10. How to Foster a Resilient Household with the entire Bolaños Family
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Want some tips on how to foster a resilient household AND raise two teenage siblings who ACTUALLY like spending time together? Then we have just the family you will want to hear from in our very first multi-guest podcast episode!
Thank you for listening to the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast! We are a brother-sister team who are passionate about providing parents, teachers and coaches with ideas and strategies to help kids and teens build their resilience and achieve their potential in a healthy, fulfilling way.
For more information on the podcast, or if you have a question you would like answered by one of our expert guests, please visit us at - https://www.smarthwp.com/raisingresilientkidspodcast.
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Episode Transcript
Tom: [00:00:00] If you want some tips on how to foster a resilient household and raise two teenage siblings who actually like spending time together, we have just the family you'll want to hear from in our very first multi guest podcast episode. I'm Tom.
Jeannie: And I'm Jeannie. We are a brother and sister team who are passionate about providing parents, teachers, and coaches with ideas and strategies. To help kids and teens build their resilience and achieve their potential in a healthy, fulfilling way. Welcome to the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast.
Jeannie: We start every podcast with a question from an audience member. This question is, how do I best foster a household where resilience techniques, mental training, and the other strategies you talk about on the podcast are encouraged and actively practiced by my kids? Tom right away said, I know the people that can answer this question, isn't that right, Tom?
I did. So I have [00:01:00] the perfect guest to answer this question. One of the things that I do with, some of my training stuff is we do what's called weekly brain training. So on Monday nights from 7 30 to 7 45, we just do 15 minutes of reminders for any kids who've done any of the programs that I've had.
Tom: We have some kids come and go, but I have two kids who have been there since the beginning. They are there week in and week out. They're incredible kids. They're so dedicated that there was one time where, they, they dialed in, , to the session right at seven 30 and I look and it's like, Dark out there outside.
There's people behind him. And I'm like, where are you guys? Like, Oh, we're at Disneyland. We just wanted to, we just wanted to take a break. It was incredible. this is a couple of kids and a family that I have just had so much joy in getting to know, over the past few years.
So we have the Bolaños family with us as our guest today. Yay. Yay!
Anybody want to take a stab at that question as far as how, I mean, you guys have an incredible household that [00:02:00] has, has fostered this stuff in, in the years that I've gotten to know all of you. What's your secret?
Alicia: I think it's, it's definitely starts at home, starts with the parents and parents set the example. And my husband is really good about reading books, learning, growing, and he shares that knowledge with us, so I think that really is where this all started.
Jeannie: Elise, what do you think? Like, what, what is What makes you and your brother just be so dedicated to these practices?
Elise: I think just starting from a very young age, they've made, improving. your mind a positive and fun thing to learn. So that's something that's continued with us as we've grown older. And I don't know, something we can find fun now and something we want to keep learning from. And I know as a soccer player, something that I can incorporate into my everyday routine and something that helps me.
So [00:03:00] I just want to keep learning and everything.
Tom: Jeannie Elise is an incredible soccer player. We'll be watching her in the pros someday.
Jeannie: is so cool.
That is just so cool.
Tom: So Marco, it sounds like you're, you're the one who started all this. Did, did you do this as a kid?
Marco: No, I, I wish I had like this, , as a kid, I remember my first exposure to it was with Anthony Robbins and being fascinated by, his self improvement methodologies and I remember going and doing one of his firewalks seminars and walking across hot coals and the one thing I recognized was, it's important, and I wanted to pass this on to my kids, but the issue I had was not knowing how to teach them how to do it.
And that's where you guys came in.
Tom: I did the firewalk as well. The Tony Robbins firewalk. That was, it was, , it was incredible. I thought I would chicken out, but. But I got up, I got it up and I was just shocked by, by that. I could actually do that. So it's, it's [00:04:00] incredible for sure.
Marco: I think as parents, we try to relate back everything that they're involved in to what you guys are teaching. So any situation that we see, we might prompt them, Hey, what technique is appropriate for what, whatever it is that you guys are facing or whatever you've experienced.
I personally try to send them a video, maybe of one of their heroes or somebody that they might admire and relate that video to some kind of mental improvement, because everybody works on the physical part of development.
Very, very little is emphasized when it comes to the mental part. I'll ask , what were you taught that is applicable to what you're going through? How can you incorporate it into what you're doing and how can that improve? And then ultimately, if they have an issue, I always, Hey, ask Tom, reach out to Tom, see if there's something he can, he can work on, whether it's alter ego or something else.
