233: Fatherhood, Influence & Building a Legacy with EksAyn Anderson

In this engaging conversation, Jey Young and EksAyn Anderson explore the profound impact of fatherhood on children and society. They discuss the importance of intentional parenting, the role of influence, and how fathers can instill confidence in their kids. The dialogue emphasizes the need for fathers to take an active role in their children's education and development, adopting a CEO mindset. They also touch on the significance of accountability, positive reinforcement, and teaching life skills to foster independence and work ethic in children. The conversation wraps up with lighthearted questions in the 'Dad Zone', reinforcing the importance of connection and fun in parenting.

Takeaways

Fatherhood is a crucial influence on children's lives.

Dads need to be present and engaged in their children's upbringing.

Confidence in children often stems from their fathers' support.

Parents should act as the CEOs of their children's education.

Positive reinforcement is more effective than criticism.

Teaching accountability helps children understand consequences.

Life skills are essential for children's independence.

Dads should encourage their children to take on challenges.

The choices parents make today impact future generations.

Building a strong connection with children fosters trust and openness.

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Fatherhood and Influence

03:54 The Role of Dads in Building Confidence

07:55 Dads as CEOs of Their Children's Education

11:58 Instilling Confidence Through Challenges

15:48 Positive Reinforcement and Accountability

19:30 The Lasting Impact of Dad's Voice

34:24 Building Trust and Connection with Children

35:25 Teaching Consequences and Responsibilities

37:53 The Importance of Life Skills

39:33 Work Ethic and Perseverance

43:57 Leading with Actions, Not Feelings

48:22 The Power of Choices

51:35 The Irreplaceable Role of Fathers

55:07 Fun in the Dad Zone

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Episode Transcript

(00:10):
And welcome into the Young Dad podcast.
I'm your host, Jay. And whether you're outside
grilling and mowing the lawn, changing dirty diapers, or maybe
just maybe you got a moment to sit back, relax, enjoy some
summer rays or whatever time of year it is and relax and listen
to your favorite podcast or wherever you're at, whatever
you're doing. Thanks for being here and thanks
for tuning in. Today we're diving into a
powerful and timely conversationabout fatherhood, influence and

(00:33):
the long term impact that have on their kids and society as a
whole. It's always a relevant topic.
So it's always timely. It's always something that we
need to be talking about more and more and more.
I'm just in the world around us today.
I'm honored to have X in. I probably butchered his name.
That's fine, He'll correct me. I'm here in a moment.
I'm excited to have him join us today.
He's a husband, father, influence strategist, author and

(00:53):
speaker. You may have seen him on Forbes
Speaker magazine and various TV shows and podcasts.
He's the author of multiple books including What I Want My
Children to Know Before I Die and The Upcoming Or Maybe It's
Already Out. I could be wrong.
When I prep this hidden forces powerful influence where it is
least expected. Beyond his success in business,
his real mission is helping fathers help step up, build

(01:15):
stronger families, and change the world through intentional
parenting and influence. So make sure you grab your juice
box, grab your snack and let jump into the conversation.
Excellent. Welcome to the podcast.
Welcome to the show. Jay, thanks for having me on the
show. Appreciate it of.
Course man, your work is all about influence, but not just in
distance. So you believe that fatherhood
is one of the most powerful places where influence is often

(01:37):
overlooked. Why is it so important that that
step up now more than ever? But before you answer that
question, go ahead and take us through kind of how you got into
the spear and kind of where how you or where you're at now with
what you're doing well. Thanks.
You know, I just have just in the last year, Jay, it's a great
question. Last just in the last year, I

(01:58):
just had this strong impression that I just need to go help
dads. So that's what I'm doing.
The kind of your your previous question before that, like why
is it so important? Here's the here's the truth.
You know, everything, all the problems that we see in the
world, if you look at the root, so like if we see people who are
being violent or we see people who are being dishonest or

(02:21):
corrupt, or we see people, you go back to all kinds of problems
that you see. And a lot of times we want to
fix it with a quick fix. Like we say, well, we'll just
have the government fix it or we'll just get more social
programs or less social programsor this political party is going
to save us or that political party is going to save us or
whatever it is. But the truth is what we, if you

(02:42):
look at the root of where the problem started, the problem
started decades ago in an, in a neglected or overheated home.
I mean, I was talking to a police officer some time ago and
he told me that 90% of the people that he's taking to jail
don't have a present dad in the home.
It's not there. And, or they may be there, but

(03:03):
maybe they're not emotionally checked in or, or, you know,
checked in his dad. The vast majority of, of the
problems we see are not problemsthat you have a quick fix for.
There are things that we needed to fix a long time ago.
And so, you know, I there was a wise man, let me tell you this,
there was a wise man that said something like this.

(03:24):
He said, if there's not enough good parents, there will never
be enough police. If there is not enough good
parents, there will never be enough prisons.
And I think we're almost gettingto that point where there's so
much going on, you know, we can try to have police fix things or
prisons or, or try to have things that, you know, social
programs, something that fixes it.
But what we really need and whatone of the things, Jay, I'm glad

(03:45):
you're doing, you know, here you're trying to help dads,
which is so noble. You've got this podcast, it's
reaching out. We need dads to step up and say,
you know what, I'm, I'm going todo the very best I can to be a
great leader, to, to, to be a good dad, to be, to teach
principals in my home, to influence, as you said,
influence our children for good.And so it's a great question.

(04:08):
I think it's needed now more than ever.
And I think we have a chance to stem some of the tide.
But we've got it. We've got to go fast.
Because the truth is, if you look around, things have
deteriorated and, and that's what we're trying to do is, is
trying to inspire dads to step up and be as awesome as they

(04:30):
can. Yeah.
No, you make a really great point there.
There's been a lot for for decades now, there's been a
fight on the nuclear family, taking dads out of the home,
taking children away from their fathers.
You're having the influence of men be less demasculite,
masculinizing men, however you want to say that, right?

(04:50):
Taking masculinity good, real, strong, honest masculinity and
making it something that just toxic.
Every sense of masculinity is toxic now, right?
Except for feminine masculinity isn't toxic, right?
And you can talk about social programs, court system, prisons,
police forces, right? All these social programs, none
of those, as we've learned over the last few decades, many

(05:12):
decades, 5-6 decades now those, those haven't really worked.
Those haven't really helped too much or done anything except for
make the problem habitually work.
Honestly, if we look at it, you know, there's here in Washington
state, you know, our, our children are failing math and
reading. By the time they reach 8th
grade, 70% are failing math and 80% are failing reading.

(05:34):
Maybe I have that invert. No, it's 7080.
Like they're not even above 5th grade level in a lot of for 3rd
to 5th grade level and and the time they get to 8th grade, like
the system's broken, but it's all we you look back in history
and where was the breaking point?
It's when you took fathers out of the home.
It's when you took fathers away from their children and children

(05:55):
away from the fathers, and you took them away and you separated
them so much that you incentivize mothers to be single
and to not have the fathers in the home.
And you've seen it just grow over time, right?
To where fathers get to spend a weekend a month with their kids
sometimes in best case scenario,when they have nothing wrong

(06:17):
with them, they have everything going for them.
They have a good job, they have a stable home still.
They have the time, the resources, everything, right?
And they get one week in a monthand they're paying Bucos of
child support. That's going for for what?
So yeah, it's, it's frustrating to kind of see how far we fall.
In Yeah. And it it, and I got to tell
you, kids need their dads more than one weekend a month.

