How to apologize to your kids without making it worse (and 4 other parenting communication tools)

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] If people don't take your advice, it's 'cause they don't want to be you. And so like that can be hurtful when you're the person that's like, I love you so much, I want you to be just, you know, I want you to be able to get past the problems that I had.

Kristi Spence [00:00:13] Tell 'em in the moment when I get it wrong. Like, try to apologize in the moment. And I think that's been pretty powerful. You know, as, as dieticians or you know, any sort of health practitioner, I think it's super important to listen to your patient, to find out where they're at and, and what they might need to be able to be successful. And so for some people that might be a much more rigid diet type concept. And for others it might be that they need to give themselves permission. Howdy. I'm Hannah Nwi Wonderer, a production lead at a soybean seed facility in central Illinois. And you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome

Vance Crowe [00:00:53] Back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. Christie Spence, a writer and mom who has a unique perspective on the world joins us today. I met Christie back when I was the director of millennial engagement for Monsanto, and she was working for a dairy checkoff program uniquely. She was not only working for this checkoff, she was a dietician and a college professor. And when I talked to people that worked for Christie, I heard some of the best praise I've ever heard given to a boss. People said that she was supportive and inspirational, innovative, and helped them take their careers onto trajectories that they never imagined. I kept in contact with Christie, and because we were in agriculture, we kind of stayed in the same orbit. She offered me a lot of support, particularly when I was pushing the envelope as the director of millennial engagement. And so when I finally decided to head out on my own, I called Christie among just a few people to ask for their advice and where they thought I should go. Christie was so supportive. She mentioned that she often shared the talk that I gave to her college students every year, and it was just one of those things that gave me the inspiration and courage to go out on my own. Now, a few years later, Kristy has recently left her job and started looking around for what's next. She called me up to talk about it, and the only piece of advice that I had for her was, you should really share the pearls of wisdom and insight that you've had throughout the years. I know that it's helped me, and I know many, many people that have worked around you that felt that same way.

Vance Crowe [00:02:25] So not because of my advice, Kristi was off on her own, but she did start a substack. And it is called noticing. And it is a must read for me because it has all sorts of little bits of wisdom about raising your children, having a good relationship with your spouse, and really just being present in the moment. I'm excited for you to listen to this interview because it's a little bit different, but I think that it will hit you in a way that you just don't have very often. So I'm excited to get to this interview and we're gonna get there in just a moment. But I have a couple of things that I want to co cover with you. First, we have started a brand new podcast called the Ag Tribes Report. We show it at six 30 at night. It is a live stream podcast where I bring on a co-host that represents one of the many ag tribes from throughout the United States and even Canada, to talk about what is the big news that is impacting the culture of agriculture. This has been a huge success and I'm really excited to be doing it. It's 30 minutes, it is high, fast-paced show, and you can either catch it on the live stream at six 30 on X YouTube or Facebook, or you can listen to it the next day on any of the regular podcast apps you catch us with. So I'm really excited about that and I hope you will check out the Ag Tribes report. Another thing that I wanted to share with you is that the fall and winter speaking season is heating up. My calendar has gotten so full that I've actually had to turn down a couple of speeches, but that doesn't mean that every weekend is full.

Vance Crowe [00:04:03] Right now people are asking me to come give a talk called Changing Minds. This is a talk about how you can have great conversations with people and how that impacts them, whether it's an older adult that you're getting to tell your stories to, or if it's somebody else that you've really known that you've had to have a deep conversation with them. We talk about many of the insights that I've learned through Legacy Interviews, but also just in my world of being an interested person. What can you learn about how to become better at starting conversations, about interacting with people listening so that they can feel really deeply heard? And how to handle some of the tough situations we get into where you don't know what to say or how to get out of kind of a messy conversation. People have given me wonderful feedback on this, and I am really excited to spend the fall and the winter traveling around to give this talk. If your group would like me to come, this is perfect for families or young farmer organizations, then go to Vance Crowe dot com and check it out. You can always hit the contact page. Tell me a little bit about your event and we can have a conversation about if it's gonna fit for for both of us. All right, so without further ado, let's head to the interview with Kristy Spence. With Kristy Spence. Welcome to the podcast.

Kristi Spence [00:05:23] Thanks Vance. I'm so happy to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:05:25] So Kristy, you are somebody that's a little off the beaten path from our, who we interview on the show most of the time. But one of the reasons I've had you on is because I think there are very few people that I'm interested in how they parent and how they've done it, but as you and I have gotten to be friends over the years, and I've gotten to read your writings that you've been publishing over the last few months, I was like, this is a great person for me to have a dialogue about the things I'm struggling with, the things that they have struggled with. Because I think anybody that's listening right now must think at some point, there's no way it's this hard for everybody else. It's only this hard for me. And I, I would like to talk a lot about that. But before we get there, why don't we talk about how you came to be writing a regular Substack and kind of who you were before you started this kind of new life you have going on right now.

Kristi Spence [00:06:19] Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to. I, I've had kind of an eclectic history in terms of my career. I majored in religion and philosophy and then I'm like, oh, I took four years and did some things. And then I went back to school and got my degree in nutrition, became a dietician, started working in sports nutrition in that field. I've always been a runner and, and really active and then found myself in agriculture. Like suddenly I was, I love communicating and suddenly I was taking nutrition science and communicating that to people about dairy and I didn't have a background in it. And I think that's what drew me to it. I grew up in Los Angeles and here suddenly I'm in Utah working for dairy farmers and I couldn't learn enough. I was like, gosh, I need to spend time on farms. I need to learn about what's going on because the questions people are asking me or questions I wanna be able to answer. So how do I better connect people with where their food comes from and help tell this complete story? And I had a great career working in Dairy Checkoff for 13 years. I have always been someone who gets kind of itchy. And you were talking about parenting, one of my favorite kids' books. And by the way, I find so much wisdom in kids' books. Like I read them to my kids and I know they're not getting what I'm getting, but I'm like, oh my gosh, how did I not know this before? But there's a book by a British author called Julia Donaldson. She writes this book called The Snail in the Whale, and there's a snail in the book that is he, he has an itchy foot and he doesn't, he's not content to do what all the other snails do and sit on the rock.

Kristi Spence [00:07:57] And he wants this ride around the world. And I've always felt like I'm the snail with the itchy foot. It's like, okay, what's next? Like, what am I supposed to do next? And my career in dairy had I hadn't really felt that way. I'd had, you know, a bunch of opportunities to try new things. And every time I would start to feel like, okay, I've done that. Like a new thing would open up and you know, our team would expand or I'd have a new role. And I got to a point where I started going through these cycles in the last few years where I was like, is this what I'm meant to do? And I felt like it was what I was meant to do to that point, but I kept projecting like 10 years from now, I need to have tried something else. I felt like I had something else to contribute to the world that in my career so far had brought me to this point. But I didn't know what that was. Vance, I still don't know what that is, but I, I knew that I had to make a change. And so I left in March, you know, of this year. And I love to write. And so I feel like I'm getting kind of back in touch with those roots and philosophy and religion and exploring some ideas and thoughts that I have about, I say in my substack, I have kind of four main topics. You know, I talk about parenting, I talk about paradox, how two things can be true at the same time. I talk about perspective, and I'm sure we'll get into that as we talk about parenting. And I talk about philosophy, like a lot of the things that we see every day around us. It's like, well, what does that mean? And what are we looking for, you know, in this life that we have? So I've been just dabbling in exploring some of these things to see what resonates and, and I hope it can take me to a place where I'm writing and, you know, I'm actually getting some money from writing, but I didn't make that my priority.

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] Yeah, I, I remember when I was preparing to leave, what was it, the Time Bear, but I had been working for Monsanto, you were one of the people I called to be like, Hey, I'm thinking about making this move. And it was, I remember how supportive you were and also like just open to being like, what are you thinking about? And so when, when it came time and you were thinking about leaving, it was, it was just a really interesting thing because I think a lot of times people can't leave the situations they're in until they know what the next lily pad is that they're hopping to. And I was in the position and you were in the position where you were like, I don't exactly know what that is. This may be a wildly bad idea, but I sense so deeply that I need to do this, that like, I can't get it outta my head. And so I know that the fear and the excitement and all of the things that are mixed together with what you're going through right now.

