Plan Your Grandchild's Destiny: The Blueprint for Raising Kids Who Never Need Rescuing

WEBVTT

00:00:01.679 --> 00:00:12.480
Nathaniel, welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. Your approach is so powerful because it's proven you have a story to share with us that's very real.

00:00:13.199 --> 00:00:31.539
You're not here to make people feel good, but to get them free. So in your opinion, what does this freedom look like for a grandparent, especially raising a second family? I think freedom is something we all get to decide what freedom is.

00:00:31.859 --> 00:00:45.780
Freedom for me is to be in the best shape I can possibly be in. I usually think of freedom that's just started by saying I think about it in a three pronged approach. I think about it in terms of health, wealth and wisdom.

00:00:46.740 --> 00:01:39.540
I think about freedom in terms of finance, but not like wealth the way many people think. Think about it like, how much stuff can I accumulate? I'm not interested in. You'll appreciate this, collecting things that rust and moths do destroy. I'm interested in knowing that I'm free, that I don't owe anyone, because to me, the real incarceration, if you will, comes if you have to wake up every day worrying or wondering how you're going to pay for something that has depreciated, that has no value. And I also if. But tied to my freedom of not owning anyone is not owning anybody because I work in an industry and I have for 30 years where people oftentimes don't understand that the things we invest in financially oftentimes come at the expense of incarcerating or taking other people's freedom. And so I don't think I can be free unless everyone is free.

00:01:39.540 --> 00:02:00.310
And then lastly, I think about freedom by being an open vessel that the Creator can freely pour into that I can take what I believe is timeless wisdom and hopefully share with other people. But that's freedom for me and freedom for our people, right? It's relative. So some people feel differently about freedom, but that's the way I interpret freedom.

00:02:03.349 --> 00:02:21.729
You talk about the backward design blueprint for our listeners who are stepping back into the parenting role unexpectedly. How do they begin designing life for a child who already 5, 10, 15? Where do they start this plan?

00:02:22.370 --> 00:02:33.729
All things start with a dream. All things start with you. And you said something to me earlier. Amma says, I think it's okay, and your listeners get to hear it. You mentioned your son and you mentioned about the heart.

00:02:34.370 --> 00:03:07.889
I believe, again, I'm not going to quote Scripture, but I'm going to say that I believe these things because the grandmother who helped raise me taught me these things and she would have if she was here. And she is here. She would say, as a person thinketh in their heart, so are they. And so I would say the answer to your question, what is it that grandparents think in their heart for their grandchildren? Because that's what their grandchildren could be. So it begins with the thoughts of your heart.

00:03:08.539 --> 00:03:19.780
What do you want for your grandchildren's life? So let's unpack that. What does that look like? If the world were perfect and there were no obstacles or obstructions, what would you want for your grandchildren?

00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:49.300
Because only once we know where it is that you want to go, can we then start to construct a pathway to get there. It's no different than if you are wherever you are and where I'm in Indiana, Indianapolis, outside of Indianapolis. And if you and I decided, I don't know, to meet in Bogota, we're not going to meet in Bogota. But if we decide to meet in. Bogota, you never know. Right. Maybe. Right. Our journeys to get there would be somewhat different, but in order to get to the same location, we would need a map or a route, an itinerary to get there.

00:03:49.379 --> 00:03:51.860
That's all I would say with people. Where do you want to go first?

00:03:53.139 --> 00:04:00.099
You're the co founder of the League of Extraordinary Parents. That's quite a title. Yes.

00:04:01.409 --> 00:04:19.170
What's the core characteristic or mindset that separates an ordinary parent from an extraordinary parent? Do you think, again in terms of relatives? So I think that there's far too much outsourcing in parenting today. And to me, that's what's ordinary.

00:04:20.050 --> 00:04:48.480
I think too many people want to. But I would say this as a caveat. I think this nation, because I can only speak about the United States, it's the only place I've ever lived. But I think this nation does a terrible job of convincing parents that we should outsource all our responsibilities as parents to someone else. Until the nation decides that we shouldn't have outsourced all our responsibility and we're a poor parent. So let me unpack that a little bit.

