What will the “autumn” of your life be like? Will the golden years really be golden? With more than 80 million baby boomers all now in their 50s or 60s or early 70s, and with most of them able to expect to live close to or into their 90s, the questions of how to live these autumn years is more relevant than it has ever been before.

In Life in Full, Richard and Linda talk candidly about their own aging and make a host of practical suggestions about how we all can create fuller lives and maximize our longevity and our legacies. For recent updates on this book, and the Eyres current feelings about the fourth quarter of life, listen to the most recent Eyres on the Road podcast on your favorite podcast app or right here.

 
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Despite the success of the Eyre’s “how-to” parenting books, they felt that it was time for something different–for a “why-to” book on what is happening to families around the world and why family decline is a problem that affects everyone in the world.

Here, Richard and Linda explore what has happened to families and trace the causes and forces that are threatening families everywhere. The first half of the book is a realistic and somewhat painful look at family decline throughout the world and at the economic and social problems that result. The second half is about solutions, and the Eyres chart an imaginative and bold course that leaders in the business, political, religious and media sectors could and should take in order to save themselves by saving families.

In their Eyres on the Road podcast this week, Richard and Linda expand on this subject and make the plea that we all put our families first.

 
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For more than forty years, Richard and Linda have sent out a Thanksgiving card to friends and family at the holiday season rather than a Christmas card. The traditional and original cards that go out every November contain the latest family picture and a poem that tries to express the main focal points of their gratitude for the year past.

Taken together, these 40 poems and some additional poetry to introduce and lead into them, give a wonderfully in-depth picture of what awareness, appreciation, gratitude, and thanks-giving can be. Teaching our children to feel and express thankfulness can be a great legacy, and a boost to their lifelong happiness.

 
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We used to call this problem “spoiled kids” or “selfish little brats” but today there is a better term to describe what is happening to kids who think they deserve to have everything they want, everything their friends have, and all without any work or effort on their part.

The word is “entitlement” and it is becoming a trap in our society that catches kids in its clutches and squeezes the motivation and incentive right out of them. The entitlement attitude that infests our youth today robs them of gratitude and strips them of any work ethic. If we as parents don’t do something about it, we will send our kids out into the world ill-equipped to compete and to succeed and even to live responsibly.

On the other hand, if we can recognize that chosen, earned ownership is the antidote to entitlement and the prerequisite of responsibility…and if we can find ways to help kids perceive real ownership of everything from their things to their money and from their grades to their choices…then we can give our children the kind of pride of ownership that will motivate them to do their best, to make good decisions, and to take responsibility for everything they have.

 
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In all their experience with parents globally and in their own experience with their own children and grandchildren, the Eyres have become convinced that the only real and lasting solutions to parenting problems and the challenges children face are spiritual. In a nutshell, the five spiritual solutions are 1. Remembering our children’s true identity, 2. Remembering and following God’s parenting example and patterns, 3. Remembering and availing ourselves of our direct channel of Inspiration from God, 4. Remembering and using the “scaffolding” of our churches and faith communities, and 5. Remembering the Savior’s power.

Taken together, these five spiritual perspectives on family can change everything from how your household works to how your mind works. On this week’s Eyres on the Road podcast, Richard and Linda share insights on each of these five spiritual solutions.

 
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On this week after Mothers’ Day, the Eyres pay tribute to Moms and their elegant fulfillment of the hardest job in the world. Linda wrote a book a few years back, with their daughter Shawni, called A Mothers Book of Secrets, and the book becomes an outline for the latest episode of the Eyres on the Road podcast.

First, Mothers need to look for light in the trenches, and find the golden moments amidst the turmoil and fatigue. Second, Moms have to have an Organized Offense and a plan instead of just reacting. Third, Mothers need to analyze their children and try to understand what each needs. Fourth, Moms should understand that kids are like puzzles and we never find all the pieces at once, and Fifth, Mothers need to find ways to give their children ownership of their clothes, their toys, their conflicts, and their choices.

Of course, every mom is different, every family is different, and every child is different, but with divine guidance, all mothers can find the unique joy of their preeminent role. The Eyres suggest that honoring and being grateful for mothers should not end the day after Mother’s Day but rather begin a year-long appreciation for mothers throughout the world.

 
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This pandemic time may be a perfect opportunity to establish better communication in your family. On their latest Eyres on the Road podcast, Richard and Linda Eyre talk about a secret code for family communication that is based on animals that children love. Humpback whales never interrupt each other as they sing their deep-ocean songs. Crabs can be caught in a bucket and never escape because their instinct is to pull each other back. Elephants are both firm and tender with their great trunks. The tortoise beats the rabbit because he is steady and keeps on going. Redwood trees stand tall and strong in the wind because their roots intertwine below the ground.

Once these nature stories are told and understood, one single word can replace a lecture. When one child is criticizing another, the parent says “crab”. When someone is rude or interrupts, the parent gets eye contact and says “whale”. The Eyres talk about how to tell the stories and to get the drawings of all nine animal symbols and how to use them as reminders in improving children’s behavior.

The Eyres wrote a book that contains the nine animal metaphors and lays out the secret family code for private communication. It is called The Book of Nurturing because of its theory that a nurturing parent would rather teach children true principles and have a clear mutual understanding of how people can joyfully live together.

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As we all live through the transition of this pandemic, let’s think for a minute about another kind of transition that all families have or will go through.

Both parents and children undergo a profound transition when children leave the home. As a child heads out for college or for a mission or for a job, he or she is still part of the family, but no longer a part of the household. How that transition is made, and how much thought goes into it will have a lasting effect on family relationships and on how close and committed the family is for decades to come.

In their Eyres on the Road podcast this week, the Eyres talk about how parenting changes but does not diminish in importance as kids leave home. Having a plan for that transition–deliberately thinking through how you will communicate and finding the balance between independence and interdependence can make your relationship grow stronger rather than weakening when you no longer live together. Richard and Linda review dozens of questions that parents ask about the empty nest phase, and then they share the Eyre family’s “Constitution” that they put together with their leaving-the-nest kids in which they came to some agreements for their ongoing social, emotional, financial, and spiritual relationships for the future.

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On the first page of Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy says “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Eyres’ interpretation of that statement is that there are certain elements that are present in all mostly-happy and functional families, and even though every family is unique, all families that seem to work and to last somehow manage to develop each of these critical elements: commitment, communication, purpose, priorities, rules, responsibility, traditions, heritage and roots, and the teaching of values and correct principles.

Some years ago, in their book The Happy Family, Richard and Linda discussed these common elements at length. On their latest Eyres on the Road podcast, they challenge listeners to “Use this Pandemic-given extra time at home with kids as an intermission in which we evaluate our families and decide what we will do better and differently during the upcoming second act of our lives.”

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In this time of crisis, uncertainty, and pandemic, The Eyres suggest that one of the things that helps most is to take the long view of things! Yes, this is awful on many levels, but along with the silver linings we have mentioned on past shows, there is an opportunity to pull back and try to see the bigger picture. On their latest podcast, Quoting Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Richard and Linda point out that “sweet are the uses of adversity” and that “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” Seeing things bigger always makes what is happening at the moment seem smaller. Many people of faith believe not only in an eternal afterlife, but in an equally eternal pre-mortal life. On this week’s show, the Eyres talk about this “forever backward” and how it can help us to put the here and now in perspective.

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