Kristi Spence [00:10:35] Yeah. And you're so right. And, and it's funny because I wasn't ready for a long time. I was really hamstrung by, which makes obvious sense, like the financial piece, you know, like, how does this work? Like how do I, how do I do this? How do I continue to support my family? And I was in a fortunate situation where we've been able to save, you know, some money and we were gonna use it for some other things. And, and then it dawned on me like, well, I could invest in myself and use that for, you know, kind of a personal investment in what the next phase is. And so any house projects or, you know, things that we had been considering suddenly didn't seem so important. Like this seemed like, you know, the, the thing that was important. So I can't do it indefinitely, but I'm really grateful to have this opportunity to, to try this now. And, but you're right, it's a little, it's a little scary to leap not necessarily knowing where, where you're gonna land. And I always find this interesting, I've I getting dabbled in this with my writing a little bit, but you know, I've loved to read and so I read lots and lots of books. And depending on the time that you read a book, you know, whether it's a book about parenting or a book about, you know, career choices or leadership, like some of the points might resonate. But when you're actually going through the thing that the book is, is really about, suddenly it resonates in a different way. And I read, I had already made my decision to leave and then read the book from Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks and everything that he said, I was like laying in bed at night saying to my husband, like, oh, listen to this.

Kristi Spence [00:12:06] This is how I feel. And he was just laughing. I don't think, had I read that, you know, a year ago I would've had the same, it wouldn't have had the same poignancy, but it did now because I was suddenly living through and had gotten to a point where I was ready that suddenly the messages resonated in a certain way. And I'm coming to believe that that's true with so many things. You know, I mean, if we, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:12:28] Carl revisit

Kristi Spence [00:12:28] Things later. Carl

Vance Crowe [00:12:29] Jung talks about how, you know, you can't really force yourself to read a book you're not interested in. You can read the words and certainly like when you're a student, you know, you shouldn't be like, oh, I'm not interested, I'm not gonna read this. But like, for the most part, you have to be curious. And it's something like deeper than just your rational intellectual self saying, ah, I should probably read this. It's gotta be like, there's something here that if I can discover what it is that they know this is going to help me somewhere, and it's this, it's this like amazing. I I often describe it as like walking on clouds, like where you're just jumping from one puffy cloud to another as you're reading. It's not difficult. You don't have to be like, all right, I gotta stop what I'm doing to go read. You're just like, oh, here's an opportunity for me to go discover these things. And I think that when we are aware that that can occur, that you're, I call it the Damon, right? The inner voice inside of you that you don't control, then you have, it leads you to places that you couldn't rationally have gotten to.

Kristi Spence [00:13:30] Yeah, absolutely. I, I totally agree. And I, I think, you know, it comes to this idea of perspective, like when you have that perspective that you can gain something from, you know, that book or the work or whatever it is, you're gonna get something more out of it. And I think about this a lot when it comes to parenting, you know, and I I am sure a lot of your listeners can relate. There's so many things that you try to teach your kids. And by the way, I have two boys that are eight, they just turned eight and 11. And there's so many times when I'm like, gosh, I need them to know this things that I'm realizing now as a 45-year-old, I want them to know as an eight and 11-year-old, so that they don't make the same mistakes or that they have the perspective now. And I've always had this thought like, can you inject perspective into a young mind? You know? And I don't know, I think more and more that there's an element of time and what you just described is like readiness and openness. And frankly, the capacity to understand what it is at a level that I'm trying to share it that is difficult when someone is young. And it doesn't mean that I stop trying, but I, I don't always know how the advice or the perspective I'm trying to give my kids how it lands and if they're getting from it what I want them to get from it. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:14:53] I've been in a, in a back and forth conversation with a good friend of mine named Wes, and he's been talking about, you know, I see my son and I see things that if he would just like take a little bit of my advice, he would not be having some of the challenges that he's having, right?

Kristi Spence [00:15:09] And

Vance Crowe [00:15:09] He's like, it's so hard because, you know, you wanna make it easier for them. And we kind of had this back and forth, and the best advice I've ever gotten about mentorship came from a guy that was a, you know, a convicted felon. His name's Wes Watson, he's this huge muscle bound dude. Like not the guy that you would go up to being like, Hey, tell, tell me some advice about, about giving advice or, and he said,

Kristi Spence [00:15:34] Yes,

Vance Crowe [00:15:34] You know, if people don't take your advice, it's 'cause they don't want to be you. And yes. So like that can be hurtful when you're the person that's like, I love you so much, I want you to be just, you know, I want you to be able to get past the problems that I had. And then when you take it in terms of a child, right? This is a, this is a person that doesn't even know that they can choose who to become, right? They're just present in the world. And so it's really hard to say how much of what I'm giving them is going to shape them. Like right now I'm at the stage of like, the most important thing I can do is hammer in manners that, that this is just the way that we behave. But like, advice is virtually not good at all.

Kristi Spence [00:16:17] You know, the Oh, I hear ya. And manners. That's a, that's a consistent thing. Like even at the kid, the as my kids are, what manners are important

Vance Crowe [00:16:25] To you guys? What do you guys focus on?

Kristi Spence [00:16:28] Oh, so we actually, in our family, when my kids were born, I came up with a couple things. I remember I was kind of in this post postpartum, you know, state. My first son had just been born and my husband and I were sitting out on the back porch. And I remember I got really emotional and I just said, oh, I don't care what they do in life, I just want to raise kind and grateful children. And that became, we added one more, but those became kind of these grounding values for our family. And so whenever we ask them, we say, Hey, what does it mean to be a sp it means you're kind, it means you're grateful and it means you don't give up. And when we say don't give up, it's really on yourself. Like, you know, we want there to be this like belief in yourself and what your goals are, what you wanna accomplish or who are who you are as an individual. And so when I think about manners, I I put them in those categories. It's like, hey, we're, we're kind, we express gratitude. And then there's the ones that don't really fit into those categories, but we have to sit nicely at the table. We culture chew with our mouth closed, you know, things that are just general, you know, things for propriety that I, that I feel like are important that were definitely drilled into me.

Vance Crowe [00:17:40] So I record these Legacy Interviews and one of the questions that I ask towards the end, particularly if family is a big emphasis for these people, and generally if somebody bought you a legacy interview, that means you did have a pretty close knit family. And that question that you're talking about, like what does it mean to be a sp what does it mean to be a crow is something that some people really think deeply about. And some people it just emerges naturally, right? And I think in the ag community there, everybody says we were hardworking, right? That's, that's something we all want, right? But the other things of kindness and you know, are we, you know, like in my wife's family, we complete what we start and you see how much that's been drilled into those, those my wife and her sisters and how much that influences what they do day in and day out, because they finish what they start almost to a fault. Yeah.

Kristi Spence [00:18:31] Right? Yeah. Some of these things I could, I could imagine, you know, some of them become like they're really well intended, but you know, when taken to the extreme or not talked about, you know, it can be, it can be challenging, you know, it's, it's funny. So we came up with these three things that were like, Hey, these are kind of the core values that we stand for as a family. And my kids might develop others, you know, later in their life. But then one of the things, we were going through an exercise at work back when I worked for, in the dairy industry. And we were taking our organization and we were doing what Brene Brown talks a lot about. We were operationalizing our values. And so we had three values as a company. It was trust, action, and stewardship. And I loved them. 'cause there were three, they felt really clear, but at the end of the day, we needed to define for everyone that worked for the organization, what do those things actually mean? You know, what does it mean to show up to each other and to our organization and to our constituents with trust? And so we did this exercise where we went through and we defined what that meant for the organization. And I thought, if I'm gonna do this for work, I wanna do this for my family. And so we spent some time with our kids saying, okay, what does, what does kindness mean to you? And we came up with some little tenets that were in large part kind of authored by them. And my, my hope was that we probably need to revisit this, but my hope was that they had some say and a real true understanding of what kindness meant, of what gratitude meant, so that they could embody that a little bit more readily than us telling them what it meant.

Kristi Spence [00:20:06] And I, I think that they're at ages now where it's worth revisiting because they have more life experience, they're a little bit more introspective. And so anyway, you're reminding me that I, that I need to do

Vance Crowe [00:20:17] That. I mean, I think it's great and the ownership, I mean, ev if you're gonna live out values, you have to feel like they weren't just, you know, that that, that you are somehow inhabiting them. You don't necessarily need to be the one that came up with them. But to be able to have the guidance inside of there in my family, what I'm discovering. So I have a almost 4-year-old and a little one that just turned two today and yeah,

Kristi Spence [00:20:38] Oh, happy birthday.