00:04:49.279 --> 00:06:15.339
My wife, Latonya is my wife, or the woman who calls me her husband. Latonya and I decided that we were going to have this child. And then we went to Lamaze classes to learn how to eat ice chips and breathe and all that kind of stuff. But once the baby was born and we were in the hospital, and 36 hours, 48 hours later, and they told us, you don't have to go home, but you got to get up out of here, Latonya and I had no idea what we were doing. We Knew more about the whole childbirth piece than we knew about child rearing. And I think that's a failure to. That this nation has, because it sets us up to always look for somebody else to give our child to. So now she's trying to figure out how to get back to work and to get back to work, to get a baby to the child care provider without understanding that there's a level of detachment that's going on when she gives up her baby to somebody else. But then we're in a hurry to get the child to a nursery school, and then we're in a hurry to get the child to kindergarten. And so we're always trying to get in a hurry to. To send the child to somebody else to care for the child. So I think that that is what is the ordinary thing, the extraordinary thing is for folks to realize that you're the person that invited your child to the planet. They are the royal invited guests. And if you had some royalty in your house, you would not be trying to pass off the royalty to somebody else. You would want to spend the time with the royal person to make sure that they had a great time.

00:06:15.339 --> 00:07:30.069
But they were here. And I think that that's the extraordinary journey that we're talking about parents joining their children on. That's a great way of viewing it. I always say that in this age of technology, it's difficult to slow life down. One of the pieces of wisdom that I'm gaining as an older person, I'm 68, in the process of raising these children, is that I've found that time can be different. You can slow down time, and it doesn't seem like you accomplish any less. That might sound strange. I don't know why I didn't learn that when I was young, because I was going 90 miles an hour all the time thinking I was going to get somewhere faster. But usually it just makes you trip more along the way. They say the race is not given to the swift, but he or she that can endure to the end. So that's a long journey. You can move at your own snail's pace. I suppose you stress that parenting ain't for the lazy. And raising children who will never need rescuing is a goal that you work towards.

00:07:30.949 --> 00:07:42.069
What's the single most important skill do you feel that a grandparent must instill today to ensure that their grandchild becomes truly independent and resilient?

00:07:42.959 --> 00:08:07.920
That the grandparents should instill in the child, or the grandparents should instill in themselves? Ooh, let's talk about both of those. See, because I believe, again, my grandmother. Who. Right. Who is no longer with me. And if I could, I just want to share this part about my grandmother, the one I'm talking about in particular. My mother's mother was born in 1908.

00:08:09.310 --> 00:08:13.069
She lived to 2011. Wow.

00:08:13.629 --> 00:08:30.829
Right. So when I. When I say to people, I think I have a unique perspective because the woman who partially helped to raise me knew her grandparents who were slaves and was alive to see the first black man be president, United States.

00:08:32.029 --> 00:08:53.289
Her life, she run the gamut. That's my grandmother. Her father was a pastor. Like, she lived through the ends of Reconstruction and the Great Depression, et cetera. So she saw so much. And so I got an opportunity to see the world through her lens. So I would say the first thing is to recognize and tree is in fruit.

00:08:53.450 --> 00:09:15.100
Grandparents can only give grandchildren what they have inside them to give. And the best thing that a grandparent I could guess I would take a give is to give a child the ability to see that no matter what age you are, as my son told me, you can still do more. You still have time. And I think that's one of the things that grandparents can give children.

00:09:16.059 --> 00:09:21.980
I would agree with you. You challenged the lie of letting kids be kids.

00:09:23.899 --> 00:09:43.110
Why is this philosophy so damaging particular for children who may have already experienced instability or trauma? Well, if you're a piece of clay and you have no experiences, would you just let the piece of clay figure out what it is it wants to be?

00:09:43.429 --> 00:10:08.759
Or would you take the piece of clay. Good point. And try to form it into something that, you know, that the clay would have utility for? I think that's a little bit what folks do with children. I am not advocating. Some people hear me say that and think that I'm demanding. I demand that a child do what I want them to do. Absolutely not the case. But I do believe in this thing, like the life buffet table.