Tom: That's great. And Marco and Alicia, did you take, different strategies to. [00:05:00] Convince Elise versus to convince Mark that this stuff is important. Was it just based on what their interests were or how did, how did you get them both? Cause you know, I've seen with a lot of people that I work with, it's, it's usually, you know, one of the kids is kind of bought in, but never both.
Marco: Both kids are very different, one is into sports. The other one is more academic. So originally we started with the sports aspect. So Elise was, first one to, to sign up.
Then we got Mark involved because we recognize the importance of the skills and how they can be applicable to him and his situations academically. We use different strategies and the same thing doesn't work for Mark that might work for Elise. Elise is big time in the soccer. So when we talk about some of the players, she looks up to, for example, they may not be relevant for Mark.
Alicia: I feel like we're really, um, tight knit family and it's important for us. So it's something that we're stressing over and over to them. yes, they're using it for sports or [00:06:00] academics. But at the end of the day, we're teaching them responsibility and commitment. it's always reminding them and then they're, they catch on and they're doing it on their own.
Marco: I think the one thing that we've done together as a family, we've communicated the importance of it.
Like Tom was saying, no matter where we are, we put it on our calendar and we, ensure that they participate.
And I think. Through our actions, they also recognize that it is important because we believe it's important.
I think we reinforced it. We encouraged it. But ultimately they, they saw the value and they did it.
Alicia: Right. They see the value. They've bought into it. They enjoy the session. Yes. And they keep coming back because it's working for them.
Tom: Mark and Elise, are there any techniques that you found helpful that you think other kids would find helpful as well?
Marc: I particularly enjoyed the square breathing.
I find it particularly [00:07:00] calming , because while you're waiting in those four seconds, you're visualizing, like, what's going to go on, and you're just calming yourself down, and you feel like you're going to be able to go into it and not have that many issues.
Jeannie: Our guest on last month's podcast talked about the brain game hero. People that maybe are in a field that a kid is interested in or somebody that they look up to who does these techniques and whatnot.
And he talks about how it's, Important to try to connect that do you have is there an athlete or a celebrity or maybe it's your parents, somebody who you know who does these techniques that you feel like has influenced you and maybe encouraged you to continue to do this?
Elise: Yes, some of the, like big names would be, uh, Michael Phelps. And then also the mentality of, like, Kobe and Michael Jordan, like, those are players that have, like, this strong minded mentality that I'm trying to achieve, so just, like, looking up to them is, yeah, something I
Jeannie: I'm sure when you're, a young athlete and [00:08:00] you see these people that have achieved, true superstardom, tons of Olympic medals and things like that, it probably makes you go like, okay, well if it works for them, then probably it's going to work for me too.
Tom: I want to take just a quick little sidebar here and get some parenting advice from Alicia and Marco. So, um,
Jeannie: The whole world needs parenting advice from you too.
Tom: So this is, um, the, it's pretty amazing. So you've got two teenagers who actually like to spend time together, which is very, very unusual. One of the things that we do, Jeannie, at the beginning of every year, we do goals.
And one of their goals consistently the past few years has always been, I want to spend more time with my brother or my sister. So how Marco and Alicia, how did you get that to work?
Marco: I'm dumbfounded. I have no idea. No, you know,
Tom: It's wonderful.
Marco: I don't think we've done anything actively to encourage that. it's just our, our lifestyle, the way we, we [00:09:00] interact with each other. It's more passive. When we do things, and the other child may not be present, whether it be at the supermarket or going to the store or going shopping or at the mall, when one wants something, I always say, okay, what are we going to do for Mark?
It's always important for them to, to consider their sibling. So that's always at the forefront of our involvement. And it might be, hey, okay, I've got to call him because I'm not sure what he's going to want. Okay. Pick up the phone and make sure you make, make that phone call. But it's, it's always important for me to have each of them consider the other sibling.
Jeannie: Tom, I would like you to start doing that from now on also. Anytime you go to the store and you buy yourself something, I would like you to call me and I'll let you know when I want to.
Marco: High ticket items.
Tom: That's
Jeannie: Exactly. TVs, new pair of headphones, all of those things.