Vance Crowe [00:20:39] And so, but one of the things that I was doing was my, my oldest really responds to stories. So we tell stories about different people and it didn't take very long before I was like, oh, I can't tell Uncle Dan's stories because she's gonna go tell Uncle Dan's stories in his opinion of whether or not that was true. But I also have all these other stories. So I have, like, I tell stories about when I worked on a ship and we talk about Silly Charlie and Silly Charlie was this guy, he is a real guy that he just, he was always forgetful. And even though he was like really nice and happy, he broke things all the time. And what I didn't realize is as I'm telling these stories, then later my daughter would be like, that's what silly Charlie would do. And so now she doesn't wanna be like silly Charlie, she wants to be something else. And storytelling is a way of imputing values has been really powerful. And, and I'm gonna just continue to do it as much as she'll absorb, I'm gonna try and put out there.

Kristi Spence [00:21:37] Yeah. I mean, gosh, I think that that's awesome when you can do that, suddenly they have this construct that they can relate to and you've created a character that they now can reference, you know, in future, you know, experiences that they have. And I am always just so amazed at what my kids remember, you know? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:21:56] Sometimes

Kristi Spence [00:21:56] I think they're not really listening and then they parret back a story. My husband's a really good storyteller, and they'll parrot back a story that Mike has told them and they remember all of it. Like they were really listening. And one of the things that I think Mike, you know, my husband does particularly well, is he's not afraid to tell stories about his own history or childhood that are pretty vulnerable. It's like, Hey, one time I made this really bad choice, and this is what happened when my Fred hit me in the head with a hammer through a tent. 'cause we thought that was a good idea, you know? But my kids remember these stories and they're a real person. Like, it's, it's Mike, you know, as a character in this story. And, and I think he's also in doing that, showing some vulnerability like, Hey, I didn't always get it right and I wish I would've done, you know, this a little differently. Or here's a very real situation like not speaking in abstracts where I could have done better and those seem to resonate with my kids. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:22:53] That's actually exactly how I came to the storytelling was that my daughter was like, tell me when you were a little boy. And I told her these stories and you see like, I think like, oh, these are kind of boring or they don't make me look that good. But the just an absorption of it, and I see it in Legacy Interviews too, because you have these people that are, you know, in their sixties, early seventies, and they tell me these stories. And I always say at the beginning, it's really easy to tell stories where you did everything right. The more important stories are the ones where you didn't make the right decision and you fell down and something happened. And the letters that I get from people about Legacy Interviews are oftentimes, like, I finally became an adult today because I realized that my parents didn't know what they were doing when they were raising kids either. And now I see that, and I don't feel as bad about the mistakes I'm making, it's just from my kid eyes, they seem like they knew, you know, that there was a thing as an adult. And an adult means you make all the right decisions. Yeah,

Kristi Spence [00:23:52] Yeah. You know, I, I totally agree. And the one thing that I've been willing to do is recently, probably the last few years, is tell 'em in the moment when I get it wrong, like, try to apologize in the moment. And I think that's been pretty powerful. I had listened to, this was like around 2020, I had listened to a podcast that Brene Brown did, and she was talking about Harriet Lerner and all the work that Harriet Lerner has done on apologies. And there were a couple things from that podcast that just resonated so deeply with me. And it, it all relates to how we apologize both how we offer an apology to someone as the giver, and how we accept the apology as the receiver. So the two things are, when you're giving an apology, you have to make sure that you're ready to apologize and that there's no caveat, like, how often do you get an apology or do we do this to our kids? Yeah. Hey, I'm sorry that that happened, but you were making really bad choices.

Vance Crowe [00:24:52] The minute that

Kristi Spence [00:24:54] You put that caveat in there, it, it then puts the Yeah, they're

Vance Crowe [00:24:58] Right back on them. Yeah, of course. Like,

Kristi Spence [00:25:00] Yeah. And so how do you stop at the, but like, hey, I'm really sorry that, you know, I reacted that way and, and I realized that I did the but thing a lot and I felt okay doing it because it felt like it was all true. And then I thought, gosh, how do it, I feel if that's how someone apologized to me. So now it's like I have to get myself ready and I'm like, am I ready to apologize? Have we already had the conversation about what went wrong, what they could have done in the future? And then I need to own my part? And that's been really big because it's just made me apologize better. And, and then as the receiver, instead of giving people someone a pass, you know, we often say, oh, it's okay, you know, no problem. But is it like, if someone's really offering their apology to accept it means that you've acknowledged that, yeah, that, that hurt me. And thank you for for acknowledging that. And so a great response, and again, this is not mine, this comes from Harriet Lerner, is to say thank you. If someone says, Hey, I'm really sorry that I responded that way, or that I hurt your feelings, and if you just say thank you, it's like you accept it and you don't deflect it and you don't make it okay, you don't give them a pass. And it's really neat for me 'cause I, I told my kids about this podcast and I said, I'm committing to doing this and I want you to try to do it too. And Vance, they do that now when they apologize to each other, they genuinely apologize. And sometimes I have to catch them with the butt because they want the other person to apologize to, you know, or own their part. But they always say thank you. And it's, it feels really powerful when I watch that interaction with them.

Kristi Spence [00:26:36] But it was something that I didn't know that we kind of like learned all at the same time. And that's felt, that's felt really good.

Vance Crowe [00:26:43] My, my wife stopped me one time from making my oldest child apologize to the younger child, and she was like, look, if you force the apology, all they're doing is they're figuring out like what it is that they have to do to get around the, this obstacle, but they're not actually, you know, apologizing. How do you feel about that? Do you force your kids to apologize?

Kristi Spence [00:27:06] So, that's a great question. I try not to, and here's where, and I was gonna bring this up earlier, you know, when we were talking about giving perspective to our kids, I don't know about you. I see certain things in my kids that are me.

Vance Crowe [00:27:21] Oh yeah.

Kristi Spence [00:27:22] And you know, and as you, as you watch it, it's like you can experience the emotion that they're experiencing because you know it so deeply and or at least you think you can. And so I'll watch my little one, you know, do something and I'm like, oh gosh, I know exactly how he's feeling, but he's also not me. And so the way that I would respond now is it's not necessarily the way that he would respond, but I have one, one of my sons is very quick to apologize. He doesn't particularly like conflict. He wants to make sure everything's okay. He needs a lot of reassurance. And so he, and, and I do that too. So he's very much like me in that regard. And he'll just apologize even when he might not need to just to make the situation. Okay. My other son doesn't apologize when he really should. And that's hard for me because I wanna tell him like, Hey buddy, you need to own that and say you're sorry. But I also, to your wife's point, like he's just gonna learn that he does the thing that's not okay. He says he's sorry and he moves on. And then this is a pattern that repeats itself when I want him to recognize the behavior and, and own his part. So I've worked with him a lot more on talking about ownership. Like, Hey, you know, I think that really hurt your brother's feelings, or that really hurt my feelings. Like that was, you know, not a kind thing to say, to let him know how it made me feel. I so desperately wanna say, and I need an apology, like, you need to tell me you're sorry.

Kristi Spence [00:28:56] But I try not to do that so that he can come to it. And one night, this was probably two months ago, he had been not very nice and he was going to bed and 10 minutes later these little feet come walking down the hallway into the bedroom and he's like, mommy, I'm really sorry I didn't talk to you in a nice way then. And I almost started to cry. I was like, I didn't force the apology, but he recognized it. He doesn't do that all the time, but I feel like it's starting to come. And that felt genuine as opposed to me giving him a lecture about, you know, Hey, this is why you need to apologize. But he needed time to process it and come to that on his own.

Vance Crowe [00:29:35] Yeah, I, I think the thing I ultimately apologized for is something I did not expect would be a problem for me, but it has been a challenge and that is losing my temper. Like, I, I'm like generally a very controlled person, and I would say I had before having children literally gone years without ever raising my voice. And now you have your kids, like my, my wife and I both run our own company, so there is always stress like at any moment of the day and in the weekend, like, I could be working and it would have a material impact on my family. And so, right, sometimes you're sitting there and you're like, why am I dealing with this? Like, why are you guys yelling? Why are you, you know, crying about things that are, that are like, clearly not something I can solve. And that's the point where I wonder, are other people under this much stress? Like, and is this new? Or if, if my wife and I were a one, you know, one stayat home parent, would they be having this much stress and this much pressure that they, you know, blow their stack? What do you think?