00:10:09.080 --> 00:10:31.610
And I think the best thing we can do is expose young people to as much good that we can possibly expose them to. So if I could use this as an analogy, I grew up in Gary, Indiana. Gary, Indiana, is considered one of the more economically socially depressed cities in America.

00:10:33.690 --> 00:10:44.049
When I was a high school sophomore, my high school guidance counselor told me the best that I could hope to do in my life was join the military. He didn't mean I could be an officer.

00:10:44.049 --> 00:11:50.750
He thought I could. Or a gentleman, for that matter, thought I could maybe at best be a grunt. When I think about that in terms of a buffet table, he decided that the Best I could eat at the table was bologna and cheese and peanut butter and jelly. Did you buy that at the time? No, because I had a village of people who told me that I could do better with my life. But at first, I don't quite understand what you're telling me. But. But moreover, I don't know where else to go. Where else do you go when the guy who's the counselor tells you that this is the best you could hope to do? So many people when you hear that, you would just give up. Like, this is what he said is my fate. Here's the buffet table. Eat this peanut butter and jelly and this banana. How old were you at the time he told you that? 15. About to turn 16. Pretty influential time in your life. Absolutely. But the other people told me, hey, Nate, there's filet mignon and there's Dom Perignon. And they write this caviar down at the other end of the table. You're welcome to that, too. But how do I get to that?

00:11:50.750 --> 00:12:35.029
And so that's what I think that we should do for children. Make sure we expose them to enough stuff. Now, look, if you want to eat peanut butter and jelly, that's the life you want. Have at it. But you can't say you want peanut butter and jelly if you've never tried to. This other stuff at the end of the table. And you can't just say, I only want this stuff on the other end of the table. If you have no experience with what it means to eat the stuff on the other end. I always say that kids understand images once they're given them. Like, that's a pretty powerful image. My grandson happens to love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and he eats the same thing for three months. And then he changes what he decides he likes.

00:12:35.769 --> 00:12:46.169
But if I told him, if you think that's good, you gotta try this kind of thing. I know he understands things and life in those terms.

00:12:46.570 --> 00:12:57.610
Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. So I love the image of the clay because my grandkids love clay. If I explain to them, here's this lump of clay.

00:12:57.610 --> 00:13:01.210
Let's create a sculpture. What do you want to be when you grow up?

00:13:01.350 --> 00:14:09.919
Absolutely. I think in terms of Legos. Cause Naim, my son, he loved Legos. And so everywhere, we at some point stopped buying toys. We just buy Legos. He had so many Legos. And it's not surprising, when I think about it, that he's an engineer today. But we bought these Legos, because with the Legos. Yeah, there's something on the package but at some point, you have so many of them, you just make whatever you want to make. And that's essentially what I'm saying. When you give the children encouragement and then you say, hey, the world is your proverbial oyster. You make what you want to make out of it. But I at least have to give you the material so you can have some ideal that you can do whatever you want to do. I love that so many of us struggle with the balance of discipline and unconditional love. How does a purposeful parent integrate fatherhood, manhood, audacity to love on purpose into everyday interactions? Can you unpack that for me a little bit? I got the unconditional love piece, but I know you said something else, and I want to make sure I ask you a question accurately.

00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:17.360
Well, my husband, who was raised in a very conservative farming family in the South.

00:14:17.600 --> 00:15:26.629
Okay. Has very specific ideas about what a man is, what life is. Many of us grandparents who want that carrot for their grandchildren has to break tradition to teach these ideals that we're talking about. Is there a vision you can give them that would help? Gotcha. So the first piece, the unconditional love piece, that part I've come to understand. I don't have an option. I have no option with love. I have an option which is very different. Like, I'm commanded to love my maker and love my neighbor. That I'm commanded to do. The liking part is completely different. So how does that show up? As a man who was raised by a father who was in the military, and his grandfather was in the military, and his uncle was in the military, I know very well that old style of what is a man.

