All right. Do you have kids getting engaged? Or maybe you have kids who will one day get engaged.
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Today we're going to be talking about family culture and integrating a new person into your
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family culture. And just ideas in general around family culture. Welcome to the What
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Could Go Right? podcast. I'm Emily Orton. I am Erik Orton. Here we talk about personal growth,
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family connections, and parenting adult kids. Before we get started, I want to ask you a favor.
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sharing with somebody that you care about because we'd love to reach out to as many parents as we
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can. And help us as we all go through this crazy exciting – and sometimes a little complicated
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chapter – of raising adult kids, being a parent of adults. So today we're going to talk about family
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culture and you had quite a few good thoughts on family culture. Would you mind starting out? Yeah,
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for sure. Ao Emily and I have discussed this a lot over the years because I dare say that we have a
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fairly strong family culture. And so our kids have kind of said, 'Well when we get to that point of
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life when somebody else is going to come into our family that's going to be a real shift and how do
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we prepare them for the craziness of coming into the Orton family?' I want to say one thing here.
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Thanks. I know when I was growing up my mom had seen couples who had struggled to come together
1:39 Pros and Cons of Strong Family Culture
because the family culture was so strong and so she thought, 'Let's do an approach where we
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don't try to put too many traditions or too much family culture in place.' And that's one way to go
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about it. Then we've just been coming up with our own, which is great – to also make your own new
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traditions. But I think you can have a strong family culture and still prepare your kids to
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combine with a partner going forward. So just to be clear what what I mean and maybe what we
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mean when we say family culture – it doesn't mean your nationality. It doesn't necessarily mean what
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language you speak. It doesn't mean, you know, your religious background or your education. It
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can mean all of those things but I would say that you could have two people who grow up
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side by side – neighbors on the same street, with all the same friends, going to the same schools.
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You know, just everything you can imagine in common and you can still have two entirely
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different family cultures despite all the things that come in common. And all those
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other things that I just mentioned can also factor in but no matter how similar we are,
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if we're from two different families, we have two different cultures. Period.
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And so we were joking you know as as our girls were getting into the dating ages and they're
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starting to think about boys. And thought, 'Oh we we have a lot going on in our family. Maybe we
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should write a book or a manual on how.. things.. sort of like "minimum requirements" to like.. "A
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Survival Guide to the Orton Family." Like you need to have watched these movies. You need to have
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read these books. They will.. There are going to be inside jokes about them that you will not get
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if you don't read them. You should listen to these recording artists. You should be aware, you know,
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you should know these painters. You know, I could go on. But any anything else that I'm..? Yeah.
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What painters do we need to know? Everyone should know Monet because everybody love "Money." Okay
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so maybe there's actually some comedians. Yeah. Okay lots of comedians just.. Yeah just kind of an
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'Insider's Guide to the Ortons.' And our kids all thought this was awesome. In case you're joining
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us or you're early on in your journey with us, we'll just let you know that we have five kids.
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And four of them are girls. Three of them have already launched and moved out of the house. And
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we still have teenage boy and a teenage girl at home right now so.. That's correct. That's where
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we're coming from. I like what Michael Pollan said about culture he said, Culture is whatever
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your mom taught you. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why it's going to be so different, right. Yeah,
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culture can be.. from person to person.. how you stack the dish. How you stack your dishes. Can we
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talk about loading the dishwasher? The dishwasher, yeah, strong family culture. How you mow a yard. I
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have very very strong and correct opinions on that. And we didn't even have a yard for over
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20 years. So it's it's funny what things might matter. And you don't know what your kids are
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going to choose to take from your family culture into their family culture or you know vice versa
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but you can still have a strong family. So I think it would be fun if we talked about some
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of the things we're doing as, like, we're moving from being THE family to becoming extended family.
4:59 Engagement is an Origin Story
Yeah and so one of the things that we're trying to keep in mind is that this season, as our kids are
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choosing their partners, is going to be looming large for the rest of their life. They could be
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75 years old and someone says, 'Tell me how you two met.' And they're going to come back to this
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time period that's happening right now. And so many things before and after it are going to get
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you know washed away in the current of memory. But this is going to stand out. It's going to be
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of legendary proportion. or mythic proportion, right. Like this is this time is just a little
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more special and a little more memorable than other times. And so being mindful of that we
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want to be circumspect we want to make sure we're being positive in all the things that we're saying
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and doing. And that our part in the story is that we're being supportive. And so one of
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the.. For years I've been asking other families with more kids than me or kids who have been,
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you know, are older than our kids, "How have you brought these new sons-in-law and daughters-in-law
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into your family? Do you have rituals? Do you have traditions? Do you have a guidebook? What
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what are you doing? How are you making that transition? How are you making it as smooth as
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possible?" I felt like, for me it was a little bit bumpy. And wanted to figure out how can I?