Kristi Spence [00:30:40] Yeah, I think the stress is always there. I think it ebbs and flows based on, you know, what, you know, I always think of there's like a finite amount of stress that we can deal with. And it doesn't matter where it's coming from. It could be coming from work, it could be coming from home, but it all starts to build and then there's gonna be this thing that kind of, you know, like a volcano and suddenly we blow our top and you know, I always talk to my kids about, Hey, where can you vent? You know, instead of just blowing up and getting really angry. So in our situation, how it had been before I, you know, made this career shift, my husband stays home, so he is, we homeschool our kids, and that's fairly recent, that's been the last couple of years, but he's on as dad a lot of the time, and I was traveling a whole bunch for work and either when I was home and I'd work out of a home office, I was on calls for like eight or nine hours a day. And so he took the lion's share of, you know, the work with the kids. And it was also stressful, like, just because that was his job. He didn't have an outlet and a break. And often, you know, I think he just needed to talk to another adult and have, you know, a conversation that was not constantly parenting and doing school and teaching. And, and so, you know, he would, sometimes I'd be on a work trip and he'd call and he's like, and he would just have to tell me, he's like, I lost my temper and I wasn't my best. And it's like he needed to get that off his chest. And, and so I think it, I think it happens to everyone.

Kristi Spence [00:32:12] I think parenting is just stressful, Vance. And I think that it goes through these phases of being more stressful than others based on kind of where your kids are at. I've definitely had this thought of my kid will never outgrow this phase. They were, they're always going to do this and they're gonna become an adult that does this and I'm never gonna be able to teach them. And then as I look back, those moments in time are short, but when you're in it, it feels like this is just the way it's always going to be.

Vance Crowe [00:32:42] So yeah. You, you have in your writing one of the reoccurring series that you talk about, which I, it really resonates with me is this concept of being in it. And like, it's, it's, I you have one of your opening early stories. I remember you talking about how many Rudolphs did you do and you were talking about, right?

Kristi Spence [00:33:00] How

Vance Crowe [00:33:00] Many times did you sing Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer to your child as you were trying to get them to sleep? And that hit me right between the eyes. 'cause we had that with our first daughter where as soon as she was born, she was an unconsolable child for nearly two years. Right. So this is just yeah, constant stress where you're going from two hyper productive people. My wife and I are really productive to now being completely at the mercy of this terrorist who at any time yeah, can start screaming and crying and there's nothing you can do about it. And when you described it as like, just as like, being in it, I, I I got it. So tell me more about being in it.

Kristi Spence [00:33:40] So the idea for these posts actually came from a friend, you know, I was talking to her about something that we were talking about at the beginning, you know, when you mentioned Carl Jung and you know, I said, you can read all these books about people making these career shifts, but you're, you're reading about 'em in retrospect, you know, often it's like they've, they've figured it out that they've made it to the other side, and now they're writing about the whole experience in this neat, tidy package. And I was like, it doesn't feel that way. And she said, you should write about it. And I thought, huh, okay. And you know, I thought, I have this, this platform right now and I'm very much in this transition, and so I'm just gonna write about the ebbs and flows and what it, what it feels like. And I didn't necessarily intend for it to turn into a series, but I wrote the first one and I was running with a friend of mine who lives close by, and she said, you know, Christy, it was so, it was great. I loved it. She said, I also, sometimes it's gotta be hard and I want you to write about, you know, what feels hard or question yourself or, and I thought, oh, I can do that. I don't have a problem being vulnerable. It's part of the, I think my natural style of writing. And so it's, it's kind of turned into this series of posts where every few weeks, like, Hmm, I feel like I'm at a different stage right now and, you know, and I'm gonna write about that. And, and sometimes I pull an experience from the past like that with my son, where you're in this, in this state of transition and it feels really unsettling. You feel untethered and you don't know when it's gonna end. And then I realized I never noticed when I stopped singing Rudolph, but I did at some point stop singing Rudolph.

Kristi Spence [00:35:11] And at some point I won't feel untethered and I won't feel, you know, stressed, but I need to go through that now to get to the other side. And so that's what this whole in, you know, series is about. And it's been fun to explore just how I've ebbed and flowed. You know, I think when I first left, I was very much trying to fill my days. Like I knew how, you know, and what I mean by that is when I was working, I had a full schedule. And so, you know, I knew that I had, you know, this call at this time and this call at this time, and I had to be prepared for each one. And I had a lot of direct reports. And so I felt very responsible to my calendar and to other people, and I knew how to do that really well. And so then suddenly I'm the master of my own calendar and I'm responsible to myself, and I'm like, well, what do I actually want to do? And I didn't know, I, I was like, I don't know, I, I don't know what I wanna do. Like, that's a hard question and it's an obvious question. And then I also didn't know how to schedule myself. I was like, well, I think I need to schedule, I was trying to be really structured about it. I'm gonna schedule a bunch of calls with a bunch of people to find out, like, to learn as much as I can, like what resonates about my writing, you know, with you and do I, can I kind of identify these themes? And so I did that like for four hours a day for the little first little bit. And my kids were like, I thought you stopped working, mom. And, you know, I was like, well, I'm trying to figure it out. So now the pendulum's probably swung the other way. And I've spent the last few weeks since summer kind of officially started really just being present and adventuring.

Kristi Spence [00:36:47] We live in this beautiful place in the mountains, like doing things outside and trying to take advantage of this time that I don't always get, my kids aren't gonna be able to be these ages for this long, you know, forever. They're only, this is a snapshot in time and I have this opportunity now to have this time. I don't know if I will, you know, a year from now. So I feel more settled now than I did four months ago.

Vance Crowe [00:37:13] Yeah. I like, I hate children's songs and I like the, just the like quirky nature of them, right? And a couple of months ago I was driving my daughters to school and like they're both advocating for the song that they want. And I realized like, wait a second. Like there will come a day when they'll be like, dad, like, stop paying attention to us. We want privacy. We don't want to listen to what you wanna listen to. We don't wanna sing. And it made me like stop and be like, all right, what do I like about this? And like, just to, just to be able to be focused on the fact that they are giggling with glee about talking about Uncle Dan in a garbage can. And so he, like, I have a thousand things to do, but if I miss that, it's gone and you don't get it back. And the challenge that, so that like becomes kind of an obvious thing, right? You're like, okay, I should be present. But the challenge that I've faced is I don't want to be present for fear of being nostalgic, right? Yeah. For fear

Kristi Spence [00:38:16] Of

Vance Crowe [00:38:16] Being like, oh, well I needed to absorb all of that, because I think that's what leads people to taking obsessive photographs.

Kristi Spence [00:38:22] Yeah. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:38:23] Where, where instead of actually being there, you're pulling out your phone to be like, I really wanna remember this. And so all of their memories are seen through the lens of a camera. So what's the balance between being present and being afraid of nostalgia?

Kristi Spence [00:38:39] So it's so interesting that you say this right now because, so I try to do this daily meditation practice, and I've started to do that with my kids. And, and so they're getting this message of being present. And my oldest, I think stresses about it. He will be, will be out on a bike ride together, we like to ride our bikes together, and he'll stop in the middle and he's like, mom, I'm stressed about being present. And he sometimes thinks being present means remembering every single moment of the ride from start to finish. And so it's almost like you describe, you know, for the sake of nostalgia, like he wants to remember the whole thing in its entirety, like a photographic memory kind of thing. And he thinks, and he, he paused this past weekend and he said, I don't think I need to remember the whole thing to be present. And I said, no, I think you just need to be here. Like, are you enjoying? Like there's cool flowers here that pay attention to the trail in front of you. Like, we're out here together. And so I, you know, I I feel like that too. Like I don't wanna, I wanna remember the things, but I also, I don't need to remember it in a certain type of detail if I remember a feeling I got, or I remember that I was just really paying attention in that moment, or like you just described, if you remember that you were able to enjoy the, just that feeling of being with your kids in the car and listening to them giggle to these songs that are in mean and funny and you don't actually love, but you know, they love. And so instead of wishing it away, if you just remember this, I had this moment where I, I just embraced it and it was fun and I started to laugh.

Kristi Spence [00:40:17] I feel like that's being present and the very fact that you can remember that anecdote and tell me now, I think means that you were present in that moment. And you know, one of the things that I wrote about recently was, you know, my youngest, my youngest son, and he'll, I, I just had these kind of, this epiphany a few weeks ago when he was, he told me an experience that he had, we were volunteering at a trail race, and the next morning he said, mom, I really loved that. They made me feel like I belonged. And he used that word Vance and it suddenly clicked with me that a lot of the things that he'd been feeling the weeks prior or the way he was acting out was because he felt like this deep sense that he wasn't, he didn't belong or people weren't including him in the way he wanted. And I was present enough to listen and I heard that word and I, it like unlocked something for me. And I started asking him, I was like, Hey, what does it mean to belong? And he started to talk about it in a way that I don't think I ever could have gotten to before. And I thought of you actually, because, you know, one of the things that you've talked to me about is, and in your Legacy Interviews is ask the question that they wanna be asked. And sometimes I think I, I'm trying to get, I, I have the intention, right? Like I'm trying to get it the right thing, but I don't ask the right question and I can't unlock it. And I had been, I had been asking Elliot like, you know, how do you feel about this?