00:15:28.070 --> 00:17:06.359
But I know that old style of what is a man is flawed. And I know that those men, when they are honest and when they look deep down inside, they know that that's not the best way to proceed. Because what it does, it denies the responsibility to love your child as yourself. See, when my father would discipline me in a particular way, he would do so and say, well, I don't have a father. But if I ask you, if you had a father, would you want your father to do this stuff to you? You would absolutely, unequivocally say, no, I would not want my dad to beat me or withhold affection and love. So I. I think the first thing I would do is, like, again, like, starting with yourself, look at myself and ask, is that what I want? I had one time when I disciplined my son like my father disciplined me. And it was the worst day of My life, I cried the entire day. And the next day, a very good friend of mine who's a client of mine, her name is Sheila Trigg, and I went to see her, I dropped Naeem off at school and she and I were supposed to talk about her finances. And she says, how's the baby? And I just fell apart. And I think I was at her house about four hours and she had to help put me back together because I realized that that old fashioned way wasn't, wasn't going to work. So I, I would just say men have to look inside and be honest. That is that did that. Is that really what you would have wanted, the little you. Is that what the little you really needed then was to be in discipline? Like that?

00:17:07.400 --> 00:17:16.680
Probably not. And is that all that a man is, is somebody who provides economically? Because if that is all that we are, well, we are in a world of trouble if that's all men are reduced to.

00:17:18.200 --> 00:18:56.279
And I think, even though, you know, I know my husband shows up every day with these kids and I know that goes on inside of him and he's not a person that communicates his feelings very often, but I think if we keep those images in our minds, whether we can express them to others or not, it still comes through the kids. Yeah, my father's not here any longer. My father passed May 13, 2018, on Mother's Day. I hadn't talked to my father for more than probably about four or five times in over 20 years. I had made the decision that to continue to have, to strive to try to have a relationship with my father was counterproductive to being the kind of man I need to be for the person who was responsible for me, who called me dad. But even though my father raised me in such a fashion, I found a way, I believe, to be better than my father, even though my father didn't give me things to be better than him. If does that, if that makes sense. Oh yeah. And you just made me think that if a man or a grandfather does nothing more than have the goal that their grandson is a different man than the grandfather before him or the great grandfather before that, then that's progress.

00:18:57.559 --> 00:19:09.880
Yeah. My dad used to say, and this is to the point, he used to say to me, if anything I give you works for you, use it. And if it doesn't, throw it away. And I used to think, man, you are such a coward, just be better.

00:19:10.599 --> 00:19:52.359
This is just a bunch of excuses. There's a lot of wisdom in that. Right. And just as you help me Right now, what I now understood, what I've been understanding, but what it seems, clearer now than ever, is that he gave me liberty to say, I know I'm not going to do everything right. And when I don't do it right, don't keep it. Don't apply that to your life. And when I do it right, hold on to that. And so I think that that's what grandfathers or fathers or uncles or anybody who's raised differently and are trying to raise children in a very different world have to understand, hey, everything we give them is not going to work.

00:19:53.079 --> 00:20:05.559
But let's try to give them some things that are applicable no matter what place or time they're in. I think that's a great piece of advice for grandparents out there. I know you've lived through very difficult times.

00:20:07.640 --> 00:20:11.400
I know I have. Many of us have.

00:20:11.799 --> 00:20:21.490
How should a grandparent use these difficult life experiences, their struggles as a source of strength and teaching for their grandchild?

00:20:25.490 --> 00:20:51.549
You know, so I'm a. I'm a. You said I've lived a difficult time, so I'll clarify for the listeners. I'm a survivor. According to the Centers of Disease control, there are 10 adverse childhood experiences. Growing up in a household where you live in poverty or where you see someone be abused or someone abuses drug and alcohol or someone's been incarcerated. There are eight of those 10 things that occurred while I was a child.

00:20:54.670 --> 00:21:01.150
My wife is a survivor of seven of those 10, and collectively we have nine of those 10.

00:21:03.230 --> 00:21:06.349
There's a way to look at those things and say, wow, woe is me.

00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:10.509
But then there's a way to look at those things and say, wow, me.

