Home » “It Won’t Be Like This For Long:” The Best Parenting Advice We Don’t Want to Hear Courtesy of Darius Rucker

Babies, Song Analysis, Toddlers

“It Won’t Be Like This For Long:” The Best Parenting Advice We Don’t Want to Hear Courtesy of Darius Rucker

Time flies when you’re having fun. Time moves excruciatingly slowly when you are sleep deprived and can’t seem to get the baby down for a nap. What do these things have in common? They don’t last forever. We are going to talk about just how fast things move when it comes to raising kids and why we hate the phrase “I miss those days.” “It Won’t Be Like This For Long” by Darius Rucker is the perfect song to describe this moment in time.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Show Notes:

  • 4:04 Dad Life Sound Check – The Series “Yellowstone” provides both parenting advice and music from Ryan Bingham. Flatland Cavalry makes Dave feel older than he is.  
  • 13:10 Farm Boy Update – Mick has a mole problem on the urban farmstead. 
  • 15:15 HARDY Report – “Quit!!” has Dave wanting to see HARDY perform live once again. 
  • 18:39 The Dads break down why “It Won’t Be Like This For Long” is such a perfect summary of the fact that life changes faster than you think when it comes to raising kids. They also touch on the fact that when you are in the middle of it you aren’t always the most receptive to hearing about how people miss it. Dave needs to go and research the word Kairos as well. 

Sources:

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Transcript

You do, you miss it.
And I tell people not to get mad at the older, experienced parent, grandparent who reminds you of that.
As much as you don’t want to hear it, just don’t get mad at them.
I’ll try.
This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang.
We’re bringing you a fresh take on country music through the lens of modern parenting.
My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.
My name is Mick, and I’m also a country music dad.
This week, we’re going to talk about how fast time flies when it comes to the kids.
So Mick, good to see you, as always.
Same.
I can’t wait to talk some country music with you.
So what’s going on with you lately?
Well, we’re still just trying to figure the college stuff out.
It’s just a process.
It’s a process, whether it be figuring out the location, or the housing, or the FAFSA, which is the acronym for the Federal Financial Student Aid type thing, which the government in its wisdom, everyone can see the air quotes I’m using, the government in its wisdom decided to redo the whole website last year.
And they said it was going to be done last October.
It’s not done yet.
Oh, no.
All the different schools, you keep getting all this information saying, well, we’re just going to push this back again, and we’re going to do the best we can.
When we hear anything, we’ll let you know.
But we’re just going to do as much as we can without it.
But it definitely, for some people, oh, I can’t imagine it is just really making this college process just kind of a mess.
Man, it’s stressful too for you, probably for your son too.
I remember it being a stressful time.
Yeah, it can be for the kids that just aren’t sure.
Some kids, they just know.
They know what they want to do.
They know where they want to do it.
They know, you know, whatever.
But some kids, you know, they just don’t know as much at that time.
They’ll figure it out.
But some it just takes a little longer.
What about you?
Yeah, for me, sports are starting up.
This is the first year that I’m going to have two kids in sports.
So my middle son just turned four.
And so he’s now eligible to play things like soccer and baseball.
So juggling the schedule, it’s becoming a big part of my life.
And I don’t know how people do it.
I don’t know how people do it with more than one kid in activities and stuff.
It’s crazy.
Practice and games and getting the gear, man.
Yeah.
Quick question for you.
So I know you did some coaching on your oldest baseball team.
Are you trying to do more coaching?
Are you one of these parents of, well, if I did this for this child, now I got to do it for that child type thing or?
That’s how I’m starting.
So I am coaching both teams.
I’m an assistant coach for one of them, but I am on the field and engage with both of them.
Plus, it’s baseball.
That’s my favorite.
So I like doing it.
But at some point, I’ll have to scale it back and pick and choose what I want to coach.
So we’ll see.
I also don’t want to be that dad that is always my kid’s coach every single year.
Just from his perspective, I want him to have some other voices too.
That’s a good point.
As far as the sound check, been rewatching some of the Yellowstone episodes.
So that has got me going back into Ryan Bingham because I like Country Music with an edge.
He just distinctly provides that.
It’s just introspective music that just brings you into your soul with what he’s talking about.
As far as the Yellowstone TV show goes, I mean, it’s not exactly any type of a program that I would want to get a parenting connotation out of with the exception of one thing.
There’s this one episode where John Dutton, the main protagonist is out in the big sky country with his grandson and they were moving their campsite.
The boy goes, grandpa, is this a better campsite?
And he looks down at his phone and his cell phone says no service.
And he says, yep, this is an excellent campsite.
