How to engage with your kids

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In today’s episode we’re discussing how we engage with our kids. We'll cover our thoughts on the following:

• Tips from a therapist

• Our advice and what works for us when engaging out kids

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Resources:

·      How fathers can avoid pitfalls of shifting parenting roles, according to a therapist

TRANSCRIPT

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Dave: In today's episode, we're discussing how to engage with our kids.

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Dve: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Papa est fatigué podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. We recently ran across an article that discussed how fathers can avoid the pitfalls of shifting parental roles. Before we get into that, here's my deal, I'm Dave, I have an eight-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son.

Jim: I'm Jim. I've got two daughters, five and eight.

Dave: This article that we're discussing today was really talking about how the pandemic affected men in their parenting roles. The author is a therapist and he was talking about the upside of the pandemic for some men was to show them what they had been missing out on from a family perspective and from a parenting perspective, and there was this how then do those men then figure out how to fit into those new family roles.

One of the examples that he was giving was at the first day at his school, he saw more men than normal at the first day of school dropoff. A lot of these men just looked awkward, like they didn't really know what to do, and it was a new thing for them even though their kids might be in whatever, first, second, or third grade, it's not like they're in kindergarten or preK3. These men clearly were wanting to take a more active role in parenting, but they just weren't really sure where to start.

The other story that he tells, which I think was really interesting, was a father who was raised to be the breadwinner rather than that active parent. He felt that his parenting involvement suggested a lack of masculinity, which he knew to be objectively ridiculous, but it was still this baggage that he carried with him because he didn't have a role model to look at and say, "Okay, well, this is what an active father figure would look like."

Jim, I'm curious because we were talking in prepping for this podcast about further fleshing out who we think this father is. We were talking a little bit about how that I can certainly see if you were taught at an early age and if all of your role models reflected that your job as the father is to put food on the table and make sure there's a roof over the kids' head and everything, and if you've been doing that for 8, 10, 14 years and you get to this point and you come out of COVID and you say, "I would like to have a more active role, but now my kids are, say, 10 and 14, and I'm just not sure how now to engage with them."

It's a little bit easier, I think, with a five-year-old or seven-year-old where if you just sit down and play with them, there's that instant connection you can make versus with a 10-year-old or 14-year old who now are mini-adults. They have their own intricacies, their own problems. This is maybe a parent who might not even know who their kids' best friends are. You see jokes around that, but I think in those jokes there's some truth to that. I'm thinking, are there other things that you think you're seeing in terms of who this father might be, and just, I guess, how we would look at it relative to how our parenting style is.

Jim: Well, like you and I were talking about, it's hard for me to picture exact-- Maybe it's not an exact scenario. Maybe it's not an exact archetype. If there's somebody who is either working, as you said, 80 hours a week and just doesn't have the time and is unavailable and suddenly has the time because they're now in COVID and working from home, doesn't have the commute, and has more time and has more capacity to be more involved as a father, but the thing that really struck me and the thing that's been interesting to me over the course of this podcast is this idea of the gender role. That it's something about raising kids is women's work and the men work outside of the home. They bring that up in the article, this idea that maybe that's what, again, a generation or two generations ago that's what the good father was, was probably the enforcer or the disciplinarian and the breadwinner and maybe less involved in-- There's this idea that dad would come home at the end of the day would just be a stranger.

That wasn't quite so much in my house, but I can see at my friends' houses that dad is really wasn't a part of that social-emotional core of the family. Having more opportunity to be engaged in parenting or to, as the article says, see how much that they're missing and want to be more involved, those are interesting things. I guess the effect is the same, but what we're talking about is somebody who now has a desire to be more involved in parenting, which is really interesting. That's very different than having to take over the parenting roles because mom's sick or because mom's got to work outside of the house or something. It feels like there is a desire to capture those things that maybe they've been missing.

Dave: The role of the parent or, sorry, the role of the father is so important for the kids. There is the sense of if you are the father of a daughter, that the daughter will learn what she should expect from a relationship with the opposite sex. That's, again, modeling good relationships. Then I think for sons, they see your interaction with your wife and, again, understanding the requirements of how you treat the opposite sex. That role of the father is so important.

