David Homan: Vulnerability as Strength Reshaping Fatherhood Norms

David, every dad has that story that just lights ’em up, that they love to tell on their kids and their kids roll their eyes. And what is your favorite dad story

with two children? My older one, Eva’s 11, my younger one max is eight. They always go back to that time on an airplane where I, I saved the day for a mom, but got poop on my hands.

So like, so like, you know, when you’re a dad and I’m now divorced in a new partnership, but I was that type of dad where I was the one who was always there when a lot of it was only the moms. And so I’d fly frequently with my two kids when they were one in four and then two in five. This was right before COVID, um, down to Florida to see my family.

And every time I fly and I, I love and respect moms. I think they’re incredible. Every mom looks at me in the flight and they have that glare, like that dad alone with his kids. They’re gonna be trouble. He doesn’t know how to handle it. And then, you know, an hour into this flight, Jacksonville, Florida, there’s this mom that just can’t quiet her baby.

My kids are quiet. One’s reading, one’s doing a crossword with me, and you know, like a color crossword, nothing fancy at five. And, um, my daughter leans over and she’s like, you should help. And I get up, my two kids get up, one of them is two by the way. And I’m like, I, I’m here to help. And this mother looks at me like, oh God, not this, not this guy.

And I just take the baby, I put the baby down on the floor of the airplane one hand down. I change the diaper. My daughter grabs the dirty diaper, she puts it in a bag. My son drags it to the bathroom. And all of a sudden, like all these moms turn around and they, you go, oh, I wish my husband could do that.

And I, what I remember is my kids just had that so such great sense of pride and I had this incredible sense of pride and then they start laughing at me. It’s because I had poop on my finger. And what they remember from that story is I did such a great job and I was about to go woo. And then I realized, thank God, I saw it and got cleaned up.

And that was, that was the most memorable flight we ever took.

Oh, wow. I, I was just waiting for you to say, you, you ended up smearing it all the way across your head afterwards. That’s just

Oh, it was, it was so close.

I, my super weakness with kids was, was dirty diapers. Right. I’ve, I’ve been in the heart of like, major accidents. I can handle blood guts, vomit. Doesn’t even faze me.

Something I, I can handle. I worked on a ranch. I can handle animal feces, but human feces, even babies, like my upchuck reflex is just hard.

Yeah. Well, when you have a girl who’s super cute but has explosive back poop all the time, you just get used to it. And then when you have the son and he potty trained himself early, but man, like he, he eats like an adult.

And then the outcome is like that. You just gotta, you gotta find a more optimistic way to deal with it. So I learned, I,

I changed, I changed dirty diapers, but only when my wife wasn’t around, I’ll change anything else. I’m the one who handled the kids when they were throwing up. ’cause it didn’t even phase me, but.

Yeah. That, that was so like, I’m, I’m cringing the whole time you’re telling that story. Just going, oh, no, no. I would throw up all over the plane.

Yeah. Well, not, not that advisable on a small plane in the middle of motion, but you know what, like it was the best place to do it wasn’t that tiny little airport bathroom, like, that’s like offensive, like we should have in this world just a changing station that a mother or a father can actually just use to help their kid.

Because no one wants to smell it. No one wants to deal with it. And yet our solution is cram somebody with a squirming, upset little creature into a small space you can barely lock and good luck. Get outta there in 30 seconds, somebody else has to go. That’s why I just used the floor with a diaper pad. I had plenty of space.

I had a bunch of moms looking. They thought they’d help and then in the end, they wanted to learn from me. So it was, it was a great moment except for the poop finger. It was

Welcome to the Dad Hat Shenanigans podcast, the Unfiltered Truth about Being a Dad. Real Dads Real Stories, unfiltered, candid conversations on fatherhood. I’m your host, Brent Dowlen and today. My special guest is David Homan. David, welcome to the Dad Hat Shenanigans podcast.

Thank you. I’m so pleased to be on this.

I just love of everything you do. This in particular. I know we were talking before you said it’s just raw and honest. I don’t understand how you can’t be anything but raw and honest about the the absolute choice and challenges of being a father.

It, it’s funny because there are not a lot of spaces for dads to feel like they can just admit that being a dad has his rough moments.

I don’t, I don’t understand why. I really don’t. Right. Because you have, if you have a good group of friends who have children, you can talk to other dads pretty openly and sometimes we’ll do that in the right situation. But there seems to be like this lack of spaces where you can go, yeah, my kid ate the glue a lot, and other dads go, oh God, that’s not just my kid.

I thought something was wrong. Right. It’s, it’s hilarious to me, but I think we need more places where dads can just have those open conversations and be like, yeah, my kid was having explosive back diarrhea and I have no idea what to do about it.

I mean, look, like when you start to like become a parent, then you meet other parent friends, right.

There’s a different socialization with fathers. Mm-hmm. But we have this weird false expectation that like. We need to present that level of perfection as if we’re the greatest. When in the end what we’re trying to do is not be at least 50% like our fathers were for us because we studied the best of them and the worst of them.

For those of us lucky to grow up with fathers. And then once you have a kid, you start to realize that like the tendencies you had that you hated growing up, you are that person. And since that struggle and balance of like my father is a absolutely horrific, neurotic traveler, you do not want to be near him.