00:21:11.630 --> 00:21:22.539
And I've decided to look at those things and say, wow me. Right? I'm here. I didn't fall apart. I'm still here. And how am I here?

00:21:22.700 --> 00:22:15.339
Oh, because some people decided along the way to love me for no good reason. They just decided to love me. Be it if you believe God or divine intervention or the good nature of people. For some reason, folks decided to love me for no reason. And because of that, I don't want to spend any more time lamenting what happened to me than I do being joyful about the people who poured into goodness and mercy into my life. So I really don't pay that much attention to what happened to me other than to share when someone like you might ask, hey, have you ever experienced something? I can say, yeah, I have. But what I do today is try to live my life, as I say, with joy on purpose. Because the other thing would be to live in misery on purpose. And I choose joy over misery every day, all day.

00:22:18.220 --> 00:22:24.220
I feel the same way. And I also tell people that I can speak from experience. Yep.

00:22:25.900 --> 00:22:28.619
And a wisdom that someone who's lived a perfect life can't.

00:22:30.619 --> 00:22:40.180
Yep, that's true. You famously say, I love this one. College is a scam unless you do this first.

00:22:41.940 --> 00:23:00.339
Yes. For grandparents who may have limited savings, which most of us do, and even less so than we planned on, what's the one financial educational strategy they need to implement today to ensure a debt free path to opportunity for their grandchild?

00:23:01.539 --> 00:23:04.319
So, a little background, of course.

00:23:05.359 --> 00:23:28.160
Naim, the guy who calls me dad before Latonya and I knew we were having a male or female, she and I wrote Harvard for an application and we wanted the application from Harvard because I was in law school, newly married, about to have an expecting wife, and I don't have a job.

00:23:29.089 --> 00:23:40.250
And I'm asking myself, what else was I supposed to do? I've done everything I thought I was supposed to do. And then I thought, well, maybe if I had gone to a better law school.

00:23:40.250 --> 00:24:00.549
I went to a school called Valparaiso University. It's a good school. It's not Harvard or Yale or Princeton. It's a good school, but at that school, Only the top 5% of the students are going to get a job. If I go to Harvard or Yale, there's no question I would have. Somebody would have decided to hire me. In fact, when you introduced me today, you just said Harvard trained lawyer, Nathaniel A. Turner.

00:24:01.910 --> 00:25:34.529
But so I was like, okay, well why didn't you go to Harvard? Well, you didn't go to Harvard because you didn't do well enough on the LSAT and you didn't have good enough grades in undergrad. Well, why didn't you have good enough grades in undergrad? Well, because you didn't know how to prepare. You showed up in undergrad and you weren't ready to be in undergrad. Well, why weren't you ready? Well, where'd you go to high school? And where'd you go to high school? Why didn't you go to a different high school? Well, because this is where you went to middle school. So you trace it all the way back and you say, oh my God, this began before I even had anything to do with it. So I would say to grandparents to ask yourself again, if the world were perfect, where would I want my grandchild to go to school? And if I want my grandchild to go to school, they can go to school without any debt. I've got to think about the schools that have perhaps larger endowments. They have tuition free programs that have programs that won't allow you to take out student loans.

00:25:34.769 --> 00:25:49.490
What are those schools? And now instead of me just saying I want my child to go to college, I need to be working on making sure my child meets the academic qualifications of those schools that can provide my child or grant. We have AI now.

00:25:49.729 --> 00:26:19.099
Right. So you can actually ask those questions and get an answer immediately. Absolutely. And that's what you would do. Like for us it was as well as Harvard. So let's get the application. And Harvard application said there are three things that they were looking for students, of course, who do well academically. And this is 1994. They were looking for students who were world citizens and they were looking for students who cared for something greater than themselves. And like, wow. And that became the template for his life. So everything we were going to do, we now call intellectual ambition.

00:26:19.339 --> 00:26:26.629
How do we get. Getting great grades wouldn't be enough. I know a lot of smart people who are well adjusted to maladjustment. I don't want that.

