The Duck Commander Family (22 page)

Not that our kids don’t have plenty of activities of their own. But sometimes when a family’s life totally revolves around the kids, parents can start to feel like their children are a burden. We’ve never felt that way. Our lives didn’t end when we brought children into the world. When our kids were younger, I just put them on my hip and took them with me wherever I went. If it meant they had to fall asleep on my shoulder while I was answering e-mails or filling orders, then that’s just the way it would be. Kids only know what you teach them. If you let the whole world revolve around them when they are younger, when they realize that’s not really the way the world works, it’s not very pretty.

Having said all that, somebody told me once that they’d never seen anyone watch their children as much as we do. We’ll sit around at night just watching them doing tricks and performing for us. That was something I brought from my side
of the family. My family absolutely loves to watch our kids perform. It’s really one of our favorite things to do. I think enjoying your children and delighting in them is a gift that you give your children. It’s a way to show them that they are loved and valued. Plus, there’s nothing cuter than a three-year-old showing off her latest dance moves.

Hey, wait a minute, I will never forget being in the eighth grade and one Friday night telling Phil about “break dancing.” Phil said, “What’s that?” I told him, “Let me show ya.” I put my boom box down, put in my cassette of Midnight Star’s “No Parking on the Dance Floor,” and did an entire dance while Phil watched from his recliner. He seemed impressed. “That’s some kinda moves, Will,” he told me. “Not sure what that is, but at least it’s entertaining.” So even the Robertson side did a little watchin’!

Korie:
Another thing we’ve always tried to teach our children is that people are more important than things. If one of the kids is watching TV and somebody wants to talk, you stop watching TV and listen to them. You never put more importance on a thing than you do on a person. This is hard for older siblings to learn when there are little ones in the family destroying your favorite toys. But it was a lesson we were intent on teaching. If you are going to teach these tough lessons, though,
you have to model them in your own life. When your neighbor borrows your lawn mower and tears it up, you have to act with love and forgiveness. It’s in the little things and the big things. Your children are always watching.

This was a hard lesson for me because I came from such a poor family. When I was a child, you really took pride in having any possessions. But Korie and her family could always go out and buy a replacement when something got lost or broke. She actually taught me a lot about this lesson in our early marriage days. I was used to protecting my stuff from my brothers like the Secret Service.

Korie:
Willie and I have always thought that your home should be the happiest place for your family. If you’re excited when your kids or husband walks in the front door, then you’ll have a much happier family. A lot of people don’t make it a habit to do that. They go to work and give their best to the outside world because they know if they’re negative or griping or complaining, they might lose their job. They’re not going to make a sale with a frown on their faces, so they’re always putting on their best smile. It should be that way at home too. I always tell our children that the people they love the most and the people who love them the most are their family. So your family should be the people you treat the best.

When the kids come home every day, we really try to make it a point to greet them, be happy, and ask them how their days went. I do the same thing for Willie, and he does the
same thing for me. When Willie comes home, I’m excited. I hug him and kiss him. We find out what happened in each other’s day, and it sets the right tone for everything else. Our kids see our love for each other, and they realize that’s how they should be treating one another too.

I think having happy kids and a happy marriage is all about respect. Willie and I have a mutual respect for each other, and we try to treat each other respectfully. Sadie once asked me why marriage is so hard. She realized married couples don’t always make it and that there are a lot of people getting divorced. Our kids see that Willie and I are happy and think marriage looks pretty easy. Of course, they didn’t see us during the early years, when times were tough. In those days we fought our way through all the things newlyweds have to figure out in order to live together peacefully. I told Sadie that sometimes it’s hard because you go into a marriage with expectations, and you think the other person is going to be a certain way. You want them to be that way because that’s how you always envisioned your husband or wife, or that’s how your daddy or mama was when you were growing up. But until you can let those expectations go, and value your spouse for who he or she really is and be thankful for it, then a marriage is never going to work.

I’m very different from Willie’s mom, and Willie is very different from my dad. So if you go into a marriage with all these unrealistic expectations and try to change your spouse to be
exactly like you want them to be, then you’re always going to be fighting and miserable. But if you can let those false expectations go, you can learn to appreciate and be thankful for who that person is, and then marriage can be a great thing.

I think marriages start to go bad when selfishness creeps in. Korie and I are super laid-back, in a lot of ways like my parents were. I never liked taking orders, never liked being bossed around, and I didn’t marry a parent figure. There is no sense in my giving her orders or her giving me orders; we’re both adults. I married somebody to share my life with. You have to let your spouse be the person they want to be, and you have to let them do the things they want to do. If she doesn’t feel like cleaning the kitchen one day, she doesn’t have to. If I feel it needs to be cleaned, I can do it myself, or hire someone to do it. I don’t tell her what to do. I’m not her father. She does the same for me.