For those individuals that have had experiences we're like, "It was just dad rolled home at the end of the day, he ate dinner with us, and then went off to do something else because he was so tired from the day." It is so important to be present in our kids' lives. We just joke around sometimes about what were the upsides of the pandemic. I would argue, yes, if you found yourself in that situation where you were one of these parents that was just one of these dads, I guess, in particular, that was just, "My job is to just put food on the table, and again be the breadwinner," and you realized by having a little bit more free time that, "Look at all these things I've missed out on because I was on business trips or I was working the 80 hours or whatever it is that I was coming home tired." I think that is one of those benefits to be able to look back on and hopefully say, "Yes, there is some really terrible things that happened here, but here is the ray of sunshine that came through was that I understood what I was missing out on. I was able to address it before it became a lifelong regret."

We just came off that podcast last week, episode 35 about what it means to be a good father. Then I talked about the deathbed, how I wish I spent more time with the family. I think this is that first pivot point that you have if you want to take it to say, "For those first whatever 8, 10 years, I actually have been a little bit less present than I want to be, and I now realize what I've been missing out on. I now want to take some steps to change that and to actively reengage and be a more intentional parent and contribute more to the parenting of my child."

Jim: Here's what I was thinking about. I was remembering a couple of days when I was taking care of my girls for maybe the weekend or maybe for a couple of days when my wife was out of town. When she would rejoin the family, it was great and everybody got together, but thinking about the day, let's say, that we had together and how many things we did and all the activities and the places we went, and it's a thousand little stories that I didn't recognize during the day, but how do you communicate that to the other parent when they come home? "What did you do today?" "We went to the museum," or, "We went to the park." It's the thousand different things that you did, get them in their seatbelt, and the jokes you make, and where you went out to lunch, and things like that. That's a lot to be missed. That's a lot that the other parent is not going to participate in if they don't have the time or the attention, let's say, to do that.

There's this shift towards being more involved in, as you said, the, "I didn't want to spend more time at work," or nobody says they'd want to spend more time at work, they'd want to spend more time with their kids, that's a powerful motivator. I think with this article, what I get out of this article, somebody's got a piece of that and got a taste of that and really wants to integrate it into the family structure.

Dave: Sorry, I'm going to go back again to the podcast last week because I think that these two podcasts overlap a little bit, being a good father and this one. I think that one of the points that we made last week was talking about how being a good father is not necessarily these grand gestures of the trip to Disneyland. It's great to be able to save up and go to Disneyland, but at the end of the day, that's not what the kids are going to remember. Yes, they'll remember that, but they're going to remember more the breadth of the experience that they've had over the course of, whatever, the 18 years of life when they're growing up in part of your family. Yes, they'll remember the trip to Disneyland, but really the things that they'll take away are going to be what you talk about, the trips to the museum.

I remember growing up and my dad used to take me out all the time where we went hiking or went biking with my mom. All of those banal things that we do just day in and day out, those, I think, are the pieces that impacts the kid more than the fun vacation that they took. Again, I think this concept of saying, "Hey, yes, I'm shifting my thought patterns from my sole job is to be the breadwinner to now I want more than just that. I want to move beyond that very one-sided view of what being a father is into something that is more encompassing about all of the pieces of parenting I think that's important.

Some of the tips that the author, again, who is a therapist talked about for fathers that, again, are trying to begin that relationship. He gives four tips. One is announced the change. Again, if you've been one of these parents, it's like, "Well, I just show up at certain points." There could be some level of just confusion. Your kids are like, "Wait a minute, you've never asked me about this or you've never been this involved in my life. What's going on?" He says, just let them know your intention, and so that then it just becomes easier for everybody to understand what's going on. It's like, "Oh, okay. I get now why dad is trying to do this, because he wants to be more involved in my life." I think that's a good thing.