00:26:26.629 --> 00:28:44.169
I want someone who can think critically, etc. So we call it intellectual ambition. Hey, you're gonna. It's not a world citizen anymore, but can we prepare you for to be a global citizen? Because the world is big, but it is also very tiny. And now can we get you to care about something greater than oneself? I was a theology working on masters in theology at the time, so I figured, well, I understand that that's about God, but not. It means a little bit more than that. So how do I help you to care deeply enough about other people? So that became the template for his life. And that's what I say to families today. I can't tell you where you want your child to go to school, but you have to tell them what you want. If you got all the money in the world and it doesn't matter what it costs to go to school, all right, we'll pick something else. If it doesn't. If you own a great business and you can bring your children on no matter what degree they have and they can work for you, then fine. Hey, enjoy that. But if you like most of us who have limited resources and we have more time than money, well, then we have to come up with a completely different strategy. Which is all of the people you're speaking to on this podcast, right? We have different. So yeah. So then you say, well, what would I want for My grandchild. And today the landscape consistently changes with AI and people losing jobs and so forth. And so it's hard to predict. But I would always say to families this, that the world runs on math and science and so do not undervalue the importance of making sure your children are not only getting decent grades, but they exceed proficiency in math and science when they bring home those standardized tests. When they take the NAEP or in some places they take the NWEA assessment, which is the Northwest Educational Assessment. When you see those scores, make sure those scores indicate that your children are well above just what the school says is okay, that they're consistent with the top international standards. If you can do that, then you know your children are more likely on track to be able to qualify for those schools where they can go to school for free or mostly free. I'm assuming you speak more about this in your books. How to Write that Map.

00:28:45.689 --> 00:28:52.849
So we teach a course through our program I haven't written. Everyone there asks me, is it in the book somewhere? I said, no, I should write.

00:28:52.849 --> 00:29:00.169
Latonya and I have talked about it. We haven't written it, but we need to write it. It's similar to what we were talking about earlier.

00:29:00.329 --> 00:29:03.369
It makes me think of writing your life.

00:29:04.569 --> 00:29:15.259
We were talking about that previous to the beginning of our recording and envisioning it and putting it in black and white, whatever form it may be.

00:29:15.259 --> 00:29:18.899
I know a lot of us are raising very neurodiverse kids.

00:29:19.779 --> 00:29:38.419
And I'm always telling my granddaughter who can't read very well, she's still at a first grade level. She has dyslexia and she has some cognitive brain issues, but that doesn't mean she can't live a full life. And so we talk about that.

00:29:38.899 --> 00:29:56.979
I tell her, you may not need to know your times tables, but if you're going to be a veterinarian, you need to know how to figure out how much medicine to give a cat. Right? So that's what's important is practical math. And that's what you need to learn. Yeah.

00:29:56.979 --> 00:30:04.299
So that's beautiful the way you've explained it to her too, because again, as we talked earlier. Don't you hear what I'm saying? It's auditory.

00:30:04.299 --> 00:30:11.679
No, I don't. But some people are tactile. They need to touch it, feel it, see it, smell it. Right.

00:30:11.679 --> 00:30:26.000
Experience it. You're an experiential learner and most of us learn better by experience than we do with just one, one method. So I think that that's beautiful what. You Suggested I know that you help people who are often left out.

00:30:26.719 --> 00:30:30.319
You say, too poor to be wealthy. Too wealthy to be poor.

00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:43.769
Most of our listeners don't need to worry about the second half of that statement. Right. But too poor to be wealthy. What's the financial services secret or mindset shift you teach to help families break into long term wealth building?

00:30:44.969 --> 00:31:54.259
First of all, I will tell people that it's about less money than you think it is. That's encouraging. It is. I didn't. So, so when, when I say to someone, well, when you, when you introduce me and when you and I talked off, he said, should I call you Nathaniel or Nate? And I said, call me Nate. And oftentimes he will see me and there's a bunch of stupid letters. I won't say stupid. My best friend said, put your letters behind your name. You earn those degrees, but people will see the letters behind your name and they think, oh my God, he must be something he's not. And I always tell people, you all don't know. When I became a father, I was unemployed. I had nothing. I lived in an apartment where someone had a cat and it was urine in the carpet and we couldn't ever get the carpet cleaned enough. Like that's where I first lived. I bought a, had a car with a door that barely opened. And so I said I didn't have any money, but I had more time than I had money. So I had the time to decide what it was that I wanted for my child. And then I had the time to invest in my child. So what do you do? You do simple stuff, you as a family.