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How can we make it easier for kids coming into our family? And we didn't come up with any like
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established ritual or tradition that we necessarily wanted to do. But the first
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thing is just being mindful at this time is really important. And so when our daughter got engaged
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recently we said, 'We'd love to take you out to dinner and celebrate.' And then at that dinner,
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we didn't just have a great meal, which was fun, but we asked to have a specific conversation. We
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said to each of them – in front of each other – here are all the skills that we see in you that we
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think will help you to have a great marriage. And we said it about our daughter. We said it about
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her fiance. Can I say skills and attributes? Yes. Sorry, yeah. I'm sorry character traits. Yeah,
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I didn't mean to just say skills. Thank you. "I am a skilled metal worker" And you have to
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check our Survival Guide to get that joke. Yeah. Right and then ask them if they would
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mind telling us what they each love about each other. And so we got to like start out saying,
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'We are really familiar with what you love about each other and why you think it's a great idea
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to get married.' And we also got to contribute to that encouragement and that love. And that feeling
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of good will by saying, 'Here's what we see in you that makes us so excited for your future.'
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Yeah. And I think just realizing that.. I watched a movie last night, Aquaman.
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Not sure if I can recommend it or not but but it's an origin story, right? And we all love origin
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story movies. We love to know where people come from. And so I think what I'm, what you're saying,
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Emily, about how these these scenes take on in some ways mythic proportions. And so handling them
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carefully (not, carefully is not the right word) but just like being thoughtful. Being mindful..
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thoughtful about the impact that they have. And so shall I share an example? Go for it. Okay. So
8:38 In-Laws and Managing Disappointment
this amazing young man who wants to marry our daughter was over at our house over Christmas.
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And in the process of wanting to give us a Christmas gift he needed to transfer a file.
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And we're mostly a Mac family and he's a PC guy. And we're going to work that out. But he needed to
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borrow a hard drive and so I gave him my hard drive. And he had to do a quick clicking of a
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couple of buttons to get it so that it would show up on his computer so he could transfer this file.
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When I got it back a few minutes later –two minutes later –I loaded it up.
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And it's just the hard drive that I use all the time for everything. And I loaded it up and
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everything was gone except for the file that he wanted to give us as a gift.
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And I did not know what to do because when I say it was all gone, this was two years worth of
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audio, media, video work. It included an audiobook that I'd recorded. Included some personal videos
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of us. Like, like a monologue. Like a one-hour conversation. Yeah. Absolutely. If you haven't
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heard Erik's book Knock: The Spiritual Journey of a Door-to-Door Salesman, you should go check
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it out. All those files got deleted. But they are up for us. Not intending to plug that but it was
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on there. And all those files were gone. And we had recorded a video while we were celebrating
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our 25th anniversary and kind of a message that we wanted to give to our kids when they got engaged.
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Gone. Gone. And so we're.. I'm just like.. it was one of these moments where I truly
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didn't know what to do or say. And so I was like, 'Hey I'm gonna just go upstairs for a
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minute.' And I took my laptop and the hard drive and I went upstairs. And I was like
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oh my goodness. We consulted. We consulted. And we had this conversation where we said,
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'This is going to be a defining moment in our family's story with our daughter and her fiancee.
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We can't screw this up.' Yeah we don't want.. I mean, you always can screw it up but then you just
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have to deal with the consequences. We don't want to. We want to. We don't want this to go sideways.
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Yeah. And so we thought about it and we counsel together. And we said the worst case scenario
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is... That it's all lost. It's all lost and we can never get it back. But the good news
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is we're creators and we'll create more. But this relationship that's
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happening is more important than our last two years worth of media projects. And so
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we're gonna just recalibrate to be okay with the worst case scenario version of it. And we'll
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operate from there. Yeah. And then said, "We can't, you know.
