think you can get mom and dad to retract that statement. Because it shouldn't be without a caveat. "I just want my son to be happy, but not at the expense of his mental health. But not at the expense of what's in his best interest-"
Gina:
Or his physical health.
Vince:
"As a member of society."
Gina:
Yeah.
Vince:
"But not at the expense of him getting in trouble. But not at the expense of him going to school and showing up and taking care of business and doing the shit that he needs to do." I want my kids to be happy too, just as much as the next guy. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to disqualify what's in their best interest so that they can be happy.
Gina:
That's true. I mean that's a heavy burden as a parent though, right? It just is.
Vince:
Sure it is.
Gina:
It just is.
Vince:
Sure it is.
Gina:
Because by the way, when my kids are happy, I'm happy.
Nicole:
Happy kids, happy mom over there, right?
Vince:
Yeah. And there's room look, obviously, and I'm pitching to the margins now, right?
Gina:
Yeah, for sure.
Vince:
But I think that's an important frame.
Gina:
This story strikes me as interesting. This is the one you picked, because I think it hits home a little bit, and so only I know that story. So I'd love you to share the story about you coming home late as a teenager.
Vince:
Oh, yeah.
Gina:
So it might give our friends some insight.
Vince:
That's a good one, G. I appreciate that. So because I was a wayward young man, I bounced around from place to place a little bit. So there was a period where I was kind of bouncing between my dad's house, and buddy's house, and my grandparents' house for a little while. There was a point where I was staying with my grandfather. And so it was like the first weekend I was there. I'm 19 years old. This is during my year off, which I'm happy to chronicle later on. I took a med leave from school for a year when I was in college. It was like the first weekend I'm staying with my grandfather, and he said, "All right, I understand you're going out." I said, "Yeah, I'm going out." This is probably 7:30, 8:00 o'clock.
He said, "All right, well curfew's at midnight." I said, "Okay," I said, "What do you mean midnight? I'm 19 years old. I got to be home at midnight?" He said, "Yeah, midnight." All right. I say, "Okay, I'll be home at midnight." Now, I respected my grandfather a lot, so I really prioritize trying to be good to what I said. So I come home 12:07, knocking on the door, it's 12:07, door's locked. Every single light in the house is off. And I can hear him and my grandmother inside the kitchen. I could hear her saying, "Aren't you going to let him in? Aren't you going to let him in? Aren't you going to let him in?" He peels back, they had the little blinds, and he peeled the blinds back and he said, "What time is it?" It's like that, peels the blinds back. "What time is it?" I said, "It's 12:07." He said, "And what time was curfew?" I said, "It was 12:00 o'clock, Pop." He said, "Okay," he said, "I left a pillow and a blanket for you on the breezeway. You go sleep where the animals sleep. If you're 12:07, you're seven minutes late. Go sleep where the bums sleep outside." That's what I did.
Nicole:
Wow. That's why-
Gina:
And you did all night, right?
Vince:
Crying, tears in my eyes, wiping the tears out of my eyes, sleeping on the back porch.
Nicole:
Yeah. That's why I think we were siblings from another life. Because literally, minus the sleeping outside, my stepfather didn't make me sleep outside. But I came home at 12:05 when it was a 12:00 o'clock, all the lights were dark. He was sitting on the couch. I walk in thinking, "I'm fine."
Vince:
You're good.
Nicole:
He's like-
Vince:
Five minutes?
Nicole:
Yeah, five minutes. He's like, "What time is it?" I'm like, "It's 12:00 o'clock." He's like, "What time is it?"
Vince:
"What time is it?"
Nicole:
I said, "12:05." He's like, "What time is your..." Same exact-
Gina:
Same story.
Nicole:
Same exact thing.
Vince:
Yo, that's wild.
Nicole:
And he is like, "You know your curfew's at 12:00, and so we'll talk tomorrow morning about what that means for you."
Vince:
That's it.
Gina:
Oh, wow.
Nicole:
I was never late again.
Vince:
Never.
Gina:
Oh, wow.
Vince:
No, I probably was. I still have a couple more.
Gina:
I can guarantee that you were.
Vince:
I had a couple more years to go before I got my shit together.
Nicole:
I'm a coach's kid. So when the coach says, that's what happens.
Vince:
But what do you think, what did you pick up from that?