(06:40):
You know, when the system's set up to incentivize giving the dad
as little as possible so that they, the other party can have,
you know, maximize child support, that there's a system
systemic error there, frankly. And kids need.
Kids need, there's certain things that dads can do that

(07:01):
moms don't do. And you know, they found that a
lot of confidence comes that gets instilled by dads.
Dads have a tremendous chance toinfluence confidence in their
kids. They have a tremendous chance to
influence principles and and boundaries and teaching respect
and kindness, the golden rule, but just things that are basic
to our society, honesty. And if we lose this, I mean, if

(07:24):
if dads are just there to go make a paycheck, we're we're
missing the boat. We have to have dads who are
willing to teach principles to their kids.
We have to have dads that are willing to stand up and say, you
know what? You know what, Jay, I want to
say something. They found that the kids who do
best are when parents act like they're the CE OS of their

(07:45):
children's education. Now.
I wanted to think about that fora second.
As a parent, I really believe you are the CEO of your
children's education. Now, some people think that you
should just take your child and drop them off at the nearest
school. And there's nothing wrong with
that if you as a parent think that's the best thing for your
kid. But we need to be able to say,

(08:06):
you know what? If my child's going to learn to
read like you were talking about, my child's going to learn
to do good in in school, the buck stops with me.
Now, I might decide as the CEO to outsource it to the nearest
school, but maybe the nearest school isn't doing a great job.
So maybe I need to outsource it to another school.
Maybe I need to move. Maybe I need to just see if I
can get an exception, take him to another school.

(08:27):
Maybe I need to homeschool. Maybe I need to private school.
Maybe I need to put him into charter school.
Maybe I need to do something different.
Because as ACEO, you get to decide.
You get to decide. Am I going to hire or am I going
to fire? Am I going to outsource to this
supplier or we're going to change suppliers?
And as such, you know, you couldyou could get if you don't, if
you're not good at piano and youwant you think it would be good

(08:48):
for your child toward piano, youcan outsource to a piano teacher
or a math tutor or or a private school, public school, home
school, whatever it is you want to do.
But we need to take this attitude that we're the CEO's
and his dads. I think we've become checked out
some. Some dads are just don't even
care. It's like I'm just that's their
job. No, it's not.
It's your job as a dad and your children when you take that

(09:09):
attitude. And like I said, it doesn't mean
I'm not. It's not like I'm against
schools, Like there's great schools, we have great teachers
and different things. But I'm saying the teacher, if
we can have the attitude that the school may be someone I
outsource to, but in the end, the buck stops with me.
If my kid can't read, I'm going to find a way to teach him to

(09:30):
read. If I if my child's struggling in
a certain area, it's my job to help, to help that problem
rather than just saying to someone else's problem.
And I think those are the dad. That's the kind of attitude we
need to have. Yeah, no, what you're hitting on
there, right? You hit on a couple things I
want to want to continue the conversation on, right?
First is confident, right? It's so obvious that Dad is

(09:54):
still confident because especially for the boys, right?
Who who do we want to make more proud in our life than anyone?
We want to make sure dad's proud, right?
Like I'm, I'm in my 30s now, right?
And I still want to make sure I make my dad proud, right?
I want to make my grandpa's proud.
Like I want to make those strongmale influences my in my life
proud. Still like to this day.

(10:15):
Like I think about it's like, man, what am I doing?
Something that would make my dadproud, man, would he be proud of
me? Like my dad's still alive.
Don't take it like that. Like he's not alive.
But like I think about like, that would just be making my dad
proud. Like I don't have any
relationship with my biological mother, but I don't really think
about that stuff, you know, withmy grandma who raised me, I
don't really think about that. Am I making her proud?

(10:35):
She's going to be proud of she'sgoing to love me regardless.
I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread regardless of what
I do. But it's like my dad's like I
want to make sure I'm making himproud in some way, shape or
form. I want to make sure I'm always
doing something that makes him proud So I can call him.
He can ask me what I've been up to lately.
I have something just amazing totell him that he'll be proud of
me for. They'll just be like, whoa,
that's so cool kind of thing, like good job kind of thing.

(10:57):
Get a little pat on the back, you know, over the phone.
You know, we look for those things.
Greater person instills confident than that, right And
confident goes into every aspectof life, every single aspect
being able to overcome peer peerpeer pressure, academics, you
know, feeling confident like, Ohyeah, I can do this right.
Like my dad and I, we've been reading together.

(11:18):
I'm feeling good and feeling confident or he helps with my
homework. I feel good and confident on on
these answers, right Like that confidence comes from that like
it doesn't come the same way formom.
It can, but to a much lesser degree, right?
Because mom's going to be like, you're great, honey, you're
doing a good job. All the things, guys, We'll tell
you how it is. We'll tell you if you suck and
if you need to improve. But at the same time, when you

(11:38):
do do the things good, we're going to tell you you're like,
you're killing it kind of thing.And that's going to feel really
good. The second part that you
mentioned there with, you know, being the CEO of your child's
life, you know, parents are the primary stakeholder in their
children's life. There's no ifs, ands or buts
about it. None.
I mean, I use Washington State as an example a lot because I

(12:01):
live here. I can speak very, very well to
it here, here here in my my beautiful state.
That up to interpretation for Howard Grant, I'll leave it at
that. But there's been a there's a
recent six hours debate in Olympia.
So this is in March. There's a recent six hour debate
over a house bill. Basically take in the past

(12:23):
because it's the there was a Democrat bill and it passed and
all this fun stuff, but basically taking away parental
right to notification to if any abuse or anything happened in
the school to what the curriculum is and things like
that. Just taking all those things
away, a six hour debate and you know, ultimately the Republicans
lost, you know, every amendment they try to push through for

(12:44):
more transparency, more parentalaccess kind of things.
But at the end of the day, you know, parents are you are the
primary stakeholder in your children's life.
The buck stopped with you. Like you mentioned, if your
children's child struggling in math, reading, writing, socially
with our confidence, whatever, right?
It all stops with you as a parent because you are, like you
said, the CEO. You are the primary stakeholder.

(13:05):
You have to make those decisionswhether you want to or not.
It's up to you. You can't let your children
fail. You have to put them in an
environment where they can. See, no, I love that.
Hey, Jay, you are absolutely right and these are hot.
These are these are intense issues.
Let's start with where you said first on confidence that I want
to circle back to the CE OS likeyou said that so briefly.
And I, I love how you brought that up.

(13:25):
There is something unique about how a dad can instill confidence
in their kids. It's it's, it's, it's very
unique. Now, let me let me tell you one
of the things that we as dads can be be thinking about when
we're trying to influence our kids for good.
So when something happens, the way we react is completely can

(13:47):
be helpful or unhelpful. Let me give you an example.
If you're if you're walking along and your kid skins their
knee so that, you know, walking along, they fall down, they
trip, they got a little bit of the skin knee.
If you as a dad get all intense to be like, Oh my gosh, I can't
believe he's getting in Cuchi cuchi cu and and Oh my goodness,
we've got to get some. And you know, assuming it's just
a a little skin knee, the unspoken message to the child
might be, Oh my goodness, I'm fragile, which is not confidence

(14:11):
building, like I'm breakable. Do you hear what I'm saying?
So overreacting to something like a skinned knee could make
them feel it could set this tone.
They're like, oh, my dad thinks I'm fragile.
On the other hand, if you just react confidently, so like they
skin their knee, you say, you know, oh, looks like you skinned
your knee and I've skinned my knee and gosh, it's going to
hurt for a little bit, but it's going to start feeling a little
bit better as time goes on. Here you'll be you're going to

(14:32):
be fine. What happens is when they skin
their knee later and you're not there, they hear your confident
voice. They know it's going to be OK.
On the other hand, if you freaked out, they have this idea
that Oh my gosh, my dad freaked out.
Maybe I should freak out. And they're, and that's they'll
almost react kind of like you do.
Let me give you one other example.