00:31:54.500 --> 00:31:58.019
If you want children to read, then let them see you reading.

00:31:58.579 --> 00:32:28.099
If you want a child to have a greater vocabulary, then you increase your vocabulary so that when you're having a conversation with a child, instead of said, instead of saying, do you know how far that is? You can say what's the proximity to this? So you can start to elevate your vocabulary and they hear you and then the words start to make more sense. But Latonya and I can assure you we didn't have any money in those formative years of his life. We just did as much hands on stuff that we could do.

00:32:28.339 --> 00:32:53.929
But there wasn't even now I would say the families, there's so many free resources. So I'd say every family should have a Khan Academy account. It's a free thing. It's free. If you have a child and you don't know if the schools are giving your this, I'm Going to use the third grade because it's such a critical period where we know that third grade reading scores that two thirds of American children can't read at third grade level in the third grade.

00:32:55.289 --> 00:33:28.299
But most parents don't know. And then most parents won't find out that their children are having reading problems until they graduate from high school. But you don't have to wait. If you open a Khan Academy account as an example, you could give your child a third grade assessment before they go to the fourth grade to see if they learned everything and if they didn't, because the software is intuitive, it'll start to create the lesson plans so that the child can get back up to speed.

00:33:29.179 --> 00:33:40.039
That's free. Didn't cost anything. I tell families that whenever you travel, if you travel or if you're local, there are probably there's a local college or university.

00:33:40.759 --> 00:33:56.679
If you travel, there's a college or university. If college, university is where you want your children to go or grandchildren to go, you cannot afford not to visit. Go walk around the college campus, set up a tour, an actual tour. This is free.

00:33:57.240 --> 00:34:12.969
Naim's first college visit was at age 6, his first official visit. Now, we stepped foot on college campuses before that, but at 6 we visited Vanderbilt, Tennessee State and Fisk University and he actually took to visits.

00:34:12.969 --> 00:34:27.409
And I can remember distinctly at Vanderbilt, the counselor coming out and calling his name and looking around for a high school age student. And there was this little kid sitting in a chair, his feet didn't touch the ground. And she says, naim Turner.

00:34:27.409 --> 00:34:43.179
And he raises his hand. She says, excuse me, can I ask a question before we start the tour? Why are you here? She said, how old are you? He says, six. She says, what brings you here? He said, because it's time for me to start thinking about my future.

00:34:46.139 --> 00:34:49.820
That's powerful. It was free that those things are free.

00:34:52.860 --> 00:35:03.250
So as a lawyer, I know this is a question that I have to ask. How do we teach kids how to beat the system without becoming the system?

00:35:06.210 --> 00:35:25.469
The system being the legal system or you just mean like this larger system it seems. Yeah, the larger scheme of systems. There were situations where I wish I'd gone back and told them how things really work, rather than just told them this is the law.

00:35:27.149 --> 00:35:42.028
I guess a better way of really saying that is how do we teach kids how life really works, how these systems really work.

00:35:42.108 --> 00:35:48.829
When a police officer stops you, a lot of people think they just do whatever a police officer tells them to do.

00:35:50.460 --> 00:36:30.360
But really what I've learned through losing A child this way is that you don't have to get out of the car. You can show them your license. You need to know that you need to ask for a lawyer if you're being detained. Sure. So knowing the law, obeying the law and understanding the system are different things. Well, I think you just answered the question. Your explanation was better than any explanation that I'm going to give. You said, let's make sure that they know not only know the law, but know, but know not only their responsibility for the law, but what, how the law is responsible for them.