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We're not going to try and troubleshoot this on Christmas day. We're not going to try and call
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tech support because nobody's going to be there. This is a problem that's just going to have to
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wait for later. We're going to table it. We'll figure out 'what can go right?' later. Right now,
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we can't. We can't know the answer." And so came back downstairs kind of composed with some sense
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of equilibrium and I just said, 'Hey this is what it's going to be, okay? Whatever it is, it's going
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to be okay." Gave him a big hug. He was crying. We were all, like.. We ended up doing a big
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group hug. And in the end this moment was really beautiful. And I think connected us in a way that
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none of us had expected. And we didn't get the hard drive stuff. We didn't even get to address it
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till a while later but.. And the solution is, the outcome is not important, the outcome. The
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important thing in my opinion here is that being mindful, like you said, "Am I being mindful of how
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we choose to act?" What we choose to say and do in these origin story moments have a huge impact
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in the trajectory of these relationships between us and our daughter, us and our future son-in-law,
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them with each other. All the ways. With the siblings. With each other because the whole
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family was kind of present and having opinions. It's so hard not to have an opinion when you're
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a witness right of these situations. And I gave him a hug as well and I just said,
12:58 Establish a Habit of Loving Each Other
"You guys are going to be together for a long time. There's going to be a lot of years, right?
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If you're going to be in this family for the next 75 years of your life (or however long till,
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you know we just assume everyone's living to 100), we are going to disappoint each
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other again in the future. I guarantee that will happen. And we just want to establish a habit of
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loving each other through it, assuming the best intent, and assuming that we can
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work it out." I don't know if this is a plot spoiler but I'll just say we were able to get
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back over 95 percent of all the data. So yeah. Yeah. Whether that.. whether it worked out that
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way or not I think.. We just don't want to leave you hanging on that point. You know everyone when
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we want you to sleep well at night, so. I'll just say that. But I think for us the takeaway was just
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saying the relationship is the important thing here. And making sure that we were handling it
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mindful of the fact that these are origin story moments. I guess that's what I would say there.
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And I actually want to go back real quick to the idea of family culture. Oh, yeah. Because
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we were talking about each person brings their own family culture to the marriage to the new
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relationship. And I think it's also important for me, as a dad and a future father-in-law,
14:19 Becoming a Visitor in Your Kid’s Culture
to remember that when our daughters and our son, you know, when our, when our kids get married,
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they and their spouse are going to create their own family culture.
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They may load the dishwasher in a totally different way than is right.
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And they may mow the lawn in a way that's different from, you know,
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all those different things. And so I think for me just remembering that there's probably
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going to be some movies that I'm going to have to go see to get their family culture.
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Books that I'm going to have to read to understand where they're coming from.
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Artists, you know, music, artists... And I'm gonna say, "How do you like this done? You know,
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I'm in your.. This is your home. This is your family. This is your territory. I'm a visitor
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in your culture, now. I'm a guest here so I wanna play by your rules." So I need to
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remember that. And that's one of my takeaways is that not only do we come from different cultures
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but we'll be entering into new cultures as well as our kids form their own homes and families.
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So that's all I got. It's very exciting. It's nuanced. It can.. it can feel complex. And we just
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need to take a breath and think about what could go right? And keep in mind the kind of feeling
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that you want to have between you. the kind of communication that you'll be most, you know,
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proud of going forward. And just let's have some fun on this journey. If you have questions
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or other topics you would love for us to discuss –we have an inexhaustible list of topics to talk
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about but –we love to talk about things that are coming up for you and presenting for you as you
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have kids who are moving into adulthood. Crossing that threshold, have already crossed that, getting
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married, you're starting to have grandchildren, and the different issues that are coming up there.
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I'll say this, if this is these are our ideas about how to kind of cross this bridge into
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Married-Kid land. I was just on a very basic level. Yeah. we would love to hear from you
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because some of you are further along this path than we are. And so if you're watching
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this on YouTube just go in the comments leave a comment. We'd love to hear your thoughts or
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your questions or your suggestions. Let us know what's working yeah. Also or you can DM us on
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Instagram or Facebook. And also you can just shoot us an email [email protected]
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We'd love to hear from you. And we know that we have just as much to learn from you guys as you
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know.. As much as we want to give we have lots to receive. Yeah. This is a dialogue so we look
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forward to hearing from you and hearing what could go right. All right. If you enjoyed this.
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If you had some takeaways that were helpful or some good reminders, please subscribe, rate,
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review, share with a friend you think this would be useful. Share with your spouse. Say,
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'Let's talk more about this. How do we want to go about it?' We would love to
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just keep these good ideas flowing and circulating throughout the world
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so we can have stronger families, feel more confident in our parenting and keep growing.