(14:52):
I live in the Rocky Mountain area and my five year old
daughter came to me years ago. She's older now, but she came to
me years ago when she was five years old.
And she said, hey dad, I want tohike this mountain.
She knows I like to hike mountains.
And this mountain happens to be 11,700 feet tall.
OK, so it's a big mountain. It's a 15 mile hike.
She's five years old and she comes to me and she goes, hey,

(15:12):
down, I want to hike this mountain.
Now I could have said to her, you're way too young.
Sorry, can't do it. Luckily I didn't.
I just said, Are you sure you want to hike this?
And she said sure. I said, she goes, I really do
that. I really, she didn't say sure.
She said, I really do. And I said, well, sure, I, I
think I'll give you a shot, But let's talk about it for a
second. Let's go through this like it's
15 miles. We're going to have to start in

(15:35):
the very early morning. We're going to have to hike all
day long until it's night. Your feet might hurt, you might
be this could be a long hike. And I said, Are you sure you
want to do it? She goes, yeah, I'm sure.
I said, what are you going to dowhen your feet hurt?
She goes, well, I'm going to take a little rest and then I'm
going to keep walking. I said, you think you can do
that? She said, yeah.
Well, here's the thing, Jay, I decided to let her try.

(15:57):
We we got up on the mountain andI got to tell you, Jay, she made
it to the top of this 11,700. She's five years old.
IA lot of dads and myself included could have thought,
gosh, I can't do that. Like I'm I'm not going to take
her, but I got to tell you what happens as she's walking up the
trail, there's these people highfiving her.
They're going good job. You're a trooper.
We get to the top. There's a group of people that

(16:18):
stand up and give her the standing ovation.
And I got to tell you she becamelike, I could just tell you when
when that happened when we got back down, her confidence was
you could tell she's like, I cando this.
She's kind of, she was kind of like I hiked this mountain.
She would tell, you know, some of her friends, some other
people in our neighborhood, she had hiked it.
She was, we gave her confidence.So I could have shot down this

(16:40):
idea and not let her try and just made a judgement for it,
Say, hey, you can't do it. But when sometimes our kids can
surprise us and when we give them the chance and we're and we
and we show, we show faith in like, you know, I think you can
do this, but it's going to be a long hike week when we've set
their expectations. That's confidence building.
It's confidence building when when later she has to do other

(17:02):
things to her, she's like, she knows because her dad showed
her, her dad was with her that she can do hard things.
Can we do that with our kids? You know, that's an important
thing. Now, to the CEO point, you
talked about CEOs. I'm just going to be frank and,
and I'm just going to say it theway I see it, our rights do not
come from the government, Jay. They come from our creator.

(17:25):
Yeah. And we as people form
governments. So what people can realize that
a lot of people think the government gives you rights and
I don't, I don't believe that. I believe they come from, I'm a
man of faith and I believe they come from our creator.
And we as as parents, as as people grant the government
rights. We form governments.
We give like schools exist at the pleasure of parents.

(17:49):
Parents do not exist at the pleasure of schools.
Do you hear what I'm saying whenI'm in my view, if a school is
not performing to what the parents wanted to do, the
parents have every right to taketheir kid and put them in
another school, put them in a ina different public school or
different private school or or home school or put up in a

(18:09):
Co-op. And, and I know there's some who
would disagree with me on that, but it's not to say that we as
parents know everything for our kids, but we do know our
children better than a government bureaucrat in my
view. And so if I'm not good at math,
I may know I'm not good at math and I can say, OK, I'm going to
outsource to a school to teach my child math, or I might get a

(18:33):
a homeschool Co-op and outsourceto somebody who knows home
school. Or I might, I might go to a
another, another public school or maybe I learned math.
You know, I happen to be decent at math, but that's just an
example, right? There's some things I'm not
decent at. I don't know how to teach my
kids foreign languages, some lotof foreign languages.
I can't, I'm sure I can't speak a lot of foreign languages.
So I could have that outsourced if that's something that I feel

(18:55):
important. If I could outsource to a karate
teacher, I could outsource to a violin teacher, I could
outsource to a, to a swim instructor.
I mean, but the, the proof, the truth is my job as a dad is to
build my kids confident enough so that when I leave this world,
when I pass away, they are confident enough to do to do
life without me. So they don't need me, right?

(19:18):
I mean, that's what I want. I want my kids to get to a point
where they miss me and love me, but they don't need me because
I've built that confidence in them.
And the way I do that is by stepping up and saying, you know
what, you can do this. And they can hear that voice in
my head, You've got this. This is not a big deal.
You can hike this mountain. You can, you can learn this
problem. We can, we can learn it together
and that confidence in your voice, that confidence in your

(19:40):
very being becomes the voice in your their head when you're not
there. And so we need to we need to
realize that what we're saying to our children is even if it's
through a different even it's just our body language or
something else is that you've got this one last example and
I'll let go. So there was my kids.
The other, this is years ago. They said, Dad, we want to sleep

(20:01):
out in the backyard. OK.
The problem, Jay, is that the back, it was December, the
backyard was about 20° that night.
They said, we want to sleep in the backyard.
And I said, OK, this might be anopportunity.
I said, OK, you really want to sleep in the backyard?
Now, I wasn't about to go let mykids freeze to death, but I
asked them, I said, hey, what? Let's talk about how we stay
warm. We talked about how we got to
you got to use layers and we need mummy bags and we need, we

(20:23):
need. Something to keep our head warm
because we lose a lot of heat through our warm and we don't
want to get wet because you losea lot of.
We went through all these thingsthat would, you know, you'd need
to know if you were sleeping outside.
And after we went through that, I said, OK, if you guys want to
pitch a tent out there, I'll go sleep out in the tent with you.
And we pitched the tent in the backyard and we slept out in the
20° weather and we brought a laptop and watched the movie.
It was fun, but it was now they knew how to do it.

(20:45):
Of course, I wasn't going to go let him sleep out outside in a
dangerous situation where they didn't know what they were
doing. But they now have the confidence
to know I can do things that aredifficult.
Of course I need to do it safely.
And my dad taught me because my job, my job as a dad is to
protect. But that kind of how do we build
confidence now? There's lots of times I haven't
built confidence. There's things I have times I've

(21:06):
blown. I've done it plenty of times,
but the principle is still the same.
Does that make sense? No, 100%.
And there's a lot of things thatwe can do right.
And I think this is one, one thing that you're you're
mentioning here, I feel is one of the common mistakes that we
make as dads, right, is we underestimate our kit.
And before I jump into that, Ed,I do want to say for anyone

(21:26):
listening to this that their child is struggling with math, I
have a great sponsor of the podcast that would be more than
happy to be supportive of you. It's a great program.
Would be more than happy to talkto you guys about that.
Feel free to message me about that or jump over to my link 3
shameless plug right there. But anyways, a common mistake
that dads make while we're trying to connect with our kids

(21:47):
as we underestimate them, right?We underestimate their ability.
And I saw this my very first year coaching T-ball when my
oldest daughter was in T-ball a few years ago.
You know, the parents was like, oh, you know, just, or even
like, not even the parents therewas like the other coaches were
just like, oh, you know, it's just like herding cats.
You know, you just try to keep them busy and running stuff.

(22:08):
If you teach them some baseball,great.
If not, then you know, it's fineas long as they have fun or
something, right? It's like, no, I can teach my
daughter baseball. I can teach these kids baseball.
I learned baseball when I was this age.
So why can't they learn it? They're more than capable of
learning how to field a ground ball and knowing the bases and
knowing how to make these plays and whatnot, right?