Nicole:
Oh, god, structure. And I preach this all the time when we're talking about it. One of the most loving things parents can do for their children is have some semblance of structure and have it be clear, this is what's expected. It doesn't have to be mean and nasty, or what have you. This is what the structure is. This is what you can expect. These are the rules. It makes it so much easier to function within that. And I will tell you that the parents that we see as family therapists 99% of the time, that's what they're lacking when they come in, is a lack of clarity in the structure and expectations. And then the fear of pushing their son to meet those things. And I'm not talking like, "You have to be a Harvard educated business person," expectation. I'm talking, "To live in the home, these are some of the things that..." Yeah, and they're so afraid to push because they're worried about their son's comfort.
Gina:
One of the things I'm seeing, sorry, just within our own house is like, my kids don't actually care about social norms unless I enforce them and give them that boundary.
Vince:
What do you mean?
Gina:
Like, you should shower daily. Every other, for sure. Brush your teeth twice a day. But I'm trying to enforce those things as a mom. And then at some point I say, "All right, they're going to fucking rot out of your head. I don't know what to do." So if a mom is establishing a clear structure, then what advice do you give to mom around kids who actually just don't care about the social norms anymore?
Nicole:
Typically, I think what happens though is they might say, "Okay, this is what the expectation is," but they don't follow it up with, "And here's your choice. Your choice is, you can choose to do the brush the teeth, and this is going to be the result. You can choose not to. And this is the result." Meaning, for lack of a better word, consequence. I don't necessarily like to use that word, but there has to be clarity, is that if you choose A or B, this is what is going to result from that. And that's a lot of times what they don't have.
Gina:
What are parents scared of, for not doing that?
Nicole:
So one, seeing their son in discomfort, seeing their son isolate, let's say even more into video games. They're worried that if they expect too much and there are consequences to it, their son is going to rebel even more or not like them. Or they're going to use their mental health and say, "I'm so depressed." And it can go to the extreme.
Vince:
Yeah. I also think we don't always evaluate the implicit nature of the messages we send. So when you are tacitly endorsing something, you're actually communicating to your son that you don't demand better. And so you're lowering the bar for him to engage in whatever shit behavior he's actively engaging in. So I think there's always a better way to say what you want, "Son, I believe in you, and I believe in you so much that I'm not going to allow you to accept this of yourself. And here's why." So "Son, you want to be somebody who has friends and has relationships and is moving forward with your life. Teeth are required for you to do that, in any meaningful way. And I as your father am not going to accept you not brushing your teeth. So you walk around with no fucking teeth in your mouth. And so here's what I'm willing to do."
What you're communicating there is that you actually believe in him and you demand more of him, and that he needs to rise. I think when you communicate that, it's okay for you to go out until 1:00 AM because you're negotiating with your son who is obviously controlling that paradigm, what you're really saying is that you don't demand more of him. And that it's okay for him to act out, and it's okay for him to do less and be a lesser version of himself in that situation.
Nicole:
A lot sinking in there.
Gina:
There's a lot there. There's a lot there. Because as a mom, I don't want to see my son upset and not holding a boundary, that's in his best interest. It inevitably sends the message that he's not worth it and that he can't do it, which is actually what will mostly upset my son. So that's the message that he'll hear in his bones, in his guts, versus "My mom's pissed because I didn't brush my teeth."
Nicole:
Right.
Gina:
That's fascinating. Boundaries are love, boundaries are kindness.
Nicole:
Yes.
Vince:
And they're hard. And they're hard, and they take energy and they take time and they take patience and they're a pain in to put up with when you're tired and you don't want to deal with people's bullshit. But they're essential, and the consistency of their implementation is the most essential part.
Gina:
So what do you tell parents who are not aligned? Right. So, big problem. I teed this one up. I knew where I was going, friends. Mom and dad come in. Mom has one rule, dad has another. What do you do? Because at some point everybody puts their hands in the and says, "Forget it, we're not going to do anything." Then junior wins out and is being told through whatever non consequences that he's not worth it. What do you do when parents are not aligned?
Vince:
You want to start?
Nicole:
Want me take this one first, to start off. This is like my wheel house. I'm getting all excited.
Gina:
It's like I knew, I was going to be sitting here.