That commercial where the dad gets to the airport four hours before. Mm-hmm. My father was the one filming that who set up like three hours before that because he was too neurotic in there. And then I travel and I try to be calm, but I have to unan my father every single moment. And what I’ve learned is my kids, they’re becoming nervous travelers and competent at the same time.

’cause they’re seeing me struggle in it. We, we never really talk as, as you know, we never really talk about that balance of who we’re trying to be, who we want our kids to be. Mm-hmm. And then how we show up. ’cause they’re studying us every moment. We’re not actively parenting just as much as every moment that we are actively trying to be a great dad in front of them.

One of the first things I tell dads like expectant dads is your circle of friends is gonna change when, when you, when you had that first child, even when you get pregnant. But when you had that first child, your circle of friends is going to start to change and it’s nothing you did wrong. ’cause that, that was a big, that was a stress point.

Like when we had our first daughter, uh, was all of a sudden we had these friends pulling away and we’re like, but, but what? Like I, we, we didn’t understand. Right. My wife’s like, did we do something? Uh. This is one of the early conversations I like to have with dad. Like, your circle friends are gonna change, and that’s okay.

That’s not you guys, that’s just a change in the direction of your life. But you need to take advantage of that and find other young parents who are right in the same place or a little ahead of you that you can talk to about what’s happening in your life just so you have somebody going through it with you, just so you have that comradery.

Um, yeah, I, I couldn’t agree more. I, you know, I’ve tried to study this ’cause my whole world is relationships and community building, and I, I have a network of thousands and thousands, and when I will talk to friends who are about to become parents, I, you know, I say to them, this thing that, you know, they don’t really understand to start, and then they get it after.

And I say, listen, you have aspirations, goals, successes in your life, everything that you’re gonna do. And then once you have your first kid, all of that becomes before and it’s scrunched to this little tiny bubble. And now you’re thinking there’s a creature on this planet that comes be outta this world because of me.

What am I going to do to be the best for them? In many cases, people take the opposite and they don’t know how to do that, or they did in the work and then they, they become like their fathers or they become, they retreat. But when you realize that everyone who’s a new parent around you was in that shock and awe of, of dealing with a whole different chapter of their life that they cannot go back on.

You wanna know what separates out the people who get it and not, and it doesn’t have to only be new parents. It’s the people who are willing to be curious about what it’s like for this new part of your life. And the people who feel like they can’t be comfortable with you because they don’t get it. And the other thing I found too, just strangest part, there are certain people who are parents who don’t get that.

’cause either they were raised this way or they just want to be hands off. And like, I can’t be with a hands off parent. Like I can’t go on a play date with my kids to a park and not play soccer with my son or throw a ball with my daughter or go around the gym with her. And I don’t understand where like people go, then they just go on their phones and they don’t engage.

’cause I had the dad who played with everyone and then I’m often the only dad playing and I’m thinking, I mean, I might be in my forties and no longer an athlete really, but like, what other chance do I have to like, relive my youth and connect, connect with my son by kicking a ball? And it’s so rare to see a dad doing that with their kid.

Now it’s an opportunity to go back to your phone and I, this, this is what the thing I don’t get that separates me, which is why I, me, uh, mentioned it. Uh, it separates me from a lot of the dads in my life because they can retreat back to their work. And I think I worked really hard so I got the time to kick the ball with my.

Well, that is the goal, right? I, I heard this. I’ve, I’ve brought it up several times recently. I, I read this thing the other day. I don’t know if it was on Facebook or Instagram. Someone posted, you know, everybody complains ’cause kids are not as mature as we were at their age. Dot do, yeah. They work really hard.

Just so they didn’t have to be Wasn’t that the point of all the work? And I’ve thought about it, right? ’cause I’ve, I’ve noticed that about my kids, but it’s like, wait, no, that, that was the goal, right? Isn’t that I worked really hard so my kids didn’t have to grow up as fast, had more time to just be kids didn’t have to worry about this or that ’cause we could handle this or, you know, that that was kind of the goal was to let my kids be kids longer and be able to enjoy being kids and enjoy growing up with them and helping them to say, find their way in the world.

Why are we so frustrated about that these days?

You know, when we, when we look back at what we thought our childhoods were, what we thought our parents did for us, and we grew up as kids thinking our parents are the strongest, most engaging, put together people. And then no parent has ever really said that about their parenting or what’s next in their phases.

Right? Like, like you first step into that idea that like, oh my God, like yeah, my dad played with me also ’cause he was really concerned I’d get hurt by all the other kids if he didn’t play with me. My dad went to the beach with me and went out in the waves. Not because he actually likes sand ’cause my dad has a sand phobia, but his fear of drowning or me drowning trumped his hatred and phobia of sand.

And I’m sitting here in so many of these situations as a parent going like they idolize me. They look at me and I’m thinking, how less flawed can I be stepping into this? And how much more can I embrace this and understand that, like I’m feeling like a crappy parent. ’cause my stress level’s high and I can’t solve that and be a dad right now.

So I just have to be as present as I can. And like, you know, the reason I say all this is like, then we decide, we put ourselves into a box of when we’re supposed to show up how we’re supposed to be, how hard we’re supposed to work, what we’re supposed to do. When in the end what matters is were we there?