(22:28):
And learning how to actually swing a bat and how to actually
throw a ball. Like they're more than capable.
Why would we hold them back fromthat and just look at them like
a herd of cat that we just need to to keep keep in line.
No, we need to teach them that they all can't run and collapse
on the ball, that they have positions, that there's all
these rules and stuff, right, that make the game of baseball

(22:49):
baseball. And you know, it's amazing.
These kids go from never pickingup a baseball in their life.
By the end of the season. They're they're totally
different kids. They can swing a bat, they could
throw a ball. They know where first did they
can watch a baseball game and more or less kind of pick up on
what's going on. Like that's the pitcher.
Oh that, you know, a ground ballor that's a really good hit.

(23:12):
I think kind of course they're learning and stuff, but like
they pick up on it, right? They start to understand the
nuances and baseball's a very nuanced game.
For all the baseball lovers out there, you know, you know, one
of the best gets the best game owner and there's no change in
my mind on that. But you know, we, we make common
mistakes all the time. But the biggest one I think is
just underestimating our kids and their ability.

(23:34):
Our kids are way more capable than we think they are.
Yes. At every single age.
And you know, if we can just give them a chance, they will
absolutely surprise her. You're absolutely right.
And Jay, I love how you said that and it, and it's such a
good point if, if your expectation is that your
baseball team players are just going to be act like a herd of

(23:55):
cats. The truth is you're going to
subconsciously or consciously dothings that make them act like a
herd of cats. Like, let me give you an
example. They did a study, They did a
study where there were some highachieving kids and there were
some kids who had done low achieving in school.
What happened is, is that they, they, and I hope I'm getting the

(24:16):
details of this right, but they got the, the classes mixed up.
So the teacher thought that theywere teaching low achieving kids
when they were actually teachinghigh achieving kids.
And the other teacher thought they were teaching high
achieving kids when they were actually teaching the other low
achieving kids. Well, guess what happened?
Mix that up. The the kids, no matter which
group they came from, started tomove towards whatever the

(24:37):
teacher expected. So when the teacher came in and
thought, oh, I'm teaching low achieving kids, the high
achievers became more low achieving and the low achievers
became more high achieving just because the teacher expected it.
They, they held that vision in their minds.
As a dad, if we can begin with the end in mind, if we can say,
you know what? I want my children to be
confident. I want my children to be

(25:00):
awesome. I want them to be caring, kind,
loving, you know, treating people right and we and we keep
this vision of and and hold themthat in that space.
If this is what I'm trying to create by being a good dad, our
children will will move towards that.
Now, here's the thing. Here's the next piece that's
really important. They found that the best way if

(25:21):
you want to influence your children for good, one of the
best things you can do is catch them doing something right.
And what happens a lot of times is dads say, Hey, I can't
believe you didn't make your bedand I can't believe you're
getting AC minus and they can't believe you're not.
You stand up till 3:00 in the morning.
And what they're doing, what you've got to realize from a
psychological standpoint is behaviors are like seeds.

(25:42):
And if you can imagine, I have apitcher of water in my hand here
and I water the behaviors I wantto see grow with attention.
And they found that this positive reinforcement is so, so
effective in shaping your when you're trying to influence your
kids. In other words, instead of going
in and telling them all the stuff they're doing wrong, you
know you're doing this and you're not doing this and doing
this. The research shows that's not as

(26:04):
effective. If you want to be an effective
dad, try to catch them doing something right and they're.
Let me dive in just for a second.
There's a guy who wrote a book called The Power of Positive
Parenting by Glenn Latham. I believe he's passed away, but
he wrote this great book and in this book he tells a story that
goes something like this. I hope I'm getting the details

(26:24):
right. There was a kid getting sent to
the principal's office all the time.
It became such a big deal that they called in the school
counselor to say, you know, whatare we going to do to help this
kid? And this, the counselor was
observing, and if I remember thestory correctly, what happens?
They noticed that the kid was doing a number of things right,
but getting 0 attention for it. But as soon as the kid did
something wrong, the teacher would go, oh, there you go again

(26:47):
and write his name on the board.And then he'd do something else
and they'd put the check mark next to it and he'd do something
else to get the check mark. Soon he had enough checkmarks to
get marched down. So he was getting a lot of
attention from the teacher and the students for being the bad
kid. Then once they got him down to
this principal's office, they found he was being doubly
reinforced because they sat him down next to the window.
And when the bell would ring, the kids would come out and be

(27:08):
like, hi and he'd be like, hi through the window.
So he was getting kind of this attention to being the cool bad
kid. So like getting attention from
his friends and from the teacherand the, and the, and the person
said, you know what this is? This is kind of predictable
behavior. You're giving the kid attention
when he does something wrong, but he's getting 0 attention for
doing something right. That's how behavior works a lot

(27:29):
of times. So your kids are pleading, they
may not be able to say it, but they want you to recognize the
good things they do. How can you catch them doing
something right? Well, you've got to be keyed in.
They're probably doing a lot of stuff right.
Even if your mind you're like, why we see that they did this
and this and this, that, and, and we can go further down that,

(27:50):
that, that thing, but it's I did, I got to add this last
story because it's so important.My daughter gets up.
I just learned about this principle.
She comes in, she knocks on my door.
She's six or seven years old andshe goes, hey, dad, I got a
surprise for you. It's like 7:00 in the morning or
something. She knocks on my door and she
goes, I got a surprise. I said, what is it?

(28:11):
She goes, I made my bed, I made my lunch, I got ready for
school. And you didn't even have to ask
me. And I just learned about
positive reinforcement and how effective it was.
And I said, you know, I went to my wife in the closet and I
said, hey, you know what, let's see, Let's let's try this.
Let's just see if it works. So I went out there and I said,
hey, you know what? Your bed looks great and you
made your lunch. I didn't even have to ask you.
You got dressed for school. Wow, thank you.

(28:31):
My wife gave her a lot of attention for it too.
She laid it on pretty thick. Well, guess what happened?
She did the behavior again. What would have been less
effective, Jay? As if I'd waited till she sleeps
and doesn't make her bed, doesn't make her lunch and then
storm in her room and say, now how many times have I had to
tell you to get up and do this? Like we need to, to start
catching our children doing positive behaviors.

(28:53):
And sometimes dads get they can get kind of, no, I am not saying
you can't call your kid out and say, hey, we need to work on
this. But I am saying we want to have
more positives than the negatives.
And probably by a ratio of five to one.
No, absolutely. I think even higher than that,
like 8020, right? 8020 is always like a good place
to be. If 80% of the time we're
catching them doing the good andwe're reinforcing the positive,

(29:15):
you know, we're going to get that.
But if it's on the opposite end of that, if we're always
influencing 8020 the other way, like negative, going to get a
lot of negative behaviors. If we're always giving negative
attention or reinforcing the wrong things, we're going to get
what we get right. You're going to get what you,
and it's very similar here, right?
It's a very, very, very early, similar concept to you get what

(29:38):
you incentivize the government. We can see that, right?
Kind of to bring it back to thatpoint, like we talked about
earlier, right? But when they incentivize a
program, what do they get? They get what they incentivize
for a workplace. When they incentivize something,
they get what they incentivize. If they want people to hit a
certain metric, they incentivizethat with a bonus or something,

(29:59):
whatever the incentive is, and people are into that incentive,
they're going to work really hard to hit that incentive,
right? Because now they have an
extrinsic motivator, but when wedo it the opposite and we create
that positive reinforcement, nowwe're helping them reinforce.
We're helping our kids learn to reinforce their intrinsic
motivation, things that intrinsically motivate them

(30:20):
naturally because now they're being, now they're learning.
You know, for example, like the example you made for your
daughter, she gets up, makes herbed, makes her lunch, gets ready
to school. How having to be asked, she does
all that. She gets a proper praise for it.
She gets positive reinforcement.And then she knows, oh, man, it
feels really good. When I can get up, I can get
myself ready. I make my own lunch.
That's just makes me feel good about myself because I know I'm

(30:43):
capable. I'm feeling good.
I'm ready. I'm prepared for the day.
I feel great. And then that carries on as she
gets older and older and older and older into adulthood.
He's like, oh, yeah, this is easy.
Like I, I know I feel really good inside.
When I can get myself up for work in the morning, I make a
good lunch. And no one has told me to do it.
Obviously she'll be an adult andwhat what not, right?

