Jeremy:
So there’s an awesome book that’s going viral in our little community right now. And it’s written by Emerson Eggerichs, you guys probably know about. His book, Love & Respect, it’s awesome. But he has written many other follow throughs, one for family, and then he wrote one just for mothers and sons. And it’s a really incredible book. Really, what he is talking about in this book is that women have to learn how to use respect speech to their sons, even their really young sons. And it makes a night and day difference. So I think this book is called The Respect Effect that I wanted to give you guys one quote from this. And I want to talk to just us, as fathers too, about this.

So he says, “Respect is a need in the male soul, not only in your husband, but also in your little boy. The man is in the boy. If we do not teach girls about the power of their disrespect and how that shuts down the heart of a boy, we will not motivate the boy to hear us when we coach him on how to conduct himself toward women.” So I really love this. And then April, she actually played this for all four of Jackson’s sisters. And she just wanted to equip them and say, “Hey, you have a brother who has a different heart language than is intuitive to you, and it is respect talk.” And I think that a lot of times, guys do this intuitively for each other. A lot of men do this intuitively towards sons. But if you struggle with this as a father, or if any mothers are listening to this, man, really learn this language. And it is night and day. I’ve seen this with so many guys.

I’ve seen this when I was coaching guys. I see this with my own son. And that is that if you just shift your language slightly towards respecting them, “I respect the man you’re becoming.” And this issue, I expect you to be able to overcome this because I respect you. And just constantly treating them with honor and respect and making deference to the respect that you have for the man that they’re becoming, this really motivates boys at a level that’s completely different. And this language can be completely foreign to particularly a lot of women. And so guys, if you find that there’s a constant clash going on between your wife and your son, I cannot recommend reading this book enough. But Jeff, what have you thought about this one?

Jeff:
Yeah. I mean, I can’t speak as much into the mother and son one, but the Eggerichs are amazing and incredible. But one thing I’ll say, just because I know actually, a lot of moms, I’d probably say almost half our audience is probably actually moms and women that listen to this podcast. I would just say to you ladies, man, if you haven’t dived into the importance of this for your husband, because it’s a trickle down effect, I think, from that to then the son, you need to step into that. You need to lean into that. And the crazy part is it has nothing to do with their performance, right? There’s a lot of people, there’s something about respect where it’s actually one of the first activating tools that then, they then rise to the occasion and start performing.

And so we do the opposite where we’re like, “Oh, they’re not worthy of my respect.” That’s what people actually say out in culture all the time, right? “They’re not worthy of my respect. They don’t deserve my respect.” And maybe at some level, that might be true culturally. Sure. But I think in a marriage, man, you can actually create a future for your husband that you want him to go towards if you respect him first. I think just really think on that, really sit on that, really ask yourself if you feel like you do that. And there’s something about that, over a long period of time, that the husband starts rising to that. I think husbands more than, I think, men, adult men more than probably any girls, women, any other age demographic or gender demographic. I think that particular age of men is so prone to what everyone around them is saying they are, they become.

I think that’s just so… A husband can just go so internal, so become like the typical lazy, abdicate his responsibility. And there’s a lot of that that’s his sin, but there’s a lot of that that I think actually are so many factors around him just sending him into that vacuum. And that starts a lot with whoever’s closest to him and respect. So I would just end with that note of that. And then once you see that, or if you already do do that, then yeah. Then I think the one that we don’t trickle that down to is then children and sons. We think, “Oh, that’s my child. I don’t have to do X, Y, and Z. That’s my child.” But no, no, no.

Jeremy:
Learn to respect him.

Jeff:
To actually call him up into the man you want him to be that you’re painting that future for him, that he can step into as well.