So the only positive parenting connotation that I can probably pull out of the Yellowstone series is the fact that you need to find time in nature with your kids or grandkids in this case without a cell phone.
Nice.
Yeah, John Dutton’s got some good one liners.
He does.
He does.
The writing in the show is excellent.
The agricultural representations are not the best.
I have to suspend disbelief there.
I mean, it just does not take that many cowboys to herd that few cattle.
But, you know, suspending disbelief is what I have to do.
I just have to remind myself that the show is entertainment.
They fooled me.
Yeah, because when are you going to see hurting cows in Southern California?
I mean, you’re going to all you got is hurting surfboards, you know.
Hurting cars, hurting traffic.
Yeah, that there’s an art.
There’s an art to that, too.
Yeah, love me some Bingham, too.
I started firing him up again.
I saw him live at Stagecoach, and he’s one of those guys that I can appreciate the music if I’m just listening to him, you know, on my headphones or something.
But seeing him live was a was an experience.
The whole band environment brings like a whole new energy to his music.
Plus, there was his fiddle player, there’s this guy named Richard Bowden.
He’s this gray haired guy.
He was wearing all black.
It was 100 degrees at Stagecoach, and he’s wearing all black, just like shredding it on the fiddle.
It brought me to shame, because I was melting out there, and this guy’s wearing all black, a fedora.
He’s got much more gray hair than you do, and just no issues.
But yeah, the vibe was incredible for Bingham Live.
It’s so interesting to you say that.
It’s so interesting you say that about the live thing, because if you ever clip on, if you ever go on YouTube and just like, you know, do his clips, they’re more of just kind of a, you know, traditional crooner, just kind of standing up there singing that soulful song, you know, that just really gets right into your, you know, as I mentioned before, it gets into you.
And to say, you know, to hear that he has a high-energy show, that really makes me want to try to see him sometime in person.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like Zach Bryan’s the same way.
Do you listen to any Zach Bryan?
I do.
Yes.
Yeah.
See, he’s similar.
Like once I saw him live, I kind of got it.
I’m like, when I’d hear him at home on Spotify or something, I was like, okay, I can like, you can kind of like chill out and listen to the words.
But man, live, it’s like he’s electric.
So I think Bingham and Zach Bryan are similar in that respect.
Yeah.
So for my Dad Life Soundcheck, it’s this other band actually that I saw for the first time live at Stagecoach a couple years ago.
So I’ve been listening to a song called Come Back Down by Flatland Cavalry.
I don’t know that one.
Sometimes when I’m hearing a song, it like one line will stick out to me and come back down and the first verse a line that says it’s about this like a kid coming back home, making a return to his home after many years away.
And it says, I’d run and wrap my arms around you if I could get out of this chair.
Hell, I can’t get out of this chair.
And for some reason, I identified with that.
I think the minute that I hit 40, the check engine light came on for my body.
Every time I try to exercise again, these things are breaking down left and right.
So maybe you can help me in this area because I didn’t think 40 would be the age when I would start to worry about my future mobility and whether my injuries are going to let me get out of my chair.
That’s one part of that song that kind of stuck out to me and the other part, I mean, it’s kind of along the same lines of what we’ll be talking about today.
Time passing and kind of worrying about whether you’re appreciating every moment with your kids before they move on.
So this song is all about after that happens, the kid went away and the whole family is wondering if he’s ever going to come back from wherever he went.
But, you know, after who knows how long.
So listen to that as I’m taking my six-year-old to swim lessons.
And I look at him in the rearview mirror and I think, I guess that’s not that far away, actually.
You’ll probably look kind of like you do now.
There’ll be some hints of you as a six-year-old, I’m sure that I’ll see.
It’s like any good song, especially any good country song.
I think there’s layers to this one.
It goes beyond just my body breaking down.
So you got two things there I’ll touch on.
One was the most recent.
We talk about the layers.
We’ll use the Prodigal Son analogy is such a very common theme in country music.
But it’s usually done from the Prodigal Son’s perspective.
They get home and it’s too late, not always, but I would say predominantly.
Then for this particular song you’re talking about, it’s interesting that they got back in time.
So that just opens up a whole new dynamic.
Then as far as your check engine light, the biggest thing I can say there is because you’re noticing it now, that’s actually good because you’re still trying to do things.
Most people just run into problems because they just quit turning the car on, and they’re done, they stop.
I didn’t start noticing the real, for 50 for me was kind of where, that’s when I started noticing the fact that I need the bifocals.
That’s when I realized I’m sorry, but I’m not as strong as I used to be.
The gray hair has been here for 10 years, that now I do have more of it on the top.