(31:04):
But that'll carry the habit willcarry into throughout life and
that's where the positive influence comes in.
That's right. And you have to realize the way
way you talk to your kid and react to this is going to in in
many ways that becomes the voicein their head later.
I mean, you do, you know what I mean?
So if you're always being critical, then they learn
sometimes to have that critical voice in their head.

(31:25):
But if you're being praising forthe good things they can say,
yeah, it, it builds confidence. Like we were talking about
before, like, Oh yeah, my dad thought I did a great job and I
then I can, my dad thinks I can do hard things and I can, my dad
thinks I can give a speech in front of a bunch of people with,
and it's not a big deal. It's probably not a big deal.
My dad thinks if I skin my knee,it's going to be fine.
I'm going to be fine. On the other hand, you know, if
they say like, well, Dad, I got to give this speech in school or

(31:47):
the congregation or something, and my dad's freaking out like,
oh, you can't do that. Then that voice becomes the, oh,
you can't do that in their head later.
And what you really need to haveis like, hey, you've got this.
They need to have that confident, you're going to be
just fine. You've got this, you're going
to, even if you mess up, just keep going.
You're going to be fine. And when they have that voice,
they do, they get in front of a crowd or they get in front of
their this trying situation and they are fine.

(32:08):
Because we have such an opportunity, Jay, to build
strong, confident children. Like that's what dads do better
than anyone else, including moms.
I mean, moms are good. I say moms are awesome.
They're they're, we need moms. They're great natural nurturers,
but the confidence in many ways,frankly, is our responsibilities

(32:31):
as dads and we can do it. Kind of and you know that
overall that's just dad influence, right?
That's dad fluent, right? Because we're that void.
We're what shaped our kid, right?
When they're when they're feeling overwhelmed or when
they're feeling, I don't know ifI can do this, they hear that
tiny little voice, right? We all hear those little voices
in our head, right? And when we're doing something

(32:51):
that may be out of our comfort zone, that may feel scary, that
may feel intimidating, right? Like, oh, I don't know if I can
do this. Then we hear those voices in her
head. It's like, oh, you got this.
You're, you're going to be OK. It's going to be all right.
You got, you can do it and it, it feels good.
But there's a difference here, right?
There's also something that you mentioned briefly that we didn't
touch on that I do want to make sure we touch on too.

(33:14):
There's a difference in making sure we hold our kids
accountable, right? Like our kids are going to mess
up. Not everything they do is going
to have positive reinforcement. That's right.
The accountability conversationslook a lot different than the
negative. Attention and accountability are
two different things because youcan yell and scream and lose

(33:34):
your shit on your kid for, you know, doing something wrong that
they need to be held accountablefor.
Or you can go about a different way.
You can definitely put that script and be like, OK, look,
what you did was wrong. This is why it was wrong.
This is what you can do to fix it.
This is how you can make make itthe situation be better, right?

(33:55):
When you do that, you keep trusting connection.
You keep the trusting connectionout with your kid because they
look OK. I can tell Dad's really mad
about this or Dad's really upsetthat I messed up so bad, but
he's making sure that I understand how serious it is,
why it's wrong and the magnitudeand what I can do to fix it.

(34:16):
That I know I can go to dad. Like, yes, he may be mad, he may
be furious, he may be pissed off, but I know I can go to him
when I messed up. Teach me.
He'll help me learn why what I did was wrong.
And I know I can trust him still.
And I know I saw that connectionversus when, like you mentioned
a couple times, right? When your daughter, she's not
doing all those things, you get after them.
You're like, Oh my God, you're not doing all the job, blah,

(34:36):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
We've all been there. We've all been there.
No one can say they have. We all did.
And if you're thinking this, you're listening to this
podcast, you're like, oh, that'snever me.
You're a liar. You're a liar because I know it
is, know it is everybody. But that's when we lose that
like trusting connection with them, right?
Where it's like, oh, man, well, every every little thing I do,
dad just gets on me. He's always up my blood about

(34:56):
something kind of thing. And then they'd lose that
trusting connection as they get older, right?
You got to have that perspective, OK.
If we build it now while they'reyoung and then later when they
need it, they'll feel more comfortable, right?
Or they'll be like, you know, I,if I don't want that thing to
happen, I should probably just do that thing I need to do, get
it done over with. That won't get on me.

(35:17):
If I know if I do a good job, he'll probably say some good
things about me. So that'll feel good.
But I feels good when I do it myself.
So it's always, you know, building for later in life, too.
I hear you all. I I love that Jay.
I do. And one of the things that you
taught that you you said was brilliant.
You said telling him why? So like, like, let me give you

(35:37):
an example. Let's say you're at the grocery
store and your kid steals a candy bar, OK.
And you say to him, hey, look, we got to go take this candy bar
back and give it back and pay for it.
And there's some consequences and and we can be firm but kind.
You don't have to be yelling andscreaming, but you could tell
them and say, you know what? The reason I want you to bring
this back is because there are real consequences in the real

(35:59):
world. I mean, when you grow up, if you
decide to steal there, you, you could go to jail.
You could have really bad thingswhere it would be hard for you
to, to get a job would be hard for you to, to have good
consequences. It'd be hard.
You might even go to jail. And, and as your dad, I love you
enough to not want those consequences for you.
So I'm going to teach you, even though it's hard and I'm going
to give you some consequences and you're going to need to go

(36:20):
take this back. We're going to need to pay for
it. And you might even have to do a
few jobs to work it off. It's OK for them to fail when
they're young. Like if they're five years old
and they still and you can and you can teach them a consequence
when they're 5 instead of havingto learn that when they're 25
and they're getting taken in front of a judge and go and put
them in jail. Do you see what I'm saying?
Like let them, but you can tell them why.

(36:42):
Like This is why. Like, OK, so son, let me tell
you why. Why have you have to do some
responsibilities around the house?
OK, You know, I want you to to contribute.
We're going to have you maybe load the dishwasher, mow the
lawn or whatever it is that you have as a regular job.
And it's not because you're like, I just need you some slave
labor around here. It's because really, like the
truth is you'll do better in life if you learn to work when

(37:04):
you're young. And that's why I want you to.
It's not because I just need youto load the dishwasher.
I could do it myself. I can mow the lawn.
But you, when you have those conversations about why you're
asking them to do something or why you're, you're maybe
reprimanding, we're saying, no, you can't.
You can't treat your sister likethat.
You can't hit your sister. And we can talk about why it's
not a good idea. You can't, you know, you're not
going to, you're not going to yell at your mom like that.

(37:25):
And because, and these are the reasons why, like what are the
reasons why? And discuss that.
We're not here to make your lifehard and get after you.
We're actually the reason I'm correcting you is because I love
you because I care about you, because I want you to have a
good life and I want you to havegood consequences.
If I allow you to get away with this stuff, you could have
really bad consequences later on.