Nicole:
Yeah, no. So this is one of the first things that we evaluate when families come into the center is, are the parents aligned and cohesive around what they're going to be doing with their son. What they're going to expect of him, the rules in the family. And so when there's a lack of cohesion and lack of alignment, our job first is to get those parents to a place where they can agree on something. I don't honestly initially care what it is.
I got to find one thing. And what I have to do is find a way to articulate to them the importance of that. "Why is it so important that my husband and I are on the same page?" And that's going to be different depending on the family and the uniqueness of the family. But if there's a lack of cohesion and alignment that is confusing to a kid.
Gina:
Can you give me an example? Give me a real life example of a client that came in. Obviously no names, but where parents, married parents, were so far on the opposite end that you felt like you were at a stalemate.
Vince:
I mean, I'll give you kind of a classic one that I see often.
Gina:
Good.
Vince:
Because I end up in the work that I've done with families, it's typically I start with the kid and then start working with the parents above and beyond that. So kid comes through, in this instance, 20 something year old kid, graduated college, attempting to individuate. Just recently individuated and just got his job, moved out.
Gina:
What's that mean? Individuate?
Vince:
Individuated, thanks. Moved out of his parents' place, basically he's out in his own.
Gina:
Launched.
Vince:
Yeah, launched. So he successfully launched. Thanks G. The guy moves out and comes home occasionally from time to time, maybe once a week to check in with his folks. Mom has a very sort of cordial, warm, nurturing relationship with the kid. Comes home, she cooks some food, they hang out, they pal around, she does his laundry. Very, very comforting to him. And with the goal of propping him up and... What can she do to make his life easier in that very limited window that he has.
Dad's paradigm is exactly the opposite. The kid comes home, "How's the job? How's the boss? What are you doing? Did you do this? Did you do that? You should do this, you should do that. You should go talk to this guy. Here's a guy in my network. Call this guy, move up. Here. You should go. Maybe this place, maybe that place." So on and so forth.
And so, the nature of the interactions are that there's quite a rift between, or divide I would say is probably a better way to say it, divide between dad and kid, at least in terms of nature of the relationship. Because dad is placing incessant demands on the kid with a very high value for career growth and progression. And mom feels like that's going to cause the kid to ostracize both she and dad. Wherein she's trying to draw him back inward and simplify his life now that he's moved out whatever way that she can.
Nicole:
There's something from that. So that example is a great example, that they both have strengths that they can bring to the table.
Vince:
Totally.
Nicole:
They're only seeing it for where they disagree, those two parents, where they disagree. But if they can capitalize on where their strengths lie, those differences can dovetail beautifully together, to actually be this kind of wonderful combination of parenting. It's just they're too polarized and too rigid and too extreme in their positioning that they can't find the middle ground. And so there's an opportunity there to reframe their strengths, to bring them to more cohesion.
Vince:
This is another wrinkle too, that I would be interested Nic, in hearing your perspective around. This is a family that I know very well. What I find with them is that each sort of doubles into their own role, because of the ineptitude of the other. And so mom is overly warm, overly nurturing, overly compassionate, overly caring, overly enabling, because dad is such a hardo with the kid. And dad feels like he's a hardo, because dad needs to be a hardo in his estimation because mom is literally folding junior's underwear and filling his bag with three containers full of lasagna. And the dad feels like that's doing his son a disservice. Now they're both probably right in part, but both also are more firmly entrenched in their positions because the other is so separate in their own way.
Nicole:
And so what I also would be wondering in that scenario is, what's getting in the way of that married couple collaborating?
Vince:
Years of hurt and resentment and self-righteousness.
Nicole:
So here's the thing that happens a lot of times when families come in, particularly with a young man who is struggling with whatever the symptom is. That symptom, be it the lashing out behavior, be it the isolate, whatever it is, it's giving us information about how it functions in the family system. And so many times there's something happening, if it's a married couple or a couple who's together, in that couple subsystem that the only way that they get into therapy is through the parenting subsystem. So there are so many dynamics that are playing into their lack of ability to co-parent, and it likely has to do with something with their couple relationship.
Vince:
Yeah, that's wild.
Nicole:
It is. And you don't have access to that.
Vince:
So how would you strategically approach the situation from a go forward perspective? Would you rip them out and just do couples work with them before kind of dropping them back into a family frame? Would you go one-on-one with mom, one-on-one with dad, bring them back together? How would you step into your work with them given that?