Kristi Spence [00:41:48] Or what's going on? Or, and, and he would just, he's like, I don't know what you mean. And suddenly I said, what does it mean for you to belong? And he knew what I meant and he was able to explain to me like, when people take me seriously and when people listen to me and they treat me like a peer instead of like a kid. And I was like, oh. And it was like this major parenting moment for me, I felt because I was able to use the right words to ask the question because I'd listened to him.

Vance Crowe [00:42:16] I, I love this, the, the and the thing that you're talking about being present with your kids or being present really at any time. Like if you are around somebody that is being present with you, you cannot help but feel it, right? Like yeah, it is a truly powerful thing. And actually, I was just talking with my editor about this the other day. Like, I think that one of the things that makes doing these Legacy Interviews super valuable, even more valuable than the actual recording, is that there's a person or a couple that is sitting there and the person listening to them has literally no other motive other than listening. Yeah. I'm not

Kristi Spence [00:42:53] A

Vance Crowe [00:42:53] Therapist, so I'm not trying to fix them. I'm not an attorney, so I'm not like looking for like, what is the legal ramifications of this? So it's so seldom in life that you're ever with somebody that they are like, I'm gonna listen to what you're saying and I'm, oh, you used a word that was really interesting there belong. So I'm, I'm gonna actually touch on that word and all these things are gonna unlock. And so for me, like it, it's, it's, it's been amazing. 'cause this is the first time I've ever had one of those, you know, if you do a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I have to work a lot. So I, I'm not quite there yet, but like the, the listening part of it allows you to, because being present with somebody, there's literally nothing else I I that that's like it.

Kristi Spence [00:43:39] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:43:40] So

Kristi Spence [00:43:40] Here's one area where I struggle and this happened last night, you know, I wanna be, because I think you're right. I think your kids know when you're actually listening and when you're not really listening, you know? And, and I definitely have those moments I have, and it always seems to center around, we need to get out the door to do something. Like there is a time constraint and suddenly they have a whole bunch of things to tell me that are really important. And I struggle with my own sense of responsibility and like, Hey, I can't be late to this commitment that I have. I also have a commitment to listen to you deeply in a way that you feel heard and we can work through this thing together. And I haven't figured this out, but you know, sometimes I have to stop them mid-sentence and say, I really, really wanna hear what you have to say. I also need us all to get in the car and we need to go to this place, you know, so that we can get there on time. And so I'm always trying to balance, and I don't, I, I think this is just a, a kid thing, but this perception of time, you know, as adults we have this perception of time and it's like, I have to do this and then I need to do this, and I know how long things take. And we're constantly trying to explain to our kids like, no, you can't fit in all of those things in five minutes. Like, you need to pick, like you have a finite amount of time. We,

Vance Crowe [00:44:55] Time is, is absolutely something that we impart on our children because in like, there's a concept called polychronic and monoclonic time. So Polychronic is island time. It's where if you and I are having a conversation, it would be absolutely absurd for me to look at my watch and be like, oh, it's one o'clock time to get up and go do something else. And Right. But in monochro time, the industrialized world, if I tell you, Hey, I have to leave at one, you're not gonna have any ill will towards me, I'm gonna be able to shake your hand and leave. And it's like, oh, that's expected. But Polychronic focuses way more on relationships. Yeah. So it's like, I am gonna be here, you and I are gonna walk together. If it takes longer than it should, then we'll get there when we can. But you can't run an industrialized society that way. But you can run a tribal society that way. And so we are teaching our kids the sort of time that they're gonna need to be successful. But it is definitely painful because I think the natural state is polychronic.

Kristi Spence [00:45:55] I totally agree with you. And in other cultures you see more of this, you know, polychronic, you know, idea of time. I lived in Nepal for a little while teaching English after I graduated from school. And it was totally different. Someone says, yeah, I'll come over at, you know, in the afternoon. And I would, I would be like, well, what time are you gonna come? Like, I need to know, so I'm here. What time are you gonna come? And it, and it was, it was like, oh, well sometime. And you know, so it's like this island time concept and we don't run, operate, you know, our society that way. And I don't want my kids, there's like an innocence to how kids can't conceptualize time in that way and they can just, you know, and I think I, I wonder actually, this is a, I wonder if it has something to do with play. Like they can just play for hours in a way that's unstructured and kind of freeform and go from one thing to the next. And as we get older, that is so much harder to do. And I think that's why we constantly talk about getting into the state of flow where we lose track of time because we're so engrossed in, you know, in a single thing that it's like time doesn't matter anymore. And I don't want them to lose that. I also totally, you're right. Like we need to teach them how they need to operate and function in order to be successful in, you know, when they, when they are going to school or they have an assignment they need to turn in, like they have to finish their assignment and turn it in, you know, by a certain time. Or they have to get from one class to the next class or to their climbing practice or whatever it is. So,

Vance Crowe [00:47:23] So you talked about play. I, I think like there's, I'll just speak from my own experience. We are at the place where I am, like the children should be playing with each other and by themselves more. But one, we have them in a daycare, we have to, we're running two businesses. We, we can't be watching them. And so part of that is, well, I want to, and my wife especially wants to be with them, but like, how do you facilitate children to get to the place where they are? Like, I can go outside and I can find something to do. Like, and, and at what age is the right time to start pushing them out of the nest in that way?

Kristi Spence [00:48:03] Oh, it's a good question. And again, I'm not an expert in this area, so I can only speak from my personal experience too. So my kids are three years apart and I feel like we got to that point where they would play independently with one another. Probably when my youngest was about four or four or five. And suddenly, I remember a couple more years, you have, you have a couple years, but then I remember making dinner one night and they were playing, like, I wasn't suddenly doing the corral, the kids and the dog and make dinner at the same time. Like, my husband and I had a conversation. And I think every parent deals with this. We still speak in like fragments of thoughts, you know, I mean, there's constant interruptions when your kids will play, you know, on their own or with a friend, you know, outside independently. It does open up kind of a new world and you realize like, oh, we can have a conversation that's longer than one and a half sentences. And you know, and I actually have time to, you know, to get something done. Like today's a great example. So my husband had, you know, a commitment this morning and my kids are really close friends with their next door neighbor, and they're just playing in the yard, and they're old enough now. I could have them take the dog for a walk, you know, they came back, they put the dog, we have a puppy in his pen, and he's resting and they're out playing, and I know they're okay, and they don't really need me for a whole bunch of stuff, which feels like a game changer.

Kristi Spence [00:49:36] I also live in an area that feels safe, and I'm uncomfortable with them just being outside.

Vance Crowe [00:49:40] It's really refreshing to hear that about the idea that, that like, you don't have thoughts that are more than a sentence and a half, you know? My wife one day was like, she was, she was like, well, you know, everybody needs my attention. And I was like, wow, a little grumble bear. And then I was like, actually, no, that's true because we lived together for 10 years and I have this sounding board of this person that I can explain very complicated ideas to and get her feedback and get her input, and now all of a sudden that's put in a woodshed or chipper and, and just, you just gone. Yes. And so this is probably the area where the most stress gets created. It's like we are trying to have dinner the way that we did when we were just, just the two of us. And now you've got two kids that are vying for both parents' attention. You've got dad who really wants mom's attention, mom, who's got a hundred things going on. And like, the pressure of that seems, oh, like, like what are we doing? This can't be the way that people live, that they're under so much stress.