The second one is shift your priorities. Certainly, as more people have been able to work from home, all of a sudden, conceptually we have a little bit more time. That commute time is gone and our days are so busy that it's easy to fill it up with other things. Just going down the YouTube rabbit hole or doing something else. Take that time, find time to really dedicate for your kids instead of carving out what would have otherwise been commute time and saying, "Oh, I got some free time." Spend that free time on your kids.

The third one is be patient. Start with small gestures because, again, depending on how long or how old your kids are, this is a relationship that you have to rebuild a little bit and reintroduce yourself. Then the last one is, take cues from the mom. She's been the primary parent in terms of the relationship with the kids. She certainly has ways and tips and tricks. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just sit down with your partner and get a sense of like, "Hey, how do you interact with them? What works for you? What are their interests?" All that kind of stuff. Take some advice from her.

With that being said, what kind of advice do you have? How do you engage with your kids on a daily basis?

Jim: I think the prior episode, episode 35, about how to be a good dad, I think really encompasses a lot of this. Some of it is just- fundamentally, it's time and attention. If you think about just building any relationship or any friendship, let's say as adults building friendships as adults, it's really just time and shared experiences and activities, things that you do together. The more time that you can spend with somebody doing anything, the closer the relationship is going to be.

Again, back to the episode 35 is a lot of stuff's going to be a repeat, but just spending time and attention. I believe that kids, more than anything, just want our undivided attention in any way that we can give it to them, even in just very small chunks, five minutes or 10 minutes at a time, I think is really valuable anytime that-- I ended up doing a lot of engagement with my girls. Sometimes they might be playing by themselves, and I come over and ask, "What is it you're doing?" Have an interest in what they're doing and ask if I could participate or see if they want to invite me to participate with them and let them take the lead as far as what we're doing.

I'll also set up activities that we can do together, playing games, arts and crafts, things like that. Just this week, the girls were playing with goo, and slime, and putty. We probably have five different types of this, is like glitter, putty, and space, ooze, and stuff like that. They wanted to watch TV and I didn't want them watching TV so I just sat down at the table and I said, "Let's play with slime." We sat there for 45 minutes just making balls and then making pancakes and then just shooting the breeze and having some laughs about it. For me, that was a great example of just a shared activity. It doesn't have to be something special. We didn't go to the park, we didn't go get ice cream. We weren't even playing on the swings, we were just sitting at the dining room table, playing with this putty together. That was really a pleasant time and a really pleasant memory, and seeing their faces and how they were laughing and smiling, and just having the three of us share an activity together that we're all interested in.

Then respect. Twofold, first is respect, and again, back to that episode 35, trying to treat them like little people, their own beings, show some respect. By that, I mean be courteous, play nicely, share all the things that we try to teach them to do. That sets the right tone. Also, in its heart [unintelligible 00:15:20] in this whole deal, it's when they asked me to play, I will hold rally and make an effort to do that. The one that comes to mind is earlier this week that my older daughter wanted to play tag and I just had a heavy meal and it was the end of the day, tired. My bones creak as she wants to run around the yard and play tag. I bought myself about five minutes of time, just to get my- give me a minute to get through it.

Dave: [laughs]

Jim: Then we played and that was a time where it was an activity that she wanted to do. She invited me to do it with her and I tried to take every opportunity. Anytime that my younger daughter says she wants to play with me, I take that as just the greatest compliment. I'll take her up on that.

Dave: I like what you were talking about in your first example about just sitting down with them when they're doing stuff. My youngest, he's five, and he can play Lego really, really all day long, which was a saving grace at the beginning of COVID because he basically played Lego every day for like three months straight at the beginning. The downside to that is, because he can occupy himself with that, you figure, "Well, he doesn't need attention," or like, "Well, I can get away and sneak away and do some work here."

What I've been thinking about recently is, "How can I spend more time with the kids?" I always feel like I'm not spending enough time because I got all this stuff going on and I'm trying to find more proactive ways of spending time with them. When my work is done at the end of the day, I look over and he's sitting there playing Lego and I just sit down next to him and I just start building, and then we have this conversation. I think there's also these moments where even if they are occupied, it doesn't mean that they're not interested in having you participate.