(37:47):
And I and I and I love you enough to teach you while you're
young and, and you can say it with love like that, right?
Absolutely. And you mentioned on you
mentioned another really good thing there, right?
Like we have to teach our kids to work hard to have
responsibilities and that again,it builds confidence, right?
It's important for our boys and our girls, but especially our

(38:09):
boys too, right? Like it's OK for them to learn
how to do all this housework because they need to be
self-sufficient, right? They need, there's going to be a
time that they're out on their own with nobody else around.
They won't have mom or dad or anyone there too do a load of
laundry to wash dishes, to cook food.
Like they need to learn these life skills.
Our daughters as well. But girls are pretty more easy

(38:32):
to receptive of those things, atleast in my experience.
Like it's really easy to get my girl.
I only have girls. I can't really speak for having
boys, but I can speak being a boy.
It's really easy to get my girlsto be like, OK, look, we're
going to learn how to do laundry.
Oh, cool. Or here's a pile of laundry.
OK, cool. We'll get it done real quick
kind of thing. Or this is your you need to
unload the dishwasher. OK, cool, no problem.
Or you need to do this. OK, cool, easy.

(38:54):
When my when if that was me, it'd be like, come on, come on,
let me play my PlayStation. Come on, I'm not come on, I'm
not going to do it. But then as I get older, I'm
like, OK, these skills are really, really important.
It's important for me to know how to cook some food.
It's important for me to know how to grocery shop, is
important for me to know how to take care of my hygiene.
It's important for me to know how to do laundry.

(39:15):
It's important for me to know how to do all these things that
I'm pissed to moan and groan about and work hard.
One of my uncles growing up, every summer he would make me
paint the shed. Did it need to be painted?
Oh, did he make me paint it anyways?
Yep. Top to bottom, full new coat

(39:35):
every summer. There you go, see every.
Summer. He knew he wasn't.
Painting sheds. What he really was doing was
raising the heart. He was giving you an opportunity
to be hard working, right? It was more, more he.
Was more important than whether the shed needed paint or not.
Yeah, and he would, you know, find he would have me come over
and mow his lawn every week too.You know, he would have me do

(39:56):
all his yard work. I don't know if he just wanted
me to do it or what, but my aunt, uncle, they would always
have me come over. Right and they would, you know,
have me do all these different things, you know, projects and
things like that and put all this hard work in and it's just
it's so important, right like that built like a work ethic.
My dad same way, you know, my dad was very much when I live

(40:17):
with him, he would there was no quitting, right.
He would be if you want to do something, you're going to do
it. You're going to stick with it.
If it's basketball season, you're you're playing all the
basketball season. No if answer, but anything you
sign up for, you are going to bethere and you're going to figure
out how to be there. No, if and or, but if you're
doing 3 activities at a time, guess what?

(40:38):
You're at three activities at a time.
You better figure that out and make sure you're fully there at
every single one of them. He's like, I don't care.
I don't care how tired you are. I don't care what time you get
home. I don't care what time I need to
pick you up. But if these are the things that
you're signing up for that you're doing, you're doing them.
Did it suck sometimes? Yeah, but it taught me when I
actually started working. It's like, you know, even if I

(41:00):
don't want to go to work, I wantto go to work.
Like right out of high school, Istarted working two jobs because
I just love working. I just really enjoyed work.
I would go for, I would take thebus, I would walk to one job,
take the bus to the other job and I would just, that was every
day, you know, right after I graduated high school.
It's just that constant cycle ofworking and working and working,

(41:20):
working. I enjoyed it.
I really do. I enjoy working even to this
day. Like I love when things are
challenging. I have to persevere and work
through a problem, all because that's taught by my dad.
And one thing that I really try to teach my kids is, you know,
you start something, you finish it.
There's no quitting. There's no being lazy.
You know, look, there's a stock on the ground.
Let's pick it up. It's like, but we already did

(41:43):
all this other stuff. I'm like, OK, but your task was
to make sure you put away all your laundry.
Is all your laundry put away? OK, It's it's literally one
sock. Let's just get it done.
Come on, you can do it. And then it's done.
It's like, yeah, look, all our laundry's put away and it's like
I make a bigger deal of it. It's like, whoa, look how clean
our room feels. Look how full our drawers are.

(42:05):
Look how nice our full our closet is.
Look how many options we have for school tomorrow.
Like this is great. This is great.
And you know it does. It's really great to build those
skills with our kids. So important, Jay, love how you
said that super awesome. As you were saying, I had just a
couple thoughts, You know, you said one of the things I think
that's important that we could do is to let our kids do it.

(42:27):
Most of the time. There's so many kid parents now
that for whatever reason, they want to do everything for their
kids. So like, you need, you know, I'm
going to buy you a car or I'm going to make your food for you.
I'm going to do all the laundry for you.
I'm going to vacuum the house. Everything is the parents
responsibility and the kid doesn't have any responsibility.
Well, you know what if instead of you know, if, if, if my, if

(42:48):
my child comes up to me and says, say, Dad, will you make me
a peanut butter sandwich? Now, the truth is I can make a
peanut butter sandwich in probably, you know, 30 seconds
super fast. I've done it hundreds of times.
I know exactly how to do it. My child doesn't know how to do
it. So I have a choice in that
moment, these little tiny decisions, I can say, sure,
here's a pretty butter sandwich.Or I could take a different
route and say, you know, in fact, I remember doing this with

(43:10):
my with my child. She I said, how would you make
one? And she said, well, I got to go
to the pantry and get some breadand I got to find, do you know
where the bread is? Yeah.
Do you know where the peanut butter is?
You know where the Jelly is? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you think, you know, can finda little knife and, you know, a
safe little table knife and, andmake it.
And she's like, yeah. And, you know, it took, it took
her probably 20 times longer forher to make a sandwich than I

(43:31):
could have made her one. But when she was done, she was
super confident. She's like, look, I made a
sandwich. And she you see this beaming
smile on her face. That was the confidence piece of
I did it. And even though there was some
peanut butter and Jelly and it was a little bit of a mess, who
cares? We're not in, we're not, we're
OK with making a mess if our kids are getting more confident,
right? So letting them do that.
I like what you said too, about,you know, having your kids

(43:51):
follow through with commitments,even if they don't feel like it.
I mean, the truth is, Jay, to besuccessful in the world,
sometimes you got to go against your feelings.
If if you always just follow your feelings.
Like I don't feel like going to work today.
And I don't feel, I feel like saying that mean thing to that
person because they were rude. And I feel like doing this.
The truth is people who only follow their feelings, I'll be

(44:13):
blunt, a lot of them end up in jail.
I mean, that's just how it is. We've got to be able to say I'm
going to do the right thing eventhough I don't feel like it.
And I will tell one quick story on this.
There was a guy named Stephen Covey.
He wrote the book The Seven Habits of Highly Affected
People, and he tells the story that goes something like this.
He said somebody came up to him after a conference and said

(44:33):
words that surprise me. The guy said, I don't love her.
I've fallen out of love. She doesn't love me.
I don't love her. We're probably heading for a
divorce. We've got three kids.
We're probably heading for a divorce.
And Stephen Covey looked at the guy and said, well, if you're
not feeling it, that would be a good reason to love her.
The guy goes, I just told you I don't love her.
Like, how do you love someone you don't love?

(44:54):
And Stephen can't. And again, I may be getting the
exact wording on the storm, but he said something to the effect
like this. He said, my friend, you're
treating, you're acting like love is a feeling.
Love's not a feeling. Love is a verb.
It's something you do. But here's the kicker, Jay, he
said then if you do the verb, the feeling will follow.