Did we meet them where they are? And to we start to teach them how to meet us where we are. ’cause that’s what happens when they grow up. They have to learn that in terms of human interaction, not just having that free world of being a kid till suddenly one day the world slaps them and says, all right, childhood’s done

right.

It’s that growth. That growth ramp. You know, we let them be kids as long as they can be kids, while at the same time teaching them to interact with the rest of the world. And right there, there’s, there is truly no one in the world who wants to see you succeed like your parents do. Like I really, there, there’s a lot of parents who aren’t perfect.

Right. And, and I know my parents were not perfect, but I have really great parents. And, but there, there’s no one in the world who wants to see you succeed and thrive like your parents do. Like that’s the whole goal for a lot of them.

So, yeah, I totally agree. I, I wish I could say it’s true for everyone, but I have so many friends, right?

Like in college, my parents would come visit and all of my friends would come over to hang out with my parents, cook with my mom, and play board games with my parents. Mm-hmm. And my parents became those defacto parents for so many of my college friends. And then I soon realized they might have had great parents, but they didn’t, they didn’t have that type of parent.

And then I realized how lucky I was to this day. I talk to my parents every single day. My dad’s 87, my mom is 80. They’re in good health for what their ages are. And to be clear, I grew up in Florida, not just, they moved to Florida, which is what everyone assumes. Um, and with that, like I, I don’t want to ever live a life of regret that I wasn’t part of their lives and they weren’t part of mine.

But so many of us separate from it. And, and when I think about why, like, I have such a beautiful relationship with my mother. We’ve never had any strife for averse adversity as we’ve grown UpTogether. Uh, but my, my dad had to really do a lot of work to not think of me as this little Davy who was four years old then 11 years old, then 20 years old, and then 46 years old as I am now.

And, you know, it took a lot of work on his part to get the little kid he was so proud of. Into more of a peer relationship now where he retired and I was like, you’re gonna drive mom crazy. You’re a amazing professor. You should launch a podcast. And he goes, how? And I was like, you should do it. So now he has a podcast, it’s called Shake the Spear.

He’s the Shakespearean. So there’s a little bit of sexual innuendo, but like he’s talking with academics and he is having a blast. And my friend just gets it out there for him and my parents’ marriage is intact. And I never would’ve had that as like an 11-year-old to be like, dad, shift your career. Do this thing.

But now that we were able to both overcome the me, I’m not your little boy and him going, you’ve matured into the man I wanted you to be. We had, we have to constantly find a new dialogue and a way to be. ’cause no one’s the same as they were five or 10 years before. Even though we think of our kids now, as always gonna be that way until they surprise us, not with the beautiful stuff they do as children.

But the maturity they exhibit, the perspective they give, the insight they have that makes us think, okay, maybe they’ll be okay in this world Now

I’m excited. My, uh, my kids are 11 and 13 and I’m excited to, to be a part of it, to join them on this journey and watch them become, see, see where they want to go with their lives and watch them grow into these people that are gonna impact the world in their own way.

And it may be totally different than what I think might happen and probably will be, and I’m totally okay with that. Right. But I’m looking forward to each step of the journey. I, I wasn’t really, like, the baby stage was not a great stage for me. I, I am.

I mean, you hate poop and diapers, so you got a little

bit Well, I’m, so, I spent 20 years in youth ministry.

Okay. Working with teachers Junior High and high school was my favorite age of people as far as like, you know, working with kids. Uh, and so it was, I was always very frustrated as a young dad because, you know, babies, infants, young children can only communicate so much, right? And that hyper protective father comes in and you’re like, something’s wrong, and I want to fix it, but you can’t actually explain to me what’s wrong and I’m losing my mind trying to figure it out, right?

That really, so when they started to be able to communicate better, that moved into a better age for me because that I’m, I’m a hyper protective person. Uh, so them being able to actually communicate, oh, this hurts, or This doesn’t feel good, or, this is how I’m feeling, really was kind of a crucial step for my brain to not just be short circuiting all the time with freak out.

Uh, but it’s, it’s fun to watch. I’ve enjoyed watching at this to this point as they’re growing and becoming. Their own personalities are coming out mixed with little bits of me and my wife. And it’s fun. But it is a lifelong journey.

It is. And the thing you start to see, right? ’cause my kids are my older one’s, 11.

So same as your younger one, right? You start to think about like how they were at three, then five, then eight. And like they don’t really change. They just amplify. Like they might learn and grow, but like there’s certain things just like how they’re born, how they act. Like you might think you could influence it, but all you can do is nurture it and give them perspective.

And then when that blossoms from, you know, and in communicative, emotionally charged toddler into a elementary school kid into now middle school as my older one is just starting, probably yours as well. And it’s just like, all right, well then suddenly they hit that milestone. And I don’t think, all right, well where’d all the time go?

I think only right? Well, what’s next for them? How can I support them? But how can I give them the space? I honestly wish, wish I had more of as a kid. And I talk with my parents about it, and they’re like, oh my God, we gave you so much space. You just kept coming back to us when we thought we you’d leave us alone.

And that’s what my daughter’s doing. It’s like I’m giving her the space and the freedom and then she’s still just holding my hand as we walk and talking about her fears of middle school. And then I have to say to her like, like, you’ve gone to three different summer camps. Within the span of six minutes, you made five best friends.