I think that's really important because it's easy for me to go, "Oh, he's okay. He's perfectly fine. I don't need to interact with him because he's not needy." He's not like, "Oh, make this with me. Can you give me a challenge or whatever?" You absolutely can just sit down and just start building with him. Then he'll just naturally come over and we'll start building together, or if he's playing Octonauts I just sit down and pick up a figure and he's like, "You can be Captain Barnacle." Actually, he would never let me be Captain Barnacles. [laughs]

That's who he is. You can be Quasi, or whatever, Peso. I think that's one way of just engaging with them.

When the kids younger, you don't need to be invited in, you can just walk in there, and they'll just naturally go, "Hey," and just bring you into the fold. Just don't be looking for the opportunity. You can create it yourself. I think that your point is valid too that I hadn't thought about it as, what did she say time and listening, I think it's how you broke it down.

Jim: Yes, [unintelligible 00:18:24] time and shared activities or just--

Dave: I always think of one of the big things of parenting is just showing up, just being there, just carving out time to just sit there. Honestly, if you find time to just sit there, eventually your kid will start talking to you, even if they weren't before. Again, like the Lego thing. You can just sit down and they literally just start talking or at least find out with my kids. Part of that process is just sitting down and listening to them. They might not always be willing to talk on your timeframe. The whole like, "How did your day go?" It's like a one-sentence answer, but if you just keep listening and keep at it, and saying, "Okay, That did not quite illustrate the kind of response I was looking for," and then thinking about how to change the question. You have a bunch of questions. I like what you asked. I think it was something like, "Who got in trouble today? Did you get in trouble today?" Just different ways of phrasing the question that still gets them to talk. I like that concept because I think that they will absolutely talk to you if you can crack the code to figuring out, well, okay, how do I ask the question in a way that will get them to engage just beyond the one line or the simple yes, no answer. I think those are pretty important.

I think it's also important to really focus on building the relationship and letting your child know that you're there. Some of that, again, it's just going to be just sitting down next to them when they're playing to let them know that, "Hey, I'm here to play if you want to play," or, "If you want to talk, we can talk." One thing that happened a while back with my daughter was, she came home one day from school and it was very clear that she was sad. I pressed her a little bit to just figure it out. I was like, "Look, okay, first of all, you don't need to tell me if you don't want to. I'm not going to keep asking if you don't want to talk about this, but know that I am here and I'd like to help you through it. If it's something that you don't want to share with your mom, I won't share it with your mom, it can just be between you and me." It's not like it's a secret, but it's more to create a space where she knows that she can trust me. Eventually, she told me what was wrong and so we worked through it. I think that's the first stage.

I think that's especially important when the kids are young, to create that relationship so that when things get trickier, when they're, say, in high school or middle school, where the challenges become way more complicated than a 3rd grader, that they know that they've got this history of going to you with their problems and that you're not going to judge them.

My parents were the ones in high school, you start going to parties, and they're like, "Look, if anything starts to feel weird, you call us at any point. At 2:00 or 1:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, we'll pick you up, and we won't ask you any questions. We'll just pick you up, no questions asked, wherever you are." I think that's important to start building those foundations if you want to become a more active father and building that trust.

I would say also try and find that uninterrupted time every day. It doesn't need to be an hour. It can literally just be, "All right, all I can do is 10 minutes a day." That's what I'm trying to do right now, is just 10 minutes of day of uninterrupted playtime. Let's play a board game for 10 minutes, let's play LEGO for 10 minutes, whatever it is. Maybe I can bang that out before I have to start cooking dinner.

Other things are going to be just figuring out what they like to do and doing it with them. I guess the extension to that is finding a hobby to do together. Could be something that you want to do, can be something that they like to do. That gives you an opportunity to have an exchange, as opposed to again, just the whole like, "How was your day?" If you have that shared experience, then you can talk about it as it's happening. If you don't have a hobby, or if they don't have a hobby, simple things are going to be like bedtime reading, meal times. You're just like dedicate that time because bedtime reading is 10 or 15 minutes. It's not that much time.