Kristi Spence [00:50:43] Oh, that so resonates with me. I remember like multiple times I'd come home from, you know, a work trip and I'd come in the door and make, cooking is like a, it's like therapeutic for me. So, you know, I'd come in and even though I'd had a long day, like for me to be in the kitchen and start making dinner is like, okay, I can kind of decompress now. So I would start making dinner and everyone needed me. They hadn't seen me for three days and Mike needed to talk to me, and the kids needed to talk to me. And I would, I'm not kidding, I would have three people talking to me all at the same time. And, and I was like, oh my gosh, how do I triage this? Like, how do I be the thing for each person? And, and so, and Mike would realize it sometimes, he's like, we all just need like a little piece of you for, you know, a minute. And so we would, you know, I would try to, I'd stop making dinner and I was like, okay. And I'd try to, you know, hey, I need, you know, Elliot, what do you need? Eden, what do you need? And then Mike would say, okay, it's my turn to talk to mommy now. And so they would go do their thing, but it's real. And then sometimes, you know, it's hard to, I think about, 'cause you and your wife sound like very similar to Mike and me, how we had a lot of years together before we had children. And sometimes finding that kind of time to have those conversations when we can't do 'em at dinner, we can't do 'em when we're making dinner. And suddenly you get the kids to bed and you're tired and it's like you save up all these things and then when you actually have the time, you're not quite in the mood to talk about the thing that was really serious. And so we've tried, we're not particularly good at this, but when we do, you know, have someone come over and watch our kids and we can go out to dinner, it's like magical.

Kristi Spence [00:52:20] It's like, oh my gosh, we're sitting,

Vance Crowe [00:52:22] You know,

Kristi Spence [00:52:23] Across from one another and we can, we can have a conversation. We've also, I mentioned that I ride to ride bikes with my, with my sons, but I also, Mike and I can go for a long bike ride now, and that's also a really nice time to talk or go for a run together, you know, in the morning. And so we're trying to find those times that we can still maintain that level of conversation because we need it, you know, for to progress things forward, but for our relationship. And, but man, it's hard, it's hard to figure out, you know, how it all fits you,

Vance Crowe [00:52:54] You know, one of the things we talked about earlier was about the models and advice, like trying to give your kids advice. And I, I remember when you were first starting to think about, Hey, should I do some more writing? And you were like, I have these models I talk about with my kids and some of your, my favorite writing that you do is those models because it gives me a way to think about something differently. And you did one about the your boys putting the other one in a box, you know, and assuming that you know what they are thinking, can you talk about that box? I think that's a really good model for people to understand.

Kristi Spence [00:53:28] Sure. So it, some of these just come up kind of in the moment, but, you know, they were having this argument and one of the things that we're constantly working with, you know, both of our kids on is assumptions. Like each of them will assume that the other feels a certain way and then that will dictate their behavior. So instead of staying curious in the situation, they'll look at past experiences or what they expect the other one's gonna do. And they'll, they'll make an assumption. And so one day they were doing this and I said, whoa guys, it's like you're putting the other one in a box and then they can't move outta that box, but what if, what if they're actually gonna do something that's outside of the box? And so I I just said, can you, can you just open the lid and like give them an opportunity to poke their head out and, and do something that's a little bit different than what's just, you know, in this confines that you've put them into. And it seemed to resonate with them, you know, and, and in the moment, my idea with metaphor, and this isn't like scientifically studied, but I feel like it's powerful in this way, is that sometimes when you are experiencing an emotion that's so intense or you're doing something and as a parent, you're trying to get your kid to do something different, it's really personal if you're just talking about what they're doing. But can we make it less personal and more easy for them to understand if we liken it to something else? You know, even like this box, just say, Hey, this is like, you're, you're putting your brother in a box and he can't get outta the box because you've put him in it, but he really wants to get outta the box and he wants to do something different.

Kristi Spence [00:55:03] And so my my thought is that if we can get him thinking about the situation in terms of this metaphor, it's like a tool that they get to run it through so that they can successfully come out the other end and, and make a different choice, but not feel so personally attacked. So that was the one I talked about. We, and sometimes I'll even, like, if I'm kind of working on a metaphor idea, my oldest is really thoughtful and kind of philosophical. And so I'll run it by him like, Hey, how do we, how do I play this one out? Like what makes sense in this, in this area? And I'll even hear them say, mom, I'm trying to think about something that this is like, like I'm trying to, trying to come up with something, you know, that I can explain how, how this feeling is for me. And that's pretty cool when I watch them do that. But it's where I'm trying to get with these, with these metaphors is yeah, to get them to, to think outside of themselves so that they can better understand themselves. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:56:00] What I think about that box metaphor is it answers a, a problem that's so old, it's like biblical that that concept of you're never a prophet in your own land, right? Where, where your own family you may like, and I think this happens in ag all the time. So you've got a, a young person that wants to come back to the farm, they have new ideas, they have ways to change and update things, and everybody looks at them and says, oh yeah, you're always coming up with the next new thing. And so they don't really listen to you what you're saying. Yeah. And I think that like even you, you write, I'm not sure if it was in the same article or if it was in a different one, but you ended up talking about how judgmental you are on your own change and kind of putting yourself in a box, so to speak. So you're like, ah, if I wanna change, but I can only change within these box parameters, what have you learned about yourself in change?

Kristi Spence [00:56:54] Yeah, so that might've been a post where I was writing about, like, I, I've always considered myself like a morning person, you know? So I get up, you know, at five in the morning and I'm productive and I do all of these things. And as I made this transition, I realized that I was more creative at night than I was in the morning. Like, I'm really productive in the morning, but I'm like more creative at night. And that was really interesting to me. And so, but it started making, making me question these fundamental things that I believed were true about me. And can those change, like, are those things, are those things changeable? And, and I guess what I'm coming to realize is we get to be whoever we wanna be. I think that there's core things that don't change, but whether or not I get up earlier, I stay up late. Like those things seem more, you know, superficial, they seem like, yeah, it doesn't really matter. Like I'm the same person, but I can change those things. But I think I do tend to put myself in a box. And I have noticed in know, even in our language how we do that when we start using words like should or have to, like, I should do this or I have to do this. And I challenge that in my kids a lot. I'm like, whoa, whoa, you're shoulding. Like, what, who tells you you should be this way or you should do this? And then I notice I do it to myself all the time and I'm like, well, who says I should do it this way? And so I've really started to challenge the shoulds and because the shoulds for me are this box, it's like, well, where did that come from?

Kristi Spence [00:58:27] Like, did I, did I make that up? Or did someone tell me I had to be that way? And, and so, you know, it's one of the things I'm trying to explore in my writing too is these questions that we have about ourselves and, and who we are and who we wanna be. And, but I think that that should idea is so much this box, and I think when we challenge it, we can open up new opportunities for ourselves.

Vance Crowe [00:58:54] For me, the only change that I'm ever able to make is through the idea of a heuristic. So like, when I get out of my car, I take all the trash out of the car, and therefore there's never any trash in my car. And that's the only way I can keep my car clean, is if I have that rule and I follow it. And I find that when I'm on the upward tr I, I kind of feel like my, my, my wife is like doing well, not doing well, right? Like as far as like, like not doing the habits, right? And as you take on more heuristics that help you get better, say it's the way you're eating, how you're handling your cell phone use or whatever, but then you stack too many heuristics on Yeah.

Kristi Spence [00:59:38] And

Vance Crowe [00:59:38] Then you like hit some point where you're like, can't keep up with that. And then you start going down. Do you experience this?

Kristi Spence [00:59:46] Oh, totally. And I've never thought about them in, in terms of heuristics, but I think about, you know, the book Atomic Habits. And when James Clear talks about habit stacking, he's like, Hey, if you're good at a certain thing and you know you're gonna do that every morning, I think about meditation. Say, I'm really good at meditating every morning. Well then could I tack a habit onto that? So I also wanna do my journaling in the morning. And what I struggle with is I run out of time. Like I can't do all of the things that feel like they need to happen at that particular time because I start to create too many of them. It's like, I wanna make sure that I get my exercise, my reading, my meditation, and my journaling all in within the same time period. And then that feels, then all the things that are supposed to de-stress, you start to become really stressful because you know, you've, you've stacked them up in this way. So I totally experience that. And then I have to start paring it down saying, what's the most important thing here? Like, is it the, do I choose one a day? Like, hey, this morning I'm just gonna meditate. Like they're serving the same function for me. Yes, they're all important, but I either need to find a time other, other places in the day. So I struggle with that. Like how, how many of these things can we, can we take on when we know that they're all important? Something might have to give, you know? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:01:08] And the, and the challenge that I have is like, if you stack those up and then you're like, ah, I can be flexible with myself, or I can be understanding, then does it let go? I think this is the biggest challenge with diet. And you know, I wanna, I mentioned before we started that I wanted to talk about nutrition and, and kind of the advice world that comes from that. I have come to the, so there have been a, a couple of times in my life where I've gone for several years, four or five years, where I've been very, very healthy. And then you have a period where chaos, you know, invades and the plane goes down. And I think the only way that I have ever been able to have a diet that works is for it to be almost religious in nature. Not saying that it's gotta be divine from God, but like,

Kristi Spence [01:01:59] Right,

Vance Crowe [01:01:59] These are the rules. And like, as long as I follow these rules, good things happen. And when I

Kristi Spence [01:02:05] Leave

Vance Crowe [01:02:05] The rules, when I sin, then things, you know, go, go down. But this is like the opposite of the advice that the nutrition world is giving. They're, they're much more like, be, you know, kind to yourself and, you know, don't, don't, don't be too restrictive. I think there's something I, I don't wanna offend you here, but I'm gonna just say like, yeah, I think there's very something very motherly about that that isn't actually accurate.