Like, why are you worried about making best friends in middle school? And she’s, and she says, I’m worried even though I don’t need to be, I’m just like you. And I’m thinking, how smart, how funny. And I can’t solve this at all. She’s just gonna be nervous until she jumps in. And then I know she’ll be fine, but I’m nervous for her too, even though we don’t have to.

Oh,

the joys of fatherhood. This is, I’m enjoying this conversation immensely, sir.

Same.

It’s, it is an exciting, exciting, I I’ve never understood people who don’t enjoy being parents. ’cause, ’cause you’re right, right. There are definitely those parents who are less engaged. My house was the crash house. Mm-hmm.

Like my friends all ended up at my house through all throughout junior high and high school. My house was where everybody ended up. Um, and because my family just took everybody in. Right. My grandmother lived with us. So I had the benefit of not only having mom and dad, but I had granny for everybody as well.

And so, like my mom would go to bed on Friday night and cook for an army on Saturday morning because downstairs my brother and I kinda shared the den slash downstairs of the house most of the time. And there might be 20 of our friends crashed out. On the couches and on the floor and stuff downstairs when she woke up.

So just, she just cooked for an army on Saturday mornings, and all of my friends were like, oh, mom’s feeding us. Yes. You know, uh, they all would walk up and hug mom and granny and dad, and like, it was just the communal, this is our family. Right. And I love that space. It’s,

it’s so beautiful to hear. I mean, of course you can’t really feed a family without the carbohydrates if, you know, like 500 pancakes or whatever it might be.

Um, you know, but it, it, it’s, it’s shocking to me how few people actually have that experience. Yeah. And, and then people like, they will say to me often like, well, I don’t have that relationship with my kids. You do. Like, how do I start? Or like, my family wasn’t like that. Why was yours? And, you know, everything I do write just came out with a bestselling book about community.

Everything I study, it goes down to things that are so simple, which is what if you were curious about your kids without an agenda. What if you were vulnerable to share where you are, just to share where you are and, and what if your parenting approach wasn’t how to control something, but how to just let them be where they are and make them feel heard there.

What would happen in terms of how they would react differently to you with having that courage to just be real and honest? And then what if your idea was a fund wasn’t theirs and you actually asked them what they thought would be fun to do and then you actually just did it with them? It, it, it seems so hard for people to get over that until I think, okay, well my daughter really wants to learn how to use a hot glue gun to decorate iPhone cases.

’cause everywhere we travel, she wants to go to a do it yourself store. So we’re we made one just having moved and now it’s actually incredible work that somebody should buy. But I’m sitting there with a glue gun and designing it and I’m stressed that I am busy and actually no, I’m present with her for what she wants to do and I found joy in it ’cause I just asked her, I didn’t say, here’s where we’re going, here’s what we’re doing.

Why don’t you go back to do that class you liked? What’s your friend doing? She wanted that time. And most people don’t ask. And what comes out of that is not knowing how to really build the bond that could build a family. Like, you know, obviously you and I were very fortunate to have,

and guys we’re gonna dive into that farther in just a second, but I’ve gotta ask about the hat ’cause I know your kids helped you with the hat so I, yeah,

sorry.

So my dad grew up, um, south Philly in the thirties and he went to Wildwood, New Jersey. And that was his childhood beach. And his parents, especially his mother’s view of parenting was the son’s out go play for 12 hours, come back when it’s done. And his mom, according to him, I mean, she kept the house, she would cook, she would clean, but she never played with them.

And his dad would just, my grandfather, who I un unfortunately never met, um, he would play with his kids. And so when I was thinking, you know, for my kids, like, what’s, what’s a dad hat? What’s this cool, bizarre request for like, we basically don’t have things. And my kids said, well, it’s granddad’s hat you bought for him.

He keeps leaving up here, which is the Wildwood, New Jersey hat, his beach. And then this is the photo of the time you took us out and we ate multiple, multiple hot dogs and. None of us felt good afterwards. And I mean, multiple, like contest level. Um, and then everywhere we go, my kids have to pick up whatever random feather is falling out of a bird’s butt.

And then I have to like neurotically clean it. So we have this massive collection of feathers that they never want to display, but somehow always want me to hold for them. And so that’s what my dad hat is for the day.

I love that it was a joint project with your kids to, to acquiesce to our request that you wear a hat for the show.

That’s, that’s awesome. That, um,

I, I fell in love with this idea of the dad hat. I, I had this, like, I had the cover art design for my show a year before I ever launched the show. Like I just sat with this thought for so long, uh, because dads wear such a diverse. Array of hats metaphorically, right? Mm-hmm. But the fact your kids help you put the one together for the show just makes one of the best hats we’ve had, honestly, like, hands down, tell your kids from me.

This is one of the best hats we’ve had on the show, period. I love, I’m so

glad to hear

that’s, that’s awesome. Now you have a boy and a girl.

I do. The three, uh, younger one’s a boy. He is the soft, gentle one, except for when he’s losing in Mario Kart on his switch. Mm-hmm. And then my daughter, who’s 11, is just that spunky, energetic, creative heart on her sleeve.