That’s a constant.
But 50 was the new 40 for me.
Maybe, did I say that backwards?
40s, I don’t think.
I think what I’m starting to feel is like 40 feels like the new 50 to me.
So I’m trying to reverse that.
Then keep being active, man.
Just keep being active.
That’s the key.
Yeah, I think it’s going to come down to the fuel also.
I’ve been doing too much low octane quesadillas and beer, more veggies.
Both tastes good.
Yeah.
I was just going to say, put more veggies in your quesadilla rather than cheese.
Yes.
Work on you and go like whole wheat tortillas maybe.
I don’t know.
So enough about my diet and my exercise.
Old guys complain about their physical problems.
But do you know what I never complain about?
I never complain about the fact that I get to give the farm boy report and wax poetically as to how healthy it is to have my own chickens that lay there.
That’s what I was going to ask about.
I figured I know.
I could hear it in your voice and I just thought I’d save you the trouble.
This is the time of year where I lay in the dirt and try to get stuff going.
I have a huge mole problem.
Yeah, because I think I mentioned before, I’ve had to take out a lot of trees over the years.
Because we have all these dead trees, we have all these dead roots, and we have grubs that feed on the roots.
The number one animal that eats grubs in the ground are moles.
I have a lot of moles, and there’s just really nothing that you can really do about them, except to constantly put down more grass seed every year because they just constantly tear the yard up.
Between the moles and the fact that the ground is really, really shady and the fact that there are still, even though I’ve lost a lot of trees, still have a whole bunch of other trees, my yard is not pretty by any means.
I’m picturing Bill Murray and Caddyshack when I think about you pursuing your mole problem.
I think that was a groundhog, but-
It was, but-
I would love to hear more stories about your hunt for the moles.
Yeah, maybe another time because it makes me sad.
I think I need a George Jones song.
You came to the right place, man.
I figured you’d have one queued up ready to just go and tell me what to listen to.
But yeah.
Speaking of listening to Hardy Report, what you got this time?
So for those of you new to the show, you should know that I identify as a Hardy superfan and also as the preeminent West Coast Hardy apologist.
It is my mission to give you way more information about Hardy than you ever need.
So this week, I’m going to talk about his first new release of 2024.
It’s a song called Quit.
It’s a banger.
But I didn’t think so at first.
Just because I’m a Hardy super fan doesn’t mean that I have to love everything that he puts out.
And when I first listened to it, he actually starts out by rapping.
He’s rapping at the beginning of the song.
Somebody wrote quit on a napkin.
I took it out of my tip jar laughing.
And I don’t know if I’m a fan of Hardy rapping.
It might be an acquired taste, but when I first listened to it, my first thought was, Hardy, what are you doing?
Come on, let’s pick it up.
He’s best when he’s yelling and screaming and cussing, things like that are what makes Hardy, Hardy rapping.
I don’t know.
But he is telling a good story.
It’s about the story that he told at the ACM Awards a couple of years ago about he was playing at some dive bar somewhere and he noticed that someone dropped a napkin into his tip jar.
That red quit on the napkin.
It’s an anonymous note.
It’s harsh.
Yep.
To this struggling musician.
But of course, he’s had a lot of success now, and so use it as fuel.
So this track, Quit, is telling that story, a big musical middle finger to that person.
Anyway, so I didn’t like the rapping at the beginning, but after a couple dozen listens, I can appreciate this as something that at least it fires you up.
There’s a big crescendo to when he turns on his, he flexes his hard rock muscles, which is what he’s getting into lately.
I’m just petty because they’re just metal.
Wait, then again, so am I.
Less country, a lot more hard rock.
Like I said, I think that’s where he’s at his best.
So I don’t mind that he’s not his country anymore.
He’s kind of crossing over to rock.
Yeah, midway through the song when the heavy guitar hits and he stops rapping and he just starts screaming the F word.
That’s when I’m like, all right, let’s go.
Let’s go.
Fires me up.
I thought I was done seeing Hardy live for a little while.
I thought I’d take a break.
You’re checking concert dates?
Yeah, I think I want to see this one live.
So but what’s going to happen if that’s not part of the.
I know it will be, but I’m just just messing with you.
I guess if it releases a single, it’s going to make it into the concert.
But I just going that’s all right.
Every every six months, four months, whatever it takes until he plays it.
Well, you know what keeps going?
What’s that?
Our kids, they’re constantly going, which is kind of the point, kind of the topic of this episode, Darius Rucker.
Darius Rucker, and It Won’t Be Like This For Long.
Is really just kind of in my mind, it’s a great anthem for those early dog days because you need to hear that.