Kristi Spence [01:02:33] Yeah. What do

Vance Crowe [01:02:34] You think? Is this something you've heard and, and like, I don't know, where are you at on that?

Kristi Spence [01:02:39] Yeah. Oh gosh. I feel like I'm a lot to say on this. Well, first, I, I just love, so I mentioned I majored in religion and philosophy, and when I went back to school to become a dietician, one of my professors thought it was so interesting. She's like, I love that you have a religion background because people treat nutrition like religion, you know? And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Anyway, so I think that's a fun parallel and I, I don't disagree. So I think here's where I think a lot of dieticians see so much structure in, you know, with a way that people wanna think about food and so much structure in certain diets, like, this is bad and labeling, like there's these dichotomies of this is good and this is bad. And I think that's naturally the way humans like to think because it creates these rules. It's like, well, if this is on the good side, then I can eat all of these things, but I can't eat these things. And so it makes it easier. And I think what a lot of dieticians have tried to do and what, you know, books like intuitive eating and the idea is how do we, how do we get people to develop a healthier relationship with food overall so that the rules that we create don't feel so restrictive? And you know, a lot of dieticians, me included, I have a background of working with people with severe eating disorders. And so I think we see this and when taken to ex an extreme, you know, we can create some really unhealthy, you know, beha, we can see some really unhealthy behaviors that have, you know, psychological manifestations in everything. And, and I think sometimes we see people tending to create rules and we're like, oh no, we don't want you to go here.

Kristi Spence [01:04:14] Like, that's an unhealthy state for you and for everyone around you that loves you. And so how do we keep you, you know, in a place where you can develop a healthy relationship with food And there, and I wonder, Vance, and I don't know if this would work for you, but are there some rules that you can create that are a little bit more flexible, but they're still rules? So whenever I make up a plate or a dinner or anything, I think subconsciously I think I have three things. I'm like, do I have, you know, some protein on my plate? Do I have some carbohydrates and do I have color? And so if I can look at my meal, like last night I made this rice dish with, you know, black beans and a bunch of vegetables and I mixed the whole thing together, but it had all three of those components. Then I think generally I'm doing pretty well, you know, like, can I incorporate those three things at every meal? And then for me, I also, I tend to know when I start to create rules that are restrictive and unhealthy. And I did a post about this, like it, I called it like the things that I'll admit now. And one of the things for years and years, there were a whole bunch of, of foods that I just flat out said, I don't like them because that was way easier for me to avoid them and decline them and not eat them because I thought that they were unhealthy than it was for me to have a few. And to admit that, yes, I'm a dietician who will eat french fries and potato chips. And so potato chips is one of these things. My kids love potato chips. And for a long time I was like, no, I don't like potato chips, and I wouldn't eat potato chips with them. And finally Elliot was like, please, mom, would you just have one?

Kristi Spence [01:05:47] Like he desperately he's so good at sharing and he just wanted to share. I was like, how do I say no to that? And truth is, I actually like potato chips. I don't need to eat the whole bag, but I like them. And being able to admit that I liked them was kind of freeing. And I know that might sound so ridiculous, but I think that what happens is, you know, I, we create these, we create rules because it makes it easier. How do we get to a point where we have this healthy relationship with food that's kind of fundamental to the way we live? And I think that's easier for some people than others. For a lot of dieticians and nutritionists, they're living in the food world all the time. And so those things kind of come naturally to them. I think what we need to realize is professionals is that not everyone else is living in that world all the time. Like there are some things that are super easy for you to do that probably aren't easy for other people to do. And food, I think is, you know, we naturally self-select and gravitate into this field. It's pretty easy for me to put that meal together. It might not be for someone else, and they might need a little bit more rigor and a little bit more structure to get to that point. And I think we need to be flexible in helping them get there. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:06:55] By

Kristi Spence [01:06:56] Whatever means makes sense.

Vance Crowe [01:06:57] I, I think that's a very good explanation. I, one of the things that I've observed is, you know, there are some people that they, they're not even alcoholics, but like, I, I'll say this for me, like, if I don't drink, it's not a problem. But if I sit down with my father-in-law and have a bourbon, then I wanna have four bourbons, right? And I wake up the next day and I've got a hangover. I didn't do anything stupid. I didn't drive. But like it, the answer, the, the, if the answer to the question of should I have a drink is yes, then I always go too far. And so this, the, the, the best way for me to handle that is just to be like, well, I just don't drink. That's, I just don't drink. And so this, the, the same thing is true with food. Like if I have these rules and, and like you had said, rules for me are not hard. Yeah. They're, they're like, the harder thing for me to do is to be like, oh, I'm going to have four crackers, right? Because when I have four crackers now I want eight crackers, and after eight crackers, why not eat the rest of them? And so to me, this movement that has happened in the nutrition world has been, I would, they're alienating, I think maybe would even be an understatement because I think that there is like so much advice about being kind to yourself, that when you put it in the sense of there are a lot of these people are dealing with people with eating disorders, that makes a lot more sense to me because I'm very much like, don't be nice to the convict, put him in the penitentiary and he's gonna be really, really happy four months from now or six months from now as, as he sees the progress that he wanted to see.

Kristi Spence [01:08:33] Yeah, I, I do think that there needs to be flexibility, you know, and you know, it comes back to what you said before about listening. You know, as, as dieticians or you know, any sort of health practitioner, I think it's super important to listen to your patient, to find out where they're at and, and what they might need to be able to be successful. And so for some people that might be a much more rigid diet type concept, and for others it might be that they need to give themselves permission. So I think that this, this idea of rules, I think most things exist on this sliding scale. Like everything exists on a spectrum and we so desperately wanna put things into a black or white, you know, yes or no box. Like we wanna live in dichotomies because it's easy and make things binary. And the truth is that nothing exists that way. And so as, as a dietician, I think it's super important to be on the sliding scale and just be like, okay, you're someone who in this area of your life, like it's gonna be much easier for you to not have one more choice to make because you've already made that choice. Like you've already figured out what that rule is and you know, what you described earlier, I mean, we're living in this really stressful environment. You have to make thousands of decisions every day. If your food decisions could be a little bit easier for you to make, then when you get to that, you don't have the capacity to say, oh, I have to decide to stop at four crackers, but I really want eight crackers. Like that, it becomes too hard. And so I think it's okay to have to, you know, move to that end.

Kristi Spence [01:10:08] And we do this with sports, like, and I think people could argue that this is unhealthy. Like, you know, the Tour de France is going on right now, and a lot of the top riders measure their food. Like they are incredibly diligent about what they eat when they eat, you know, the type of macronutrients they're eating. And you could say that's, I don't know if that's a healthy relationship with food, an unhealthy relationship, but they're trying to do a certain task, they're trying to perform in a certain way. And this is one component that if it's all dialed in for them, it's just one less decision that they need to make in terms of maximizing their performance. And, and so you can do that and just hope that, you know, hey, in the end, when I'm not riding as a professional cyclist anymore, I have a healthy relationship and I don't need to do that forever. But I think we need to be real flexible on this scale. And so there's no one size fits all and the one size fits all, or the what's being I think, preached a lot is, you know, this kindness and you know, how do we want, you know, every food fits. Yes, I absolutely believe that. I also think that that's a solution and that's a message that's really gonna resonate with some people and not with others.

Vance Crowe [01:11:18] How much do you think is known about nutrition science? Do you feel like, ah, we've got it pretty nailed down. You know, oh, we're at 50% knowledge and 50% clouds, or we know 1% out of 99% to know?