Like everything out there, um, you know, beautiful soul who like, is annoying and then she lights up the room and everyone’s like, how could we have been here except for what Eva just did. And so they’re, they’re both just a, a wonderful balance except for, and they actually made a theme song about this one day.

They’re sitting there and they’re like, we got a, we got a song for you. I was like, what? And they both start singing. My daughter’s choreographed it and it’s about this thing called KFC, not the chicken. And it’s like, Aila, I hate you and you hate me. That’s why we’re better together in KFC Kids fighting club.

And they will do it all the time. It’s like the cutest thing and it’s this acknowledgement that like they’re siblings and they hate each other, but it really means they love each other.

Oh, I love ev. Every kid has their own creative streak and it manifests differently. Right? Uh, your daughter obviously has a very large creative streak, like very, very artistic, and your son’s creative streak can be entirely different.

He’s that wise old soul to look at you and he’ll be like. That person over there.

Then he says something profound and you’re like, oh my God, you’re four. How do you understand that? And it’s just like, he’s that type. He’s also actually creative, loud artistic of just the, the sister overshadows him. Mm-hmm. As for everyone who grew up with an extroverted older sibling, just the nature of it.

So sort of waiting until Eva leaves her college, and then Max will have his moment, but he, he has his moments when she, she is, um, occupied doing Do it yourself stuff with me as well.

My, my kids are just the opposite. The younger one is the extrovert, the older introvert, and both my wife and I are actually introverts.

Um, I’m, I, I call myself a condition extrovert because I grew up a preacher’s kid. Yeah. You have to learn to be extroverted and shake hands. Oh

yeah. All, all of my friends, because I grew up in the south, who were pks, like all of them, no matter how they’re feeling. Especially on Sunday, you better be the junior preacher because you gotta show up that way.

Oh yeah. Yeah. We, we could be, you know, the circus ringleader if we had to be. Right. ’cause we’re taught and programmed from the time we’re little to do this. Uh, but it, it is funny ’cause preferably I’m more introverted. My mom is an introvert. Um, but my wife is as well. And so my oldest daughter is very, she’s like, eh, people know.

My youngest daughter is like, oh my gosh, people, I should meet everyone.

I love that.

So it’s, it is really funny ’cause the younger one drives the older one crazy with the whole extroverted thing. Mm-hmm.

I mean, there’s every variation of it. There’s no right or wrong of it. ’cause you can have two extroverts, two introverts.

You can have an introvert and then their friend is an extrovert. We, we have all these variations. There’s no right one. Mm-hmm. But it just means there’s always an imbalance to work through. It

does, it does. It is so funny to watch them and, and they fuss at each other and it’s usually over this whole extrovert, introvert habits.

Yeah.

David, tell us, just for reference, ’cause we, we’ve already had some great conversation already, but just for reference, for everybody listening and all the dads, who are you? What do you do? Let’s get some.

So, um, I, I am good at one thing in life. It’s not telling dad jokes, they’re wearing a dad hat. Um, I’m good at connecting people.

So my world, which as a musician as well, I’m a classical composer. I call orchestrated connecting. Everything I do is a very, very method, method, methodol methodology of how to purposely and intentionally connect. I do this, um, in New York where I live, but globally with a network. It’s around, all around impact mental health, refugees, investing in women, black and brown founders, climate change.

It’s nothing about like, I know this rich person, let’s make a lot of money. If I had focused on that, I’d probably be wearing a different type of hat. But what I focused on was how do you build community to build, bring more people together in a structured, systematic way. And so I just came out with a book called Orchestrating Connection.

I try to keep everything roughly themed ’cause I also trademarked part of it. I’ve learned that’s necessary in life. I have a startup coming out, I run a global community. And everything I do is to figure out who’s the person you should have met. That’s not me. What type of community do you come into? What type of environment?

And especially with the book, just out this idea, what’s the work that you need to do as a human, in this case, as a dad, to be curious, to be vulnerable, to have diversity in your network, to be more generous to other people and to express more gratitude. And that system is the same system I ask people to put together and who’s around them, who they choose to be in their lives and what they want out of that purposefully.

So we have a world that’s less apathetic and more intentional and action oriented. So I built this global network, launched a startup, came out with a book, run, a large scale advisory firm, and I’m still the dad who shows up for pickup. I’m still the dad who plans the play dates. I’m still the one who does bedtime no matter what.

My stress level, I chose to have children on this planet, and therefore I will be the one to make sure that they know I am there because I couldn’t see it any other way. As sad as it is to say, I, I probably you as well are an anomaly in this, but there’s nothing more rewarding than the people you bring into this planet, either one or many, to know that not only are you physically there, but you’re invested in them every step of the way.

I feel like we could just like mic drop and walk out right there, but we’re not going to. But I, I feel like

it’s still a dad joke to tell from both of us, I hope, but Oh yeah. But it’s, you know, I, I don’t get it right. Like, I don’t understand why it’s so hard for somebody who’s a father to just get out of whatever ego they have about who they are and just sit down with their kid and show up for their kid for 20 minutes more than they thought they should.

I, I don’t understand how like your kid has something important be with them before it, not just show up and get into the audience. Your kid wants to try something new, learn it with them. Like it, it’s like, why wouldn’t we want to be more curious and have more joy in our lives? We regret what we still don’t have as that we had as kids.