Nicole:
So typically, they're not giving you their couple relationship necessarily to work on on a silver platter. So they're coming through and what they're giving you is their parental relationship. And so you have to work with that first. But what I would be working on is the process by which rather than the content of "I believe this," "I believe that," but the process by which they're talking about it together, because that's what's not working. They're somehow not hearing each other, or something's happening in their dynamic as parents that also is happening in their relationship as a couple. And so I have to get there first because that's what they've given me. And then likely if I join well enough with them, I'm going to get access to a dynamic that I can speak to around that couple relationship. But it's going to go hand in hand. So if they can collaborate as a couple, they're going to be much better parents. If they can collaborate as parents, they're going to have much more kind of companionship intimacy as a couple.
Vince:
Sure.
Nicole:
So I'd have to go through the parental sub system first.
Gina:
So let's just take the same scenarios, but mom and dad are divorced. Now we have a young man's really in the middle of the situation, right. So what do you see happening in those situations, and how can mom and dad behave differently to support?
Vince:
Yeah, I mean from my experience, sometimes you can't. In the worst of situations-
Gina:
Like it's hopeless?
Vince:
No, no, not it's hopeless, but not like it's hopeless for the kid. But I mean, shit I came from a family subsystem where you could never get my fucking parents in the same room. Good luck getting my parents in the same room to try to come together around me. You know what I mean? Now...
Gina:
I'm biting my tongue.
Vince:
You don't need to, it's just a reality. So 20 something years later, things worked out reasonably okay, I would say. Not the best, but not the worst. So it's not that it's never going to work, it's just that you may be limited in terms of your access to the family and the parents, particularly in a tandem because of whatever issues that may preclude them from coming together to work the process.
So in those instances, I'll often separate it out and work mom separately from dad, and coach mom separately from dad. Or coach mom and her new husband, and coach dad and his new wife separately. Because the kid is still the shared asset, for lack of a better word. And so you just need a way to share information with the other people that are around him to support him.
Gina:
So keeping the young man as the focus, always.
Vince:
Yeah, and only. And only. I mean in the most severe of instances, you cannot let it devolve into a situation of historical conflict or, what's mom's grievance with dad or dad's grievance with mom. Because in those high conflict divorce situations, you're not going to move through.
Now I've had the other experience too. I've had other experiences where parents who have divorced but amicably and divorced well, communicate best pals and come in and roll up their sleeves and do great work on behalf of the kid. And in some instances, in fact, they're more effective than if they had stayed together. You know what I mean? So I think it really is very situationally dependent. And I've seen just about everything in terms of shades of gray in between.
Suffice to say, the kid's got to be the central focus, I think in a separated or divorced situation, because you don't really know what you're getting into until you peek under the hood and figure it out.
Gina:
For sure. And even in the story before we were talking about the mom and dad being so far apart, they're both right. Mom's coming from a place of, "My son who by the way was my little sidekick for my entire life for the last 19, 20 years, who once needed me, no longer needs me. And so I'm happy to create a space where he feels supported." And I think dad wanting to motivate him to improve and take next steps and help him use his contacts, whatever he needs, is also the right thing. But one thing that we've learned in our marriage through $20,000 of therapy probably, was...
Vince:
That's a low end estimate.
Gina:
Yeah, I know. It is. I know, I'm trying to...
Vince:
You knocked it down for the audience. You didn't want to spurn the audience in our first show.
Gina:
So one of the things we learned was, you want to get it right or you want to be right? I think for the parents in both of those scenarios, they're both right.
Nicole:
Of course.
Gina:
But standing in that room and going to blows with one another and digging your heels in, means you're not getting it right. You can be right, but also not get it right. So how do you marry both?
Nicole:
Yeah, and I think too, to your point V about parents who are divorced, I think it also depends on the age of the young man.
Gina:
For sure, yeah, yeah.
Vince:
That true.
Nicole:
So when you have a 16-year-old at the younger end of the age range that we serve is going to be different than a 27-year-old. So I see that now with some of the families. And what I'm really looking for the older ones is they have their own relationship with... If they're an adult young man, they have an adult relationship with their mother or their father or whomever. And so those are times where that's what's important to me, is the relational dynamic between the adult son and their parents. Versus when a 16-year-old, I'm going to work really, really hard to influence these parents to collaborate with one another in the ways that are important in the wellbeing of their son.