The flip side of hearing that when you’re in the weeds is that you’re in the weeds and you don’t want to hear it.
I remember.
Nope, don’t wanna hear it.
Yeah, exactly.
I’m in the weeds.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I remember being sleep deprived, pushing one of the three through the grocery store and to have this nice, well-meaning, grandmotherly hype just come over and look and make a kitschy coo noise and just say, oh, I miss those days.
And you just want to backhand the poor woman because I don’t miss those days.
I’m living those days.
And that’s the last thing I want to hear.
And when this song comes in and just documents those struggles early on, I mean, it’s really affirming to new parents because you realize, okay, I’m not the only one who’s feeling this and who’s wondering what to do.
I kind of get this one mixed up in my head with You’re Gonna Miss This.
Is that what the song is called?
I think it’s like a Tracy Lawrence.
Trace Adkins.
Trace Adkins, Trace Atkins.
Which I almost suggested that one for this topic as well because you’re right, parallel train tracks, they’re very, very similar.
But that’s more of a, I think we could do that one later if we really wanted to focus on the teenage angst aspect and not the newborns.
Because he’s talking more teenagers there and Darius is starting off at 3 a.m.
with his coffee.
Yeah, the tone that I get from, I think both of them, and especially this one, it’s pretty upbeat.
It’s meant to be encouraging.
You’re gonna miss this even though it’s, or not you’re gonna miss this.
It won’t be like this for long.
It’s kind of, I like the double meaning there too, that there’s the message that it won’t be like this for long so therefore you should appreciate it.
But also, it won’t be like this for long, meaning, Darius, you won’t be getting up in the middle of the night for that long.
Like it will end, the pain will end soon.
But yeah, I mean, I do hear this a lot from experienced parents.
I think I’ve heard it from you, I think.
I’ve probably said it.
I mean, I have a few stock.
Answers, not answers, statements, diatribes, whatever, that I will give people.
And this is actually lectures, there you go, thanks.
They sound like one of my kids now.
That’s what I feel like when I hear that from experienced parents.
It’s gracious to stop.
Anyway, Kelly and I find ourselves talking about this all the time, especially now right now.
I’ve got a new a new nephew, a grandnephew.
And to watch him, like the little videos that my niece sends, you know, of him doing his, you know, learning to crawl and figuring out the hand-eye coordination of you, he beat the stick on the drum and it makes noise.
And you do, you miss it.
And I tell people not to get mad at the older experienced parent, grandparent who reminds you of that as much as you don’t want to hear it.
Just don’t get mad at them.
I’ll try.
I’ll try my best.
Fair enough, but I get it, I get it.
You’re in the weeds.
No, you’re in the weeds and you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to get through your day.
And you’re all alone at three o’clock in the morning with that cup of coffee and you don’t know how you’re going to make it through the morning.
I get it.
Cause I’ve been there.
And I think it’s, I’m, I’m not as mad anymore.
Now that I think, now that I have more experience, you know, my oldest is six.
So I have, I’ve probably said that to my friends or acquaintances who are new parents too, to some degree.
Although I try not to, cause I don’t want to be that, that guy.
But I think part of it is like, there’s, there’s a little bit of selective amnesia.
I think that like you look back to the, the early years and you’re going to remember the good times mostly.
And I think that you need some distance to really appreciate those good times in the midst of the bad times or the challenging times.
Because I’ve cleaned barf out of the innermost crevices of my car seats far too many times.
And there’s absolutely no part of that that I will miss.
Supposedly, it won’t be like this for long, but I don’t know, barf seems to be forever.
Like that’s gonna go.
Or at least just the smell of it.
Yeah, yeah, you cannot clean that up.
The smell does permeate a lot of souls.
So yeah, I feel like it takes some practice to realize that in the moment, as a new parent or a parent of littler kids.
Like I almost have to have an out of body experience while I’m cleaning the barf out or I’m laying on the floor trying to get my kids to fall asleep in their dark bedroom.
I have to just maybe imagine myself in 10 years, 15 years thinking, how will I consider this moment in 10 years?
Okay, so that leads me to the question I have for you is you talk about you need time to, because you’re in my definition of time is different.
You know, I mean, my youngest is 10, your youngest, you know, my oldest is 18, my youngest is 10, your oldest is six, your youngest is less than a year.
So how, so it’s easy for me, yes, I absolutely get it.
It is easy for me to wax poetically on how I miss, you know, those little days, but you talked about needing some distance.
How did you figure out the distance when your timeframe, just so recently became compressed when you were up at 3 a.m.
with that cup of coffee and that nighttime bottle?