So children give you the exact opportunity to do that.

I, I have some working theories actually. Uh. About that. After working with kids for a lot of years and focusing on working with men for the last five years with my other show and stuff like that and coaching, um, I, I have some working theories on, on that because that is, that is a, a question that I wrestle with every day.

My, my children, other than my wife or my favorite people in the world, uh, thank God. Same for me. I, I, I focus on, um, you know, I, I chose my wife first, and when our kids are grown, it will still be me and her. Uh, and so I try and always keep that perspective because my children are possible because of me and my wife together, right?

Mm-hmm. But my wife, my, my children are my top priority in the world and everything else, like everything else is an afterthought for me. And so I, I often have wondered, just like I, I don’t understand, right? I don’t understand how dads just aren’t like all that way. But I was also, I think. 13 before I realized that I thought my family was normal growing up.

Yeah.

My, my siblings are some of the closest people in the world to me. I’m very close with all my siblings. Even when we don’t talk often, uh, because we’re all very busy, I’m still very close with my siblings. I want to spend time with them. My mom lives with us. Uh, my dad passed away a couple years ago.

His last year of life was here at my house.

That’s beautiful. I’m sorry to hear.

Our family is very, very close knit. Right. And so I thought that was really normal until I was about 13 and started staying at other people’s houses overnight and actually witnessed other families in firsthand. And it’s like, oh, I guess we’re not normal.

Like, uh, my friends didn’t feel this way about their siblings and they didn’t have that close-knit relationship with their families. And so that was a mindset. I was a little slow to that, and I think I’m a little slow to this.

You were, you were faster than me. Like it wasn’t 13. For me, it was college when I realized that and I lived it, but I didn’t understand it till I got different perspectives in the people I grew up around and like, you know, again, I at some point love to hear your working theory is like the reason I wrote a book on purposeful community, not just on connecting or connection.

Mm-hmm. It’s this idea, right? If you’re choosing who’s around you, then like everything is about what is, what’s your reputation? What’s what my friend Michael Roderick calls, what’s your referability? The ability for somebody to mention you outside the context of you being there in a way that actually makes you proud for how you were described.

And if we lived in cultures and communities where it was an expectation every dad acted like our dads did for us. Mm-hmm. That those people would have a choice either to be celebrated, being the dads that pick up or judged for not being that. And, and we just live in this world where like there’s no judgment for that and yet it’s so necessary and all these families are fragmented and they might be challenging, but then go do the work.

Be more intentional, be more curious. Like these are not things that take rocket science to figure out how to be more present. If in my world, if you choose not to be present, you are choosing not just apathy, but to harm somebody else, to not provide for them for what they need because somehow you think you mean more, you need more, you have to have more.

It’s just this work problem. You just have to do more. And then everyone I know comes back and goes, why don’t my kids call me? I haven’t talked to my brother in years. I try not to be my father. But it means you try not to be somebody as opposed to you decided to be somebody else like you wish they had been.

And, and it’s, it’s a really hard choice to admit that how you are isn’t how the world sees you or how you want to be. Even harder to go. I’m gonna work on that and get other people who are not me to give me perspective and feedback, and even harder than that, to then just keep showing up for other people without getting what you deserve back from it.

Mm-hmm. But who wants to be around selfish people who are egotistical and boring? I’d rather be around fun people who have a sense of purpose and play and have a strong sense, especially as a parent, whether they’re a single parent or divorced or still beautifully married like you guys are. Like, I’d rather be around those people who are intentional about their parenting than choose a bunch of parents that just let my kids come over and play video games for eight hours and then wonder why my kids feel more estranged from me Now, it’s all a choice.

We don’t think it is, but it’s a choice.

Well see. I, I think that is part of the problem, is we’re not taught to think forward. Right. We are taught. Our, our system is very cookie cutter designed for a purpose. Right. And it puts us on a very, very specific path, as been specifically, but we’re not taught to think future.

We’re not taught to think of ahead. We had the benefit growing up, a preacher’s kid. I went to a lot of funerals. A lot of funerals. Oh yeah. And I also went to a lot of hospitals with my dad. I, I’ve been around a lot of people in their last final moments, or as they knew it was coming to an end for them.

And so very early on I got to see what actually mattered. Mm-hmm. Because I’d hear these people limit about what they didn’t do.

Oh yeah.

What they wish they had actually done. And then I’d be at funerals hearing these. People talk about this person, right? What And and what they actually talked about. What people actually talk about at the funeral when they think back about a person.

What was that person’s priority? What about that person was special? And it really starts to drive home a very quick perspective of no one. Like I, I joke with people. It’s like no one ever talked about, I wish I worked more hours of work, right? I wish I worked more over time. I wish I put more heart and soul into that company that I worked for for 20 years.

Yeah, I wish I had been on the road more for them doing more sales. I wish I’d gotten higher sales figure. No one cares about that. No one ever talks about that, right? The things people talk about at the end and lament at the end really teach you something about what has value and what doesn’t. I’ve been to a lot of very empty funerals, rules where.

There wasn’t hardly anybody to say anything about the person because no one cared. Right. And to me, that was just that tragedy of like, I know these people had families, some of ’em I knew very personally, and I, I knew their families and their families didn’t care. The few people who were there were there because they felt duty bound have to be there.