Sometimes they come in and say, "I cannot sit in the same room with my spouse." That's part of the problem. So you guys can hate each other for whatever happened in your marriage, but in the best interest of your son, we're going to have to learn how you can collaborate and be in the same room, because it's not helpful to your son. Doesn't always work that way. It doesn't always work. That's the ideal, because that's part of how we would conceptualize what's happening.
Vince:
Yeah, that's good.
Gina:
Vince, what would you tell 22-year-old Vince? So we serve young men, right? 17 to 30, what would you tell that version of yourself?
Vince:
That's a great question.
Gina:
Yeah, I thought it was when I asked it.
Vince:
Yeah, I think, "It's going to be okay." I think, "It's going to be okay." Particularly if 22-year-old Vince was looking at what 41-year-old Vince's life looks like now. 22-year-old Vince had a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety about whether it was going to work out or not, and whether I was good enough or not, or whether I was on the right track. Much in the same way that a lot of the guys do now that we see. I think all that stuff feels very, very familiar to me. It felt very familiar to me at the time, which is why it was so easy for me to step inside the head of these guys, because I was one. And I am one still, I'm just older now.
Also for me, I knew I wanted to do work like this, but had no idea what that was going to look like. Just the notion that it was going to be all right, I think would help me a lot.
Gina:
That's good stuff. How about you?
Nicole:
What would I tell a 22-year-old me?
Gina:
Yeah.
Nicole:
Oh my gosh. "Life is going to be fun."
Vince:
Yeah.
Gina:
Yeah.
Nicole:
Right? Don't take it so seriously. I was a slightly different 22-year-old. Just because I think I told you this before, my college basketball coach would call me the 40-year-old point guard. So, I was the type who took so much seriously and was very structured and held myself to high, high expectations where I probably didn't have as much fun as I could have, honestly. I would say, "Hey, just relax a little, enjoy your life." And I think, again, so part of the structure that my stepfather created was beautiful and wonderful, and I'm so grateful for it, and I took it to the extreme.
Vince:
Yeah. What would you tell 22-year-old Gina? By the way, she was married to me.
Gina:
I was going to say.
Vince:
"Fuck."
Gina:
I would do it all over again. I would do some things different. We talk a lot about if I'll make a mistake or I'll say I'm upset with myself about something, he'll always say, "Baby, if I had a time machine, there's a hundred other things I would do different, I would change. Not that." I think it would be that. "Don't be so hard on yourself around, number one, the stuff you can't change, but two it's just so insignificant comparatively," right?
Nicole:
Yeah.
Gina:
So since we're giving advice to ourselves, what would you tell client A coming through the doors, if you had one parting thought for a young man?
Vince:
Yeah, that's easy. "Find your thing."
Gina:
Find your thing.
Vince:
Find your thing. Find your thing. Yeah. That's been my North star for a dozen-
Gina:
What does that mean?
Vince:
So part of my belief in this business and in starting it was that every man and young man has a thing. Every man and young man has a thing that they belong doing, a calling for their life, something that can unlock the potential of who they can be as a man. And something that they deserve to be doing, belong doing, should be doing.
Gina:
What do those look like? Give me some examples.
Vince:
I mean, literally anything. Pick the kid. So I mean-
Gina:
I'm asking for specifics.
Vince:
What have we done with guys coming through?
Gina:
Well, when a young man comes in and says, "I don't know what my thing is, I'm stuck. I don't even know that I have to have a thing to know." And by the way, mom's bringing him in saying, "My son's stuck." So find your thing. It's like, okay, well what does that even mean?
Vince:
Could be a million things. I mean, I got a guy, one of my favorite clients I've ever had, a kid who started working with me 15 years old. Sent him to drug treatment at 15 years old, and he's been in and out with me for seven or eight years since then. He still comes and sees me once every six weeks now. But 15-year-old kid, he was going to drug treatment. Now he's got a job as a project manager, and he's got his own business on the side, which is very successful. And he is growing every year. And he's 22 years old and he's been sober for four years.
Gina:
That's awesome.
Vince:
He found his thing. He's found his thing.
I had another kid, another really good story guy who graduated from a great school who wanted to work in sports, but didn't know how. Right? So he had locked in. He knew what his thing was. And so we spent months and months and months and months and months trying to just get this kid hooked up with any kind of job in professional sports that we could. Hockey, soccer, didn't give a shit, didn't matter. And we just kept going and he kept pushing and he didn't stop. And I didn't hear from him for a while. And then I got a package in the mail maybe six months ago. It was just a UFC T-shirt. He got a job with the UFC.