(45:15):
And this is an important thing to teach our kids.
We can lead our feelings with our actions.
In other words, this is a principle that works everywhere.
I mean, if I'm not feeling love for my spouse or my child, it
doesn't mean I need to run off to the divorce court.
It doesn't mean I need to run off and go leave my family.
What it means is I need to do something loving for them and

(45:36):
I'll start to feel it. It works in in training for
weights. I had a buddy, he's like, I did
this workout. It was the Spartacus workout.
I think it's like this. It's like a this workout that
you do all kinds of muscle confusion.
He said, I did this workout. I hated it, but I had committed
to do it and so I kept doing it and he goes, I did it the next
day, still hated it. Did it the next day, hated it.

(45:57):
Did it the next day, hated it, did it the next day, hated it.
I hated it was awful. I could barely, I mean I was
sore, I could barely walk, but he goes, I kept doing it and he
goes, It was really interesting though.
I kept doing this workout and something happened around Week 2
1/2 or three, he goes, somethingchanged.
I go, do you remember the exact day he goes?
I don't, but it was around Week 2 1/2 or three.

(46:18):
Around Week 2 1/2 or three, he got to the end of this workout
and for the first time he felt like he was just getting
started. So he goes that day I did the
workout twice, happened in the next day.
I got to the end of the workout.I'm like, man, this feels good.
I did it twice now. I want you to see what happened
here, Jay. He led his feelings.
He hated working out, but he committed to do it anyway.

(46:40):
And when after 2 1/2 or three weeks, he all of a sudden felt
like working out. The same thing can happen in our
marriages, in our, in our relationships.
I don't feel like doing the right thing.
I don't feel like being honest because it'd be easier to tell a
lie or I don't feel like telling, you know, following the
golden rule because I really want to be mean.
But when I do the right thing, the feeling follows.

(47:02):
Now, the other way to live life is just to wait till the feeling
shows up. Can you imagine someone saying,
I'm not going to workout until the feeling just kind of comes
in out the window and I just kind of wafts by.
I'm going to sit here on the couch and do nothing, eat potato
chips, and I'll workout when I feel like it.
Well, the truth is you're very, very freak infrequently, if ever
going to feel like it. You've got to workout before you
feel like it. You've got to show love to your

(47:22):
spouse before you feel like it. And this, this right here, this,
this, this principle that we're going to do what's right, even
if we don't feel like it is something that we as fathers,
Jay, are uniquely equipped to teach.
And if we can show our, or if wecan show our children that when
we commit to something, we're going to follow through, even if
we don't feel like it, we're going to tell the truth.
We're going to keep our word. Now, all of us have had

(47:43):
failures. I've had plenty of failures on
this. I've had plenty of failures
where I wish I would have handled it differently.
But that example and that teaching of that principle is
super important. So I'm glad you brought it up.
Yeah. No, and I, I love that because
it's so important, right? Like our choices are everything.
Like our choices are 100% everything, every single thing
you do. It's a psychological theory.
I work in mental health. That's one of my favorite, like

(48:04):
psychological theories. But it's choice theory, right?
Every single thing we do, we have a choice, but we say what
we do, how we act and feel everything.
We are in control of all those things.
You're smart, man. That's absolutely true.
Yeah, and it's like you have choices in all the things you
do. Whether you realize it or not,
everything you do is a choice. And we can teach our kids that,

(48:25):
right? You can make a good choice, you
or you can make a worse choice. You can make a bad choice or you
can make a better choice. Everything to choice.
There's always a choice, right? If you feel like you can't
control it, you're in control still, right?
But we also have to have grace. But we also can't coddle our
kids. We can't over protect them, but
we can also include them along the way, right?

(48:45):
At every single age, there's always something age appropriate
for them to do. With nearly every cat, you know,
if it's doing the dishes, they're little.
Obviously they can't reach the sink, obviously they can't wash
a dish. But can you hand them some spoon
put into the dishwasher? Absolutely.
Spoon is not going to break. Your silverware is not going to
break. They can load those, right?
Or they can unload silverware, right?

(49:08):
If they can reach it, maybe a stool or something, you place it
there, they do it, it'll be wrong, probably.
That's fine. Let them do it.
Let them learn. Can you include them in making
their food? Absolutely you can.
There's always somewhere age appropriate along the way.
Like my my older 1 is going to start helping.
They already helped put away their clothes.

(49:28):
Like I'll wash them, I'll put them in the dryer when they're
done. I make sure the room's clean
first. OK, room has to be clean first.
But then I just take all their clothes from the dryer and I
flop them on their floor and I say kind of put away laundry
girls, let's knock this out. And I just leave.
I let them do it. Last time I did this I really
almost regretted it because my oldest daughter took all the

(49:51):
clothes out of both her and her little sisters, her dresser and
her little sisters. Like bin She's forced.
She has like those little like full out bin of like the 9 cube
workers like those cube bin and she just dumps her clothes into
those because it's way easier for a four year old to get
dressed like that then with drawers and everything and
struggle and just dump them in. Don't have to worry.

(50:12):
I don't care if she folds them, she puts them away, right?
But they almost made me regret it.
But I am, I am doing it over andover again.
I'm not going to let their exuberance deter me, right?
But when they were done, heck, they had all their clothes
organized, everything was great.The room was still clean and it
was great. It was great.
We gauntlet include our kids along the way, right?

(50:35):
We can't do it for them because what's the point of doing it for
them? If someone does your job for
you, you get paid for it. Are you still going to feel like
as good about that job or are you going to want to do
something that feels better to you?
Right. You want to, again, find your
intrinsic motivator, things thatinside that motivate you to do a
good job, to find those things that motivate you continuously
continue to continue over and over and over again.

(50:58):
It's so important. So it's so important.
It's wisdom awesome, Janice, if you're well said.
A full of the wisdom, full of it.
So this. I don't know why I thought about
this, but women tend to quit more often than men.
Men, however, more likely to quit for career advancement or
better opportunities. I don't know why.

(51:19):
I'm not sure I heard what you said.
Say that one more time. I for some reason, something you
just mentioned and we'll, we'll jump into the dab zone right
after this, but this will be my last thought here.
So anyway, any other thoughts related to the conversation that
you want to give? Or Are you ready to jump into
the dad zone? Well, I guess I am ready to jump
into the dad zone. I, I guess what, what I what I

(51:40):
really want to tell any of your listeners here is that we are
our jobs as dads is irreplaceable.
It doesn't matter what the mediasays.
It doesn't matter what the, whatthe, the climate is of the
culture or the we were given ourchildren for a reason.
And it's our job to, to stand upand, and protect and provide and

(52:02):
teach and lead our children in good ways so that they can have
a good life. And we're, we are 100% needed.
And so, you know, Jay, I'll justtell you, I mean, this movement
that you're involved in this movement, we are on a crusade to
help fathers be awesome, to be wonderful.

(52:22):
And, and it's something that's not just going to affect our
children, It's going to affect our children's, children's
children's. The choices you and I make today
in our own families, Jay, are going to go down for
generations. And I, I want to just touch one
more thing and I'll get into thedad zone super fast.
Like I asked people sometime, I'm like, do you know what your
great, great grandfather did fora living?