Mm-hmm. I worked in a nursing home when I was 19. I worked maintenance in a nursing home, and I was always baffled. I, I was fascinated. I worked maintenance, so I got to go all over the place. And I interacted with our residents all the time. They all knew me. I’m the guy who come fix the toilet in their room or fix their table or whatever needs done.

But I loved being there. I loved talking to those people. I loved getting to know all of them. They were my residents and I was always horrified at how few of them ever had visitors. How many of ’em were just dumped there and their families never came to see them.

Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing that.

I’ll say just turning back around to the other work that you do. Mm-hmm. If everyone made a choice to live their life with integrity, with honor, with gratitude, that would never be them sitting in a nursing home or on their death bed alone. Right? We, we spend too much of our time focused on what we can get from the world, what we need from the world, as opposed to what we can do to show up better and to give to the world.

And if you put a lot out there as a giver, you are memorable. Not for what you did or founded, or, or, but how, how you meant, uh, what you meant to other people. And, and we don’t think of that as the same value. And as a parent in particular, right? You wanna know how you sh how you, you sit in your end of life and your kids show up, not because you did something right for them to show up then.

But because they showed up last week and the month before and the year before that and they showed up because they show up because you showed up and it wasn’t because there was an expectation that you had to, or they screw obligation. Mm-hmm. Find a way to find a commonality, find a way to share an interest.

Start something, put the time in and the time will come back. And you know, the thing I don’t get is why people don’t understand that the more you took time you put into your business to grow it, the better your business generally does. The more time you put into learning a sport, the better the sport you have.

The more time you put into being a dad, the better you are at being a dad. And yet somehow that one escapes so many people and it’s just a simple equation. How can you have fun doing it? The others you feel you have to, to feed people to succeed. But if you want to succeed in life and fail as a parent.

What are you gonna regret on your, when you’re about to shuffle off your mortal coil, like you’re, you’re gonna regret putting your time into a misplaced, misguided world where you thought success was how people saw you, not the people who loved you lived with you.

Yeah, but that’s the bill is sell. We’re sold.

And that’s, that’s part of the problem. The system’s broken that way. That’s what we’re told is our legacy is how successful we were by a world standpoint. Right? Did we have a big business? Did we leave our kids lots of money? Did we provide well for our kids, they live better than we did. It’s not,

but that’s capitalism.

That is, that is people selling us things, making us feel like the more we can buy something, the more value we have and none of it means anything. We all sat through COVID who had people call and check in, who did not, who had kids who went to live with them or help them who were older and who did not.

It’s abundantly clear then. That when you could do nothing else, you couldn’t work the same, you couldn’t just visit or go out to a sporting event or whatever it might be. Who showed up and did you show up first? We have an opportunity to reset this. It’s a systems problem, but it’s literally a choice by each person and you can choose to change it now, and all you have to do is to make that choice and to stick with it.

It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it is absolutely possible to get more out of it than you have right now.

Well, and that, that is actually one of my hopes coming out this side of COVID, right, is it was a big wake up call for a lot of people about what can change, how fast it can change, and what actually has impact.

And I’ve seen some transition, uh, locally, like just some people I know in it’s like, oh. You know, we, we couldn’t do this, but you know what we did Okay. And we had a lot more family time and that was, that was actually kind of cool and right. We’re starting to see it. It shook the foundations that have been in place for a long time.

I think it’s really important to be having these conversations, even, you know, four and a half years later, or whatever it is now, officially five years later. I think it’s important to be having these conversations. ’cause right now people are more open to them because we shook that foundation and went, uh, maybe it doesn’t work exactly like you thought.

It all worked.

So, although I do agree, I think the window’s closing, I

It is.

I think we’re gonna have that revisionist narrative of like, oh, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t that long. It was only three or ago. Oh, it was 10. Like, like, we’re gonna forget what it’s like until it happens again. It even then, we’re not gonna actually change until we put a different value system on top of it.

But we have a loneliness epidemic. Why? Because people aren’t curious and vulnerable. ’cause we think those are weaknesses. We have a loneliness epidemic because pride and fear go together as opposed to simply being gracious and humble and everything we’re taught in that system. That is a strength, especially a male strength.

Like I walk into rooms where I talk about the fact that my dad at a 87 has a now permanent catheter and I wake up with fear every morning that I’m gonna get the call going. He’s gone, and I walk into rooms where I should network with. Very wealthy people in the family office world, which I work in, people who own businesses, people who are unbelievable humans, and they pause from whatever they’re famous and they go, oh my God, I’m so struggling with my mom and her dementia.

It’s so hard. She hasn’t remembered who I am for two years. And like, people act like I’m an anomaly when I network a room because I come in going, I feel like crap because my dad might be, you know, biting the dust soon. And like, how, how hard was that? Like the window’s closing, but it’s just not that hard to be like, here’s what’s actually bothering me.

What’s bothering you? Here’s, I’m nervous about my kid going into middle school. How are you feeling about it? Why is it strength to pretend we’re perfect and we have it together and our kids are great, our kids sleep through the night. Like, why is it a strength to, to hide what’s happening with dementia in your family or anxiety with your teenager?