Korie ended up working at Duck Commander with me, but if she wanted to do something entirely different, I would have supported her. As the kids have gotten older and as the business has grown, there have been times where I’ve told her, “If you want to stop, you can stop. Don’t feel like you have to work.” I’ve asked her several times if she didn’t want me to go on the road, and if she hadn’t wanted me to go, I wouldn’t have gone. Now, she’d have had to realize that the business might have suffered from it, but if it did, then so be it. Making a little extra money is never worth it if it’s at the expense of
your family. If you work with your spouse, then you really have to respect each other and communicate well. Those are the keys to living and working with your spouse happily.

Korie:
When Willie was growing up, he always knew what the consequences were if he misbehaved or acted out of line, and it was the same in my home. We try to never yell at our kids or even raise our voices at them. I can honestly say that I have never heard Willie yell at our children but he has always disciplined them with an immediate action. I remember one time when the kids were fighting and driving me crazy. The TV was turned up really loud, and they were yelling at each other, fighting over some toy or what movie they were going to watch next. Willie came through the door and saw that I was about at my wit’s end. He just walked over and turned the TV off. The kids looked at him and thought, “Wait, what just happened?” There was complete silence in the room. Without saying a word, Willie was telling them, “If you’re going to fight, then you’re not going to get to watch TV.” The argument was over, and there was no discussion or arguing back and forth. Willie just put an end to it.

That’s how discipline generally works in our house. When our kids were toddlers, if one of our kids woke up from a nap and was whiny or in a bad mood, then he or she was expected to turn around and go straight back to his or her
room. If one of the kids is driving everybody else crazy, then he or she is removed from the situation. They’re sent to their room until they can get along with everyone else.

But Willie seems to get his point across better than me. I’m usually the one who wakes the kids up for school in the morning, and Bella takes forever to get out of bed. I have to admit, I was the same way for my mom, so maybe I have too much patience for it. But I have to roll her over and keep prodding her to get up. Then I have to go back and check to make sure she didn’t go back to sleep after I left. But Willie literally just walks into a room and turns on a light. He says, “Get up,” and they get up. I’m always like, “How in the world did you do that?” I guess that’s just the difference between mamas and daddies, and it’s important to have that balance.

When the kids are misbehaving, I don’t count to three. One is enough. I try not to be the one always saying no, but when I do, it should carry some weight. I try to be the parent who disciplines our kids because I don’t want Korie to be burdened with it. I think Korie and I have really defined roles in how we handle situations. Korie’s tolerance line has always been a lot higher than mine. My kids will test me, but they understand that when they reach my tolerance line, that’s it and it’s over. The key is being consistent so you never confuse them.

I never raise my voice. Phil never yelled at us when I was growing up. When Phil said it, he said it and didn’t have to scream. I see people yelling at their kids, and I always think, “I ain’t going to do that.” Phil let his actions speak louder than
his words. I think one of the most powerful things that happened to us as kids was when my oldest brother, Alan, was seventeen. He and his buddies went camping and were drinking beer. Then they decided to knock down a bunch of mailboxes up the road in a drunken redneck night. A neighbor came down the next morning and talked to Phil. Jase and I were pretty young, and we could hear the adults whispering in the kitchen. I remember hearing Phil say, “Okay, I got you.” Phil walked out the front door, climbed in his truck, and drove off.

Phil drove to Alan’s camp and found beer cans all over the ground. He told Alan to get in his truck. Then he told the three other boys, “If you ever want to come to my house for the rest of your life, get in my truck, and you’re getting a whippin’ for tearing up those mailboxes.” Two of Alan’s friends came over to our house pretty regularly, so they figured they’d better get in the truck. The third guy had never even seen Phil, and Al and the other two boys told him they wouldn’t hold it against him if he didn’t come. I guess he figured, “How bad can it really be?” The four of them climbed in the back of the truck, and Phil drove them back to our house. Jase and I hid in the azalea bushes and watched Phil whip four seventeen-year-old men. One of them was Bill “Red Dawg” Phillips, who was one of Alan’s best friends and later worked for Duck Commander and appeared in several Duckmen videos. Phil told him, “I’ve known you all your life. I’m so disappointed. I can’t believe you pulled a stunt like this.” Greg Eppinette, who would later become one of our cameramen on the Duckmen videos, was
also there. Phil told him, “I know your parents. We’ve been to church together. You tell your daddy why you got this.” Then Phil whipped him. Next was the boy Phil had never laid eyes on. “Son,” Phil said, “I don’t know who you are but you tell your daddy that I whipped you and why I did it, and if he has a problem with it, he can come talk to me.” Last was Alan, who was wearing these short little running shorts. It was the 1980s, and he looked like Richard Simmons. You want to talk about influencing young ones. It hurt Jase and me to watch that belt hitting Alan’s pasty thighs. That was pretty much all it took to keep Alan in line for the rest of high school, and Jase and me as well.