Yeah, I think the distance is knowing that I had this, there’s probably like a good month or two where we co-located my two oldest boys together in the same room and it was a disaster.
And so to get them to fall asleep, I would have to lay there on the ground until they fell asleep, or I would have to try to bear crawl in the dark quietly out the door to get on with the rest of my evening.
Most of us parents have been there at one weight we get.
Yeah, I think everyone’s been there, there’s phases of that.
And at the time I thought this will never end, I will be laying on the floor until like this, it seemed like there’s no way that it will ever end.
But I think now that I’ve having come through that, I can look back and think, you know, that actually was only a month, maybe two.
And I don’t have to do that anymore.
So I think that gives me a little more confidence when somebody else is telling me the same type of story that I can relate to, I can actually tell them with confidence, it won’t be like that for long.
That’s temporary, it’s painful, you don’t have to like it, but it’s not forever.
Yeah, it’s not.
And my preschooler, actually that second verse when he’s talking about dropping his daughter off at preschool, she’s clinging to his leg, preschool teacher telling him that it’s only a week or two.
I just had that with my three-year-old actually at preschool.
He’d been going to preschool for a while, but he had something happened, something clicked in his brain, he didn’t want to go anymore.
And that was not a week or two, that was a month or two.
And it was brutal.
I went through every parenting tactic I could think of.
I was nurturing to him, I bribed him, I yelled at him, I apologized for yelling at him, I promised him things, and I took the promises back because I couldn’t keep them.
And it was tough.
And again, that was new to me because I hadn’t experienced that since my oldest one was in preschool, and his issues only lasted for a couple of weeks.
But at the time, this was only a few months ago, I really didn’t think there was any end in sight.
But then suddenly, we’re through it.
It’s over.
And I think just having those experiences helps me, even for my youngest, if my youngest goes through any of those things, I’ll just know, well, this is part of it.
It’s not going to last forever.
You just kind of get through it.
And try not to let the bad parts overwhelm you too much, so that you feel like you’re not being mindful for the good things about this age.
Yeah.
And I think that is, I mean, unless you have some huge big key point takeaway, I really think that what you just said succinctly is, if we want to look at it from a dispensing advice standpoint, I think that would be it.
Just remember that.
I’ll throw a big fancy word out here to kind of piggyback on it.
But it’s that whole Kairos moment.
It’s that live, enjoy, find the joy in what is around you.
And at 3 a.m.
in the morning, the joy of the screaming baby might not be, you may not see it.
But if you just adapt that way of thinking a tiny bit, then you can look at it from the standpoint that, okay, I am in a position where I get to be with this person that is connected to me at 3 a.m.
in the morning, protecting him and her, guiding him and her, raising him and her, nurturing him and her, and you are laying the groundwork so that when they do go off to college, if that is what they choose to do, that they know that you will always be there for them.
Well said.
It kind of takes a different perspective.
But for me at least, it took some time.
It does.
I am not saying it is easy, Dave.
I am not saying changing your thought processes is easy, especially when you are sleep deprived and the little one is screaming at you.
Like I said, it is almost an out of body experience.
I have to just remove myself mentally.
That is why this song has always hit me as just the reminder that it will happen.
You will change your outlook.
And that is all I got.
What are your thoughts on Darius as a country.
Artist?
I am more of a traditionalist.
I am more of the outlaw country as we have all heard me say before.
But I don’t mind it.
A little fluffy at times.
But his songs have all had a good message to me.
And that is what is important oftentimes.
Yeah, I think I am with you.
I am not a big Darius as a country artist fan.
But I was a big Hootie and the Blowfish guy back when I was 10 years old.
Going to Bye So there’s some nostalgia to hearing his voice, for sure.
But yeah, a little too, not rough enough around the edges for me either.
Like I said, I like Hardy yelling, screaming the F-word.
No, I got you, I got you.
Well, yeah, not a bad track.
Not a bad track, as always, gives you something to think about.
So as far as we usually tell you what the next show is going to be, but we haven’t picked yet, so you’re all just going to have to tune in to the next episode and be pleasantly surprised.
As always, we thank you for taking the little bit of time out of your day week and joining us as we talk about parenting and country music.
Be sure to email us with any feedback that you might have to countrymusictads.gmail.com.
Follow us on all the socials, Country Music Dads, the website countrymusictads.com, and most importantly, please tell your friends, subscribe, give us the five-star rating on whatever podcast platform you use and listen to, as that really helps us get to the top of those searches and helps get our message out.
So Dave, you got anything else for this episode or are we going to let people go live their life and find their Kairos moment?
Live your life and go Google Kairos like I’m about to go do right now.
All right.
Thank you everybody.
We appreciate you.

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