Kristi Spence [01:11:35] Oh boy, I don't know if I could quantify it. I think we're constantly learning. Like I think that there's a whole bunch we don't know. And even in the 15 plus years that I've been in the nutrition world, a whole bunch has changed. Like we are realizing when, and I'll give you an example. When we first started doing nutrition studies, we would isolate nutrients. And so we would say, oh, like the carotene, you know, that you find the beta carotenes that you find in carrots, we think those are good for you. So let's do a study on betacarotene. Well, when we take betacarotene by itself out of the whole matrix of what comprise is comprised in a carrot and study it, we're not studying the same thing. But that's a much easier study to conduct from a scientific standpoint because we're trying to look at the relational implications of how does this nutrient impact these markers of health When we're eating a whole food diet, that's a lot harder. How do we say this person has really low, you know, heart rates of heart disease because they're eating beans and you know, they're drinking a glass of red wine and they're, you know, eating carrots. How do we know which thing is causing that? Or is it the combination of things? So I think what we do know is that there's, you know, combinations of foods and diets, you know, interact with each other in terms of our health, you know, in certain ways that's hard to study and hard to measure. And we have, you know, studies like the centenarians and the blue zones that, you know, start to look at correlations between, whoa, these pockets of people in the world tend to have longer lives and be healthier, and this is what their diet looks like, other things that we don't know.

Kristi Spence [01:13:09] So I think there's a whole bunch that our genetics have to play in terms of our nutrition. And I think that in the future, that's what we're gonna see much more of is these kind of prescription diets or food plans based on what our individual genetics are. We're not quite there yet, but I think that that's, you know, a potential. I also think, you know, yeah, I,

Vance Crowe [01:13:31] In, in that vein, I think there is a very interesting study that I, or like studies to be done, but I don't think they are right now. And that is that based on genetics, I think where your ancestors are based on a latitude largely determines what foods are right for you. So if you were way, way, way up north, a very high fat, low carbohydrate diet is probably the ones that your families, you know, your ancestors thrived on. 'cause in Norway, you know, there's not that many grains that you're gonna be able to eat. You're not gonna be able to eat the fruits that you have. But then if you go to the more like equatorial latitudes, now all of a sudden you have people that all the time carbohydrates are all around them. And so, right. We're gonna, I think, discover that people based on where their ancestors are from determines what your diet should be because that's what what is. Right. And I think like the idea of the blue zones are probably directionally accurate, but it's probably like people whose ancestors come from this area Yeah. Thrive on this diet as opposed to this is the diet that we should all be eating to get to being centenarians.

Kristi Spence [01:14:39] Right. Yeah, I agree with you. So I think that that's an area, there's, there's like a lot of untapped research that, you know, hopefully we'll learn more about. And then, you know, we're learning, there's a couple other things like our, our gut microbiome is incredibly complicated, and I think there's more and more and more coming out now about, you know, connections between our gut and our brain and, and all of those things. And then what we eat and how does that impact the microflora and our gut, and how does that impact overall health? I think we're just starting to scratch the surface on what that means. I think we're starting to look at foods at the molecular level, not just the nutrient level and what does that mean, you know, are there certain molecules within certain foods that have functional benefits for humans? And what are those? And you know, so it's almost like we've understand, we understand nutrients to a certain level, not I think necessarily the level that we need to understand overall health and impact. And then if we take that even more granular to the molecular level, that's a whole other complicated, you know, area of study.

Vance Crowe [01:15:40] Yeah. And in that, in that regard, I think like the, I I, when I heard this at first, I was very like suspicious of it, but I think that it's probably true now. Like, we know a lot about things like magnesium and what you pair magnesium with determines how much does it get absorbed into your body. Yes. Does it break the blood brain barrier? Does it, you know, help with sleep? Or is it, you know, being absorbed through your skin? I think that we will discover that a lot of things in preservatives and things that we were using to stabilize food, when you're looking at it in individually, it's like, oh, no big deal. Like when we study this, it's fine, but when you put it in a network of foods, now all of a sudden it's being absorbed in a way that changes your hormonal balances. And, and like, I, I don't say that to scare people, but I, I think it's just a reality that as we've added molecules into our food, it's doing things we can't know about because it's maybe just a small switch that it's turning on and off, but done over 20 years could have really pretty big ramifications.

Kristi Spence [01:16:44] I totally agree with you. I think I think a lot about that with, you know, different, you know, alternatives or artificial, you know, sweeteners or things that we add. It's, you know, hey, they, they might be safe, but what is the ramification in the context of a, you know, other diet, other foods in your diet? And then also over time, and I think, you know, even though we have a lot of, you know, studies and tests that go in to make sure that foods are safe, yeah, we don't, we don't know sometimes these long-term effects. And I agree it's not anything to scare anyone, it's just the reality of where we are with nutrition science and how our bodies work. And we're always learning, which is simultaneously really cool and also just fascinating that we, we don't know more.

Vance Crowe [01:17:27] Yeah. I mean, I think it makes it really, really hard to have great rules that you set and you say, oh, I'm gonna do this for the next 20 years unless it's working for you. Right, right. But like, I

Kristi Spence [01:17:36] Think,

Vance Crowe [01:17:36] I think one, your body changes over time. So the amount of carbohydrates that I could eat in my twenties is radically different than in my forties 'cause of how much it impacts your glucose, your blood glucose. But yeah, I think like this is one of those things that we'll discover things about cholesterol that'll totally change and should, you have two glasses of wine, but it makes it very difficult if knowing is what makes you feel confident in something, which I, you actually wrote about the concept of reciprocity and like, and how much you can know and how, how do you know something. So maybe as one of our closing out concepts talk about that, that idea of reciprocity and, and your son's desire to know how a math problem works.

Kristi Spence [01:18:19] Oh, so yeah. So my one son is super, like, he has to wrap his mind around it before he totally understands it. And so in this particular case, he was dividing fractions, you know, and, and I remember I was like so proud. I was like, oh yeah, dividing fractions, I remember you just multiply them by the reciprocal. And he was like, what? And I couldn't explain to beyond that. It was like, well, that's just how it works. Like this is this fundamental principle of math that, you know, and my husband's great, he understands it, he like sat down and he explained it all to him, but it got me thinking. I had just read the book Braiding Sweetgrass and which is a beautiful book and it weaves in, you know, a lot of indigenous, you know, traditions and our relationship with the natural world. And she talks so much in that book about this concept of reciprocity and trying to make something whole and how humans have this really important role to play in our natural world. And, you know, I think you have a lot of ag listeners, I think that, you know, farmers and ranchers understand this fundamentally, like how do we work with the land and the animals in a way that we're completing this cycle and making it whole and not taking too much, like how do we take what we need to take, but also give back, you know, so that the land stays viable to continue to produce, you know, crops. And so she talks a lot about this idea of reciprocity, and I'm thinking about this math problem. And I think we often think about things in terms of zero sum. We often think about things in terms of the additive property. Well, if I need to get something whole, I'm going to either need to add something to it or take something away from it. And I still have some fleshing out, like philosophically thinking about this idea of reciprocity to do.

Kristi Spence [01:19:52] But I think we benefit more from thinking about things as multiplicative, you know, instead of additive. So it's not zero sum, it's how do we, you know, at sometimes it's gonna be a bigger piece of the pie that we're putting in or taking away, but we're always trying to come back to making something whole and what are the fractions that we need to be putting in, or, you know, and, and it's, it's always putting in, it's not taking out. So if someone, you know, I think about this with Parenting Vance, like sometimes your wife's going to be able to give a little bit more than you are, but your idea is to make this whole circle of, hey, we're a parental unit, you know, that's gonna, that's gonna make our family work. And sometimes, you know, she's gonna be the one quarter and you're gonna be the three quarters, and sometimes it's gonna be, you know, a little bit different, but you're always each contributing, like, there's this idea of giving and it's like, you know, giving and taking, but over time you're making something whole. It's kind of, you know, complicated. But I, I love this idea of not thinking in thing in terms of things as just a zero sum. Like how do we think about things in terms of multiplication? Well,

Vance Crowe [01:21:00] I think there's an example of how great your writing is, because I read that, I don't know it, I dunno, several months ago, six, six months ago, and still remember it. And so if people are interested in reading about some of your musings that you're putting out there, where would they find what you're putting out there?

Kristi Spence [01:21:18] Oh, so thank you. I'm on Substack and you can search by my name Christie Spence, or the name of my Substack newsletter is called Noticing and it's completely free, so if you subscribe to it, it's a free subscription. You'll have access to everything I put out and I'm posting, you know, typically one to two times a week and more of just what we talked about today, Vance, like how I think about the world. And yeah, it's, it's been a lot of fun.

Vance Crowe [01:21:44] Well, I think it is a wonderful contribution to the world. It is one of the few things that I read regularly, so I'm so grateful you were willing to come on. Thank you. Christy Spence,

Kristi Spence [01:21:53] Thank you so much. Vance Crowe.