Nicole:
Get out of here.
Vince:
And had just sent me a T-shirt and it just said, "Vince, thanks for all the work. Thanks for helping me put the work in."
Nicole:
That's awesome.
Vince:
Another kid came through many, many summers ago, high school kid at the time. He was a senior in high school. And he was volunteering as an EMT. I remember he would come in, he would see me and we would talk about just how much he liked it. He was like a shitty student in high school. He was like a B, C student in high school. And then got an email from his father a couple of weeks ago, just said, "We just went to so-and-so's graduation from med school."
Gina:
Let's go.
Vince:
Med school. "He'll never forget the summer that he spent with you. And I just wanted to, as his father, just send you a note for what you did to shape his life in a different direction." And I could go on. I mean, I got guys like that up and down. Nothing has reinstilled that belief in me time and again, like the work that we've done. Just watching men transform, watching men and young men transform by finding that thing that could make them be a different version of themselves and be motivated to do more than they could otherwise do.
Gina:
Where do you start? Find your thing [inaudible 00:47:00] when you're helping a young man? Yeah.
Vince:
Well, I can't give away my secret sauce because then I'd have to charge for it. Where do I start? I start immediately, and I just start kicking shit. I just want to talk to somebody and hear what-
Gina:
Let's throw a bunch of stuff against the wall so that we at least know what's not going to work.
Vince:
No, and honestly not even. That would be going too fast too soon. I think it's important to just get to know somebody. Because I think as someone tells you the story of who they are and what they want and where they fucked up and what their life looks like, all that reveals itself. And typically, I know what the answer is by the end of the first hour. I know what somebody should be doing with their life by the end of the first hour, just by sitting in their story with them and having them share with me their experience. So it just comes from asking the right questions and being exposed to it enough to know.
Nicole:
It's building the rapport.
Vince:
Yeah.
Nicole:
That's where it starts. No, I was just thinking about when you were talking about the first, what you wanted to leave the young man with is find your thing. And so I was sitting here thinking, what would I tell parents that walked through the door? What's the one thing that I would tell them? There are actually two.
Vince:
There's probably more than two.
Nicole:
Yeah, there's many more, but I'll distill it down to two.
Gina:
We got a lot of episodes to cover. Let's not give away all our secrets. Right? Let's go.
Nicole:
Exactly. The first one would be, "Clarity is key." We'll talk more about that over the course of time. But just the clearer they are in their expectations and the structure and the way it's delivered with warmth is key.
Gina:
By the way, let me save you 20 grand in marriage therapy because clarity is key also for marriage. Not just in [inaudible 00:48:39].
Nicole:
Love and kindness. And then the other thing is that it's going to feel hard sometimes.
Gina:
Yeah, it is.
Nicole:
And you're going to have to dig deep, and you can. You have it in you to dig deep. You just are going to have to do it, but you can do it.
Gina:
Vince, you said, "I can usually tell somebody what his thing is after an hour, after one session." Has there ever been a time you got it wrong?
Vince:
Sure.
Gina:
Like so wrong?
Vince:
Oh, sure. Usually it's about where somebody is in their journey, and how much to push somebody and how much somebody's ready. I'll go back to go forward. I think in terms of what's somebody's thing, it's what they light up about. Just watch what somebody lights up about, and watching them talk about the thing that they love. They'll speak about it in a very different way than they talk about anything else. They just light right up.
Gina:
Why do parents miss that? Do they miss it because they're not interested in this stuff that their kids are talking about?
Vince:
I mean, potentially. Yeah, potentially. I think about it here. My son was telling us about Fortnite and the skins in Fortnite, and this guy and this... Eminem did a concert and he had a skin. And I have no fucking idea what he's talking about. And so I do think shades of that happen over time.
Gina:
Yeah. I checked out of that conversation, I was like, "This is useless information."
Vince:
And I was following-
Gina:
I don't have space in my brain for it.
Vince:
I was following. I was following and coming alongside and listening, but it's over my head and it's not something that I understand. And I think that that happens with parents from time to time. I also just think that parents are busy, and it takes intentional listening and time spending to gather that information. And you have to work to know your kid. Kids change, interests change, ambition changes, friends change, influence changes. So as those things shift, if you're not paying close attention and you're not logging hours relationally and investing yourself in that way, you can miss shit. And people do all the time.