I think the last thing that I have to say is that remember that if the role is new to you, if you're going again from a place of being, "I'm the breadwinner," to now, "I want to be more of an active parent." Remember that you don't need to go from 0 to 60. This is not an overnight thing. Don't put the pressure on yourself to go from 0 to 60. Find little things to do, and then work your way up. It could be like, my goal for this week is, again, just finding 10 minutes a day to spend with my kid. I'm going to make that a habit. If I can do that for, whatever, 30 days, then I'm going to try and do the next thing. Again, make it manageable, all things. If you're trying to do something new, I think make it manageable will feel a little bit easier.

Also, it won't give the kids a sense of like, "Wait a minute, you literally went from being the one to discipline me to now being this loving parent. I'm not really clear. I can't wrap my head around this new role for you. That's a bit of a shift." That's, I think, potentially too difficult for kids to do also, depending on your circumstances. Really, you don't need to go from 0 to 60, you don't have to put that pressure on yourself. It probably helps everybody actually, you ease into that role.

Jim: What's interesting and thinking about this role shift is, you and I are really lucky that our kids are at five and eight. I think that even if I hadn't had a strong relationship with my eight-year-old until this point, I feel like I could still make one pretty easily because they're kids and you know all the things that we're talking about. You get engaged, you talk about the things that they want to talk about.

Let them take the lead, spend time, all the little stuff. I'm sure that I've seen dozens of movies that encapsulate this really well where there's the dad that's overworked, that is absent from the family, and suddenly there's some crisis, or challenge, or journey, or whatever that they have, and then the dad becomes more involved. I think that even if my daughter was 10 or certainly if she was 12 or 14, then all of a sudden try to have a more engaged relationship, I think it would be really hard. Thankfully, you and I don't have to think about that [unintelligible 00:24:58] don't have any insight into that. I can imagine that trying to make a more intimate relationship with a 14-year old that hadn't been there before, it'd be really challenging. I think all the things that the article cites and the things that you just talked about are really key ways to get started. It's hard for me to envision what that would be like. That's going to be very challenging.

Dave: Yes, because my guess is that those teen years is when, even if you have a good relationship with your kid, they're going to want some space anyway. On top of it, you haven't had a good relationship with the-- Not to say that you have a bad relationship, but if you don't have the kind of tight-knit relationship with your kid, and then you try to build that when they're 12 or 14, when they're already trying to explore their own independence, when they are trying to not quite leave the nest, but start to feel like, "Okay, what is this independence thing? Who am I becoming as an adult?" Yes, I can imagine that that's that much more difficult.

My guess is that if you keep at it, again, with these smaller pieces that the upside when you look back on that relationship when they're 16, or 18, or 20, is probably worth the effort.

My guess is you're going to go through some ups and downs as you try some stuff that just doesn't work, that your kids like, "I'm not into this new you because I have got my own thing going on. It's like a burden, actually." My guess is that, again, when you look back on that 10 years, 15 years, 20 years later, as adults, or as your kids moving into adulthood, it'll be worth it. I always go back to that.

I'm not going to go out and say, "I regret having spent too much time at the office." That's just not a regret that you want to have when the end is here. This is that point where you can choose to pivot. It's up to you, but I would say that if you're considering it, go for it.

Jim: The article, as you said, it doesn't have to go 0 to 60. It can be incremental. Somebody can be just a little bit more involved in the parenting their kids. I think nobody's going to regret that.

Dave: I think like anything, part of it is just testing out what works. If you start with these little things, you can judge, "Okay, well, that thing did not work. My daughter really didn't like it when I tried to do X." All right, let's try another small thing. Okay, that would seem to work. Maybe I can increase that or find a larger way to do that or whatever. I think that that's what I would do if I were probably jumping in when the kids were older, or again if I was switching in these roles.

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