(52:44):
And a lot of them say no idea. Now remember your grand 2 grip.
Now some of them know one or two.
Some of them know like I know one, but remember you, I think
you have 8 great, great grandfathers, like 8 of them.
You know what all eight of them did?
Most people can't tell you. But here's the deal.
The, the way they were as a parent, they, they can't tell
you. I mean, nobody cares if they
were the richest guy in town. Nobody cares if they had a cool

(53:06):
horse or a cool plow or whateverthey were doing.
But the kind of parent they wereis, is affecting you today.
And I'll give you one quick example.
So I, I live in the United States of America.
Maybe some people are, I don't know who's listening to this
base. Some people may or may not live
in the United States of America.But the reason I'm here is
because a great because multipleof my ancestors made a family

(53:29):
decision to to come to America. Well, they've been gone for for
many, many years, hundreds of years in some situations.
But that decision is affecting me today, Jay.
It affects the language I'm speaking right now.
It affects my economic opportunities.
It affects my educational opportunities.
It affects my religion, effects everything because these people

(53:50):
did things hundreds of years ago.
And this, that's an obvious example because it's geographic,
but just as real was were they, were they checked in?
Were they angry? Were they drunk?
Were they were? I mean, all those things can be
passed down through many, many generations.
And we've got to realize that the choices that we're making
right now in our homes today cango down hundreds of years.

(54:12):
I mean, we think we're going to have it.
And no one's going to care what we did.
I got to tell you this, you're going to our great, great
grandchildren are going to care about as much as what we did for
a living as you care, as we careabout what our great, great
grandkids grandfathers did, Probably not much, but the kind
of parents they were, even if they don't, even if we don't
realize it is profoundly affecting us and it's going to
profoundly affect our great, great grandchildren and past.

(54:33):
And so it's big deal what we do in our homes.
It's a big deal not to stress you out, just to let you know
that's real. And here's the next piece.
We can do it right. We've got this.
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, let's jump into the
dad zone. So the dad zone I love to do at
the end of the conversation justbecause it's fun, it's
lighthearted and helps bring theconversation back, you know,
full circle and just a little bit of fun for us, right?

(54:56):
So it's a four question in total. 1 you kind of already
answered, but I'll have you answered again, but with the
question as part of it. So first one here is does
pineapple go on pizza? I think you should try.
I think you should try it if youhaven't.
Yes, I think it does. All right, hot take.
Hot take. That's probably the hottest take
of the podcast so far, but good,good.

(55:18):
We'll accept it. I will still probably air this
because it was a good conversation even though you
failed that question. OK, who are three people, dead
or alive that you would invite to a dinner party with you?
Well. That is a good question.
Three people dead or alive. First three that came to mind,
Jesus Christ 100% Mahatma Gandhi, good one.

(55:44):
And maybe we can say George Washington because he's a
founding father of our country. Very cool.
Yep, that's those are not standard, but gone only one
other person I think is gone. Gandhi.
I think several people have goneJesus, you know, Jesus crowd's
pretty popular on the podcast. So yeah, good thing we love
that. Yeah, Washington not maybe maybe

(56:08):
one or two. It's interesting.
Most people go with these like historical people versus anyone
contemporary. Interesting.
Really interesting. What is your guilty pleasure?
Food A. Guilty pleasure of food.
Well, I'll tell you I have I andI know this is a problem.
I actually love drinking milk and, and I, you might think,

(56:34):
well, that's not that bad, but the problem is that sometimes I
can come home like you're not really supposed to drink a lot
of stuff late at night. I can drink 1/3 of a gallon of
milk late at night. If I'm thirsty, I'm just right
out of the jug and it's horrible.
And it helps you. It's, it's, I drink way too much
milk. I mean, that's just the truth.

(56:54):
From bones then, is what you're saying?
Well, and a little bit too much of A gut.
Yeah, it's more of a beer gut. It's a milk gut.
Yeah. The new one.
So when you say you're going to go get milk, you are legit going
to get milk just to. Drink.
I got to tell you this. I got to tell you this.
Our family, I've got five kids and sometimes we'll pick up a

(57:19):
standard pick up milk. We pick up about 10 gallons a
week. Is that crazy?
2 gallons a person. 11 time I picked up 20 gallons and my wife
was a little upset. She goes you're going over the
top and it was too much. I couldn't do that.
But like 10, 10/8 to 12 gallons,not not abnormal at all.
I mean, we just drink milk and I, and I'm one of the main

(57:40):
culprits, yeah. If not the main culprit.
Yes. You ever dunk a little Oreo in
that milk? A little Oreo.
Actually, yeah, I do. Yeah, I knew it.
I knew that was there, Yeah. I think.
That's really good that you haveto try is if you take your milk,
you take a scoop of vanilla protein powder, right?

(58:00):
Shake that up, make like a protein shake, but then get some
like granola clusters and then make like AI call it man cereal
because it's just the granola clusters and the protein shake.
You mix that together and it's just cereal and it's so good.
It's healthy. It can definitely clear your
conscience of drinking some extra milk.
That sounds really great. Don't tempt me on that one.

(58:23):
It's dude, I'm telling you, I'm going to go eat some after this
just talking about it because it's so good and I got some room
left in my meal plan today to have a another snack.
The very last question here, youcould have already answered it,
but we're going to hit it again.What is one piece of advice,
just one piece of advice that you would offer to a young dad,
Bernie, What is one piece of advice that you would give?

(58:44):
I would probably say one of the things we already talked about,
catch your kids doing something right and you're going to be
just fine. You know what I mean?
I think a lot of these dads, they get nervous, especially
maybe a lot of dads frankly didn't have a dad show quite the
way they should have maybe. And so they're nervous about it.
They're worried that they might do something.

(59:06):
And so my, my thought to you would be, you're going to be OK.
And I would say keep learning, keep learning and catch your
kids do something right. So there's there's three things
you asked for one, sorry, drive it in there.
I love it. Well, man, this has been an
amazing, an amazing conversation.
Probably one of my favorites I've had in quite a few weeks or
maybe a couple months now. This has been a really good one.

(59:27):
I'm working people connect with you.
Learn more about your books, training and the messages that
you you offer. Thanks, Jay.
Well, you know, we launched recently a website
calleddadfluence.org. Now it's a.org, not.com, Dad
fluence.org if you go there, butwe have a training system for
how to teach, how to influence your kids to make smart choices

(59:50):
and specifically for you becauseyou were so kind and inviting me
on your awesome podcast, Jay, I have I made a specific coupon
code that's called young dads. If they put young dads with an
S, young dads with an S, they can get half off on that system.
And I'll leave that up the 1st 10,000 people who get it.

(01:00:14):
Using that code can get it. If they want to do that, they
can do that. They can also find they cannot
they they can also find well, Dan fluence.org, that's the best
place. Let's send them there.
Well, and if you're watching on any, if you're watching on
Spotify video or over on YouTubeor maybe on Rumble, I think I

(01:00:34):
still post on Rumble. Pretty sure I do.
You can see it on the screen here, the exact website that
we're talking about here. Can you look into it, learn more
about all this stuff? Really cool.
Definitely we need more of this.More of this is good.
More of this is good, good stuff.
Remember to go and check out Exxon's books, What I Want My

(01:00:56):
Children to Know Before I Die, and keep an eye out for his
upcoming book. When does that one come out?
So will it already be out by time this come out?
Well, it it has not come out yetand it should come out here in
the in the short future. That's a good question.
I'm not going to put an exact date on it, but it should come
out in the short future. OK.
So hopefully it's out by the time this this area, but if not,
then keep an eye out for it. Hidden forces powerful influence
where it is least expected. And of course, to find more dad

(01:01:19):
fluent. Best place to go.
And again, thank you guys all again for tuning in.
If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to rate,
review and share this episode with a fellow dad who needs to
hear it. There is a ton of golden
beautiful Nuggets in this conversation.
Crispy write out the fryer that you can share with someone else.
Share your Nuggets. Don't be stingy.
Until next time, stay present, stay engaged, and keep striving

(01:01:39):
to be the best parent you can.