00:36:31.800 --> 00:37:48.110
So you said, hey, I don't have to do these certain things and I'm within my legal right to do that. Then we should make sure that they understand that and then, and probably practice it some with them. Because if and when God forbid, the situation occurs without the practice of it, then we probably don't do what it is that we told them to do. Because just like we just talked a little bit about the ways that we learn, hearing it or seeing it is completely different than experiencing it. And when you experience it for the first time, you're like, well, I know you told me to do such and such, but I forgot, I forgot how to do it in the moment because your adrenaline and nerves and everything are going on. So yeah, I think that's the key. Maybe we have to practice it the very same way we practice other things. If there's an outcome we want, we should practice that outcome. I'm looking forward to learning more about what you write about, especially preparation for college and for kids futures, because I know that you talk a lot about the systems that are involved in doing that. And I think that's important information for us grandparents because it's different than it was when we were young and about to go to college.

00:37:49.550 --> 00:38:26.360
Different for all of us. My son is 30 now. Yeah, it is in the world is somewhat different, but some of it is still the same. I'm gonna, it's always going to be again with backward design. If the world were perfect, then what? And then once you can decide what that looks like, then we can all work backwards. But without that, without that dream, without that large audacious hope, I don't know that we can get anywhere. And eventually when we get older we're like, oh, I wish I had done something different. And I think we think we should have done something different only because we didn't know how to dream big enough.

00:38:28.920 --> 00:38:43.480
That's the greatest part about being the age we are. We can go back and say to Our grandchildren. I want to tell you, this is what I did. This is wish what I wish I would have done. You can take that advice or leave it.

00:38:43.800 --> 00:39:20.650
But if you show them then that you are going to now take your own advice, that it's not too late. See, if Naeem hadn't said that to me and if I say, yeah, man, I appreciate it, now go ahead and go to Brazil and do your thing, I wouldn't be here with you today. It was because of his encouragement that I wrote my first book and then every subsequent book or a TED Talk or any of the stuff, the places that I've been had an opportunity. People have had an opportunity to serve. That only happened because a child gave me back what I gave him and then challenged me to do more than just talk about what he should do.

00:39:21.050 --> 00:39:34.250
And so. But as his tree, I'm forever his tree. And so I'm always responsible for modeling what it is that I hope he would do. And even today, that's, that's. I feel like that's still my responsibility.

00:39:36.019 --> 00:39:42.900
I was going to ask you if you could give one final piece of advice to grandparents who feel behind schedule or discouraged, what would it be?

00:39:43.620 --> 00:40:20.670
Maybe what you just said. But if you have something else to say, please do. No, I got nothing else. If you woke up this morning, you still have time. You could do more. It's not too late. That's why I want to say, don't ever assume that it's too late. As long as you still have time, it's not too late. People do stuff all the time at various different ages and surprise. Or my other grandmother will be 100 in December 15th. We have to do that interview with her. Yes, yes, she'll be 100. I've had two grandmothers now who've I will say, have lived until to see to their 100th birthday.

00:40:20.670 --> 00:40:27.690
1, 103 and 1 is about us. Approaching 100 pearls of wisdom. Great circle of life. Yeah.

00:40:28.250 --> 00:40:53.500
Nate, this has been an incredibly empowering conversation. I really appreciate your time. I look forward to speaking with you more. You've given us not just a mirror, but some very actionable advice. Thank you so much for sharing this blueprint. And would you let the listeners please know where they can find your work, your books and the life template. Sure you can find me.

00:40:54.380 --> 00:40:58.059
I have a website like everyone else does have two that I'm going to mention.

00:40:58.059 --> 00:41:42.150
One is Nathaniel A Turner dot com. That's N A T H A N I E L A T U R N E R dot com. So you can find stuff that's about mostly about me and my thoughts about humanity, etc. Up there. If you want to find out things about what to do as a parent, grandparent, guardian, educator, etc. You can go to our site, which is the League of Extraordinary Parents. And the web address is lxtrap.com lxtrap.com Fabulous. I'll be sure to include those links in the show notes.

00:41:42.309 --> 00:41:55.599
Okay. Thanks again, Nate. Thank you. I just want to say I'm grateful that you sought me out and that I was fit to be able to share something. Very glad that I found you. Thank you. Thank you.