I mean, particularly just based on the nature of the clientele that we serve. We see a lot of families where mom's around, dad's gone most of the time. A lot of boys and young men don't get to spend significant amounts of time with their father. Just on the basis of that dad and his work life demands and demands of his career. So I think it's easy for that to be missed. And unless you're really prioritizing that, it's hard to get that primary source of information that then you can use to inform your own decision making.
Parting shots?
Gina:
Yeah. What do you got?
Vince:
I don't know. You're the maestro.
Gina:
I'm the maestro, huh?
Nicole:
Yeah. Take us out. I feel like we gave our nuggets. You give us a nugget.
Gina:
I gave some nuggets.
Nicole:
I know. But our last nugget though, you asked us for our last nugget of what would you tell a kid?
Gina:
What would I tell?
Nicole:
Yeah. Whoever's listening to this.
Vince:
That's a good parting shot for all of us.
Gina:
Yeah. Whoever's listening to this. I have made the mistake, I think, of sacrificing the authority I have within my home at the expense of... To make my children happy. So it's exactly what we were talking about before. And so if I could give a parting shot to moms and dads, I think it would be, "The authority is yours. Hold it."
Nicole:
Yeah.
Vince:
That's good.
Nicole:
Yeah. That's great.
Vince:
That's really good.
Gina:
Because a friend was telling me the other day, "You are the first authority that your children will ever know." And so if they don't learn to respect your authority... And by the way, I think respect is both ways. It's important for us to respect our children as humans. They are little humans who are pretty soon young men and big humans. And so the respect goes both ways. But it's our job to teach our children to respect that authority, because it will teach them well for their lives. So don't lose it. Don't lose your authority.
I was thinking about one of the clients you were telling me about where mom would say, or they would say, "I'm not paying for you to go back to school or go to college." And kids would say, "I'm going." And parents would say, "Okay." It's like, well, don't you get to decide actually how you want to spend that $50 or $75,000? And so, I remember you telling me that story. I'm like, "Oh my god, what a moron. You're going to let your 17-year-old who just did whatever, tell you how to spend $100K and how he's going to spend the next year of his life? That's insane." And meanwhile, as a mom, I'm doing that, but just on smaller decisions. And so think if you give up your authority to... And maybe authority is not the right word, but I'm going to go with it. That's what I'm putting in.
Nicole:
Yeah. Mic drop.
Vince:
I think parents are impatient. I think parents are very impatient sometimes, and I think they expect that things are going to turn around quickly. I think when things get hard, it's hard to sustain effort to do the work required to make things better. I experienced that in my own life, in my own marriage. We had very hard years for a few years, G and I. And I think it would've been easy to give up. There were many times where I wanted to.
Gina:
Way easier.
Vince:
It would've been way easier to give up than stay in it. But I think the message is, just stay in it. Whether you're in a situation with a son who's lost or hurting or in the throes of addiction or bouncing around from place to place, can't find a job, isolated. Whatever. Stay in it. Stay in it.
And it will get better if you do the work, if you make the next right decision, it can get better. It will get better. But I think it's hard for us to be long focused in our perspective. And we're very impatient as people, and we become progressively less patient year over year every year as a society.
My message would be, no matter how hard it is, stay in it. And stay in it for the betterment of your family, if not for you, because you want to throw the rag in and you can't stand to stay in it any longer. Staying in it for the betterment of your family, and just work hard and see what happens. And typically those situations end up better than they would otherwise.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Causeway Conversations. We hope you found our discussion on these important challenges, insightful and valuable.
Nicole:
And if you're looking for more guidance, support and inspiration, be sure to follow Causeway Collaborative on social media, where on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, where we share resources, success stories and updates. And if you want to reach us directly, email us at info@causewaycollaborative.com.
Vince:
And don't forget to hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, so you never been miss an episode of Causeway Conversations. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more.
Nicole:
For those who prefer a visual experience, our podcast episodes are also available on YouTube. Just search for Causeway Collaborative and hit the subscribe button.
Vince:
Thank you all for joining us on this journey of growth and discovery. Remember, we're here to support you and your son every step of the way.
Nicole:
And until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.