No, I, I love it. It, it's a, it sounds like it's a family thing and then it's sort of, now the kids are sort of like, okay, this is what we do. This is how we do it in our family. [00:10:00]
Alicia: We do a lot as a family, whether it's, um, a weekly Friday night TV show, we're going to sit down together and watch it.
We've all become a F1 family. We love Formula One. We'll get up super early to watch the race. We went to Vegas to watch it in person. It was an incredible experience. And, you know, we flew Mark in from college and Elise took a day off from school. We've made it happen, but it's just, we do a lot together as a family.
And. I think they enjoy their company, but don't get me wrong. They're still siblings and there's plenty of moments where they need their space.
Jeannie: They wouldn't be siblings if that wasn't the case.
Marco: They're exactly two years apart, uh, two years in a day. So we always, we always had. I wouldn't say competition, but there was always conflict when it came to birthdays, we would always encourage them to work things out amongst themselves as to which restaurant they wanted to go [00:11:00] to, for example, if one wanted to go to the same place as the other, they would have to work it out because obviously we didn't want to have dinner at the same place two days in a row. But, but that's one example where we would encourage as parents, like, okay, we have a conflict, Marc and Elise, go work it out and then come, come back and tell us your solution.
That way there was a compromise, but they were still both happy and they recognize each other's wants and needs and now they work things out obviously without our involvement or less of our involvement, but they're good when it comes to conflict.
Tom: To wrap up then, I guess we could maybe just do a round robin. Any final advice, suggestions, final thoughts on anything that we talked about or anything else you'd, you'd want to share with, with the other podcast audience, who wants to go first
Marc: So this is from a previous question for , motivation, I was always really interested in psychology , so when I first started getting into sessions, a lot of the stuff that you [00:12:00] were saying, I had already kind of covered in my psychology class, like, and, like, oh, this works, I loved exploring this, and I've always thought to learn more, like, if you remember from our original sessions before our weekly Tom, we went over like REM and sleep and that was always just, oh, that's interesting and, and how that whole works.
And that's just kept me, I want to do more and more. And then Last week we had our fun activity where we had to count all the numbers, find them all while the other distracts each other. And it's just like stuff like that, that helps us like keep focus and stay.
Alicia: To add on to that, I can recall, like, Elise's original sessions as well. Where you had parent participation and both Elise and Mark were, I mean, I could just hear them cracking up and so I'm like, oh, this is, this is great. You know, you're getting the parent, the child involved in the same activity. They're laughing together.
You, you made it fun for them and they want to continue [00:13:00] coming and learning.
Tom: Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's so important to get both the parents and the kids involved in this stuff, learning it together. So thanks, Alicia
Elise: I think the constant introduction of like new material. For example, the belly breathing that we did a few weeks ago. that's something that my trainer also recently introduced and how that could benefit my performance on the field. And then Tom introduced it as something that could like calm me down and settle me down a bit.
So I think just like, Learning new techniques is something that's enjoyable and something that's helping me improve.
Jeannie: And it also is probably beneficial because just like anything in life, you can learn a lot of things and there might be ones that don't work for you. But when you're introduced to all these different techniques, you find like, oh, this one works for me on the soccer field. This one works for me when I'm in school.
You have this huge toolbox. You can keep going back to the ones that you enjoy the most or that work for you in whatever situation you're in.
Tom: That's why I love teaching a whole bunch of things because everybody's different and [00:14:00] then even some of them, you know, square breathing may work for a while, but then maybe get bored of it and it becomes just old hat and it doesn't work anymore. So trying new things I think is always very beneficial.
Marc: It may be small, but I basically after every session I always go and say, oh, that we finished and then Either parent would either ask, Oh, what did you learn or what did you do? And that allows us to actively recall, , what we learned and be able to just keep it stored. And I would just give, like, a basic summary to them.
Oh, we were drawing stuff without looking at our paper. so we just give a little bit of summary and what are the reasons behind it because if I just tell my dad we were drawing just for no reason he's gonna be like what was the point so I have to explain oh it was for it was for this reason
Jeannie: But I also give, I give you a pat on the back because , most kids, parents say, Oh, what did you do today? They're like, Nothing. Like, so cool of you to recognize like, oh, me being able to tell him what I did. I'm answering his question, but it's also benefiting me so that I'm able to remember it.
Tom: Yeah. Marc, that is so smart. Cause the best way to learn anything is to have to teach [00:15:00] somebody else that, that thing you've got it. That's, that's so smart that you do that. And then Marco, you want to finish up what's final thoughts, any advice?
Marco: Every time I meet a new parent and they're open to, Hey, what did you guys do for Elise? What are you doing for your kids? You're the first name I mentioned , because it talks about the mental skillset.
And I tell parents, not only is it, is it applicable to what they're involved in now as kids, whether it be sports or what have you, but these are life lessons that they can use into adulthood. And I wish I would have known this when I was a kid.
It's, it's a, a tremendous toolbox that they're going to be carrying around in, in life. And. Hopefully, uh, they can continue to apply.
Tom: Yeah, you're right. This stuff, , it's so great to learn it this young, because no matter what they do for the rest of their lives, if it is professional soccer, if it's the business world or whatever, maybe you can apply all of this stuff. So I guess I just want to wrap up by saying how blessed and grateful. I [00:16:00] am that I have gotten to work with you and, and know all four of you over the past few years. Elise and Mark, Monday nights, I love because I get to see you guys and, and work with you guys, you know, every single week. So it's been fun seeing you the past few years, hearing about your wins and everything that you're doing, it's, uh, I'm very, very blessed and very, very grateful.
Marco: No, thank you. We're, we are the ones who are really grateful. Thank you.
Tom: Thanks for being on the podcast.
Jeannie: I loved that conversation. It's, it's so fun to finally meet the Bolaños family because times when Tom has come out here to visit me here in LA, they are also in the Southern California area. And Tom has gone to see Elise play and gone to meet up with them. And so I've always wondered, I'm like, who Who are these people that you're also visiting when you visit me?
And now I totally see why you want to visit them. And next time you come out, I'm coming with,
Tom: Yeah, you definitely have to come to a game and Elise we'll be starting, , college soon, so she'll be planned and she's gonna be going to college out there. So once she starts playing, , for the college team, I definitely will [00:17:00] be out there and we can both go
Jeannie: Oh yeah. I'm so, so, so, so down for that. So what, what about you? Like, what were some of your favorite takeaways? Mm hmm.
Tom: there were, you know, a bunch as there seems to always be in these, podcasts. But, but I think the thing that Marco said. Sharing like those videos, because I think of my kiddos the videos or the tik toks or whatever that may be, that's what they're watching.
So if I could find something in the medium that they are consuming, that has these types of messages for people that, you know, their heroes or whatever it may be sharing those short videos, I think was, was a smart one. And. And then another one is how Marco talked about how when they're going through tough times, , or, or situations, he asks, okay, what did you learn?
You know, what have we talked about that you can apply to this situation? So those were a couple really good ones that I thought I'm going to apply. And I think anybody could apply.
I really like how, we kind of asked the question of like, what is the trick?
Jeannie: In order to get these teens to like each other, but [00:18:00] there really is no trick. It's just about creating that family bond, creating that family closeness, like making effort, putting forth effort. It isn't some formula they had. They just, make sure that the parents are showing like, Hey, we want to think about the other sibling.
We want to take them into account in every way, whether we're planning a birthday party or just buying something at the shopping mall. And it's a good reminder that it doesn't take much. But just keeping that, that sibling in mind.
Tom: . And, and I think it's the whole family too, cause I was just thinking about how the other day we were at Lou Malnati's and, and Linda, my wife, wasn't there and all of us said, Hey, what should we get mom? So it's, just being, you know, being conscious and appreciative and thinking about everybody in the family I think is, is important and that, that is a great lesson for
Jeannie: Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I really loved is, I, I know Alyse and Mark are, are involved in the programs that you do. And a lot of times when you see that kids are that involved, , passionate about something [00:19:00] you oftentimes do think that it comes from the parents and it certainly did in the case of Marco and Alicia, but I really like how Marco said, like, I didn't have this when I was a kid, he kind of discovered it later in life.
It just shows that we don't need to do something from the time that we're, you know, five years old. We can get this interest in something at any age and, , see how it benefits us in our life and pass it on.
Tom: Yeah, you don't need to be an expert, to, to share this stuff. Just if you hear from somebody else, you can definitely pass it along to your
Jeannie: Totally, totally. Such a cool conversation. Again, I'm so happy that I finally met them and I'm so excited to go to one of Lisa's soccer games.
Tom: I'm excited to take you there and see her play.
Jeannie: Well, thank you so much everybody for listening . Such a great conversation that we're so happy that you're here for, and we will see you next month.