Like, it, it’s, it’s, for me, it’s just so naive. And misguided to think that when you project strength, when you’re really feeling weakness, you should feel better about yourself. That’s why open dialogues like you create, especially amongst men in particular, it’s so necessary to understand this isn’t like what women do versus what men do.

It’s about being human and it, and the strength comes from having the courage to say what you’re facing and then realize you don’t get judgment back. You get empathy. You, you, you build trust. You build community, not by saying what we’re doing right, but what we’re afraid of happening. That’s wrong. And no one I know is not, isn’t dealing with an aging parent right now who has kids.

Everyone is sandwiched in between. It’s been written about the sandwich generation and I don’t know, just do all your dad friends talk about it? No. Why? Why not? Everyone’s dealing with it or they lost their parents. That itself is another thing, but how they lost them is what, you know, you experience with your father that I’m gonna experience with mine.

Like, why can’t that be the starting point of a conversation? Obviously not for your structured podcast, but, but why can’t it be for the next time you have a conversation with another dad? Because it, it humbles us. And, and I, I just wish more people would build community by doing it.

I, I, wow. I have so many answers for some of that.

That’s an entire, another discussion. Honestly. Uh, as far as like, I, I could go down that rabbit hole. This has been my whole existence for years now. Um, and I can actually trace a lot of that and explain how we ended up here. Mm-hmm. On that, uh, I will say lightly, it’s a, it’s a generational screw up. But it started with our grandparents generation, our, our great grandparents generation, really.

But I, I can take you back to World War I on this.

Mm-hmm.

Actually the decline of how this happened. Um, but that, that’s what it is. It’s generationally learned. We, we are a nation of war babies. Yep. And the military’s answer is always stuff it down. Shut up, be angry about it, and push forward. Yeah. Which is good advice on the battlefield.

Good advice on the battlefield in the moment. Really horrible advice when it becomes the root of who you are and it comes home. Yeah. And, and that’s all actually filters back to is men coming back from war and from conflict and from stress. Just bringing what they stuffed down home is, this is the solution about it.

Right. A shared collective trauma, a war or like we’re talking about with COVID, you shove it down because to face it’s gonna take a lot more courage than shoving it down.

Well, you were told this is how you can dealt with it.

Yep.

Our, our great grandfathers, our grandfathers, they were told stuff it down ’cause they were in World War I and World War II and saw horrendous things and we continued for generations.

And now we’re looking at a renewal of that with the war on terror or whatever you wanna call it. In the last 20 years of being Afghanistan and Iraq and I’m seeing young fathers, uh, my brother-in-law was deployed to Afghanistan. I’m seeing young fathers fighting this struggle at home. Mm-hmm. He’s got two kids where.

It’s like now we gotta, we gotta, we gotta pull that back, bro. It’s, this is not, I, I know this worked out in Afghanistan. This isn’t how it’s gonna work at home. You gotta, um, I’ve had some interesting conversations with him and his girlfriend and, uh, it’s like, yeah, we gotta, we gotta pull that back. This is not that worked there.

This isn’t gonna work here. Right.

Totally agree. And, and there, and then he, and he is lucky to have somebody like you to help him transition through that.

But generationally, that’s, that’s where this has actually happened to men is it started with those older generations. This is how they were trained to deal with stress.

This is how they were trained to deal with conflict and frustration. Bury it, get angry about it. Move forward. Right. Yeah. You’ve got to fuel you forward. And so they just learn and then we subsequently learned from them. We don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about it. Yeah. My favorite scene in, in the Witcher, I don’t know if you ever watched the Witcher TV series.

Oh yeah. Loved it.

He set the banquet and the two lords start arguing about this monster. And he is like, I doubt either of you ever actually faced one of those. And she’s like, well, why don’t you tell us about this? He’s like, it’s a total lie. He had a knife to my throat. I was about to die, and he let me live.

And she’s like, wow. And the reason he could do that is he was the biggest badass in the room.

Right.

The reason he could be humble and say, no, I got my butt kicked. No, I, I almost died. This is horrible. That’s all a lie is because there’s no, that was an absolute image of masculinity at the moment. He was so secure in who he was.

Mm-hmm.

And his place that he could be vulnerable, he could be humble. Right. And that’s not what we’re taught being a man is, or being a dad is. Right. Right. It’s that security in who we are that allows you to go No, I, I don’t understand. I don’t, I don’t get it all. No, I’m struggling with this, you know, my, my mom’s got dementia and it’s like, it’s breaking me.

Yeah.

That comes from a place of security in self that we aren’t focused on.

That’s why I’m, I was so grateful, uh, when we were able to set this up because everything you’d speak about, this needs to be out there. You have such a great gift to share this and to have everyone just be strong in their vulnerability, which is unfortunately still rare, despite the need for it to become omniscient and, and part of every man’s fabric, especially who’s a dad.

Well, thank you for that. Although I, I, I’m still trying to figure it all out as I go. Well, uh, but that’s why I am, I’m having the conversations. David, what, what was the best piece of advice you were given when you became a dad?

I had a friend and they said to me, um, something, the thing that stuck the most for just any, any parent, but for me as a dad, which is everyone, especially when you have a young kid who tries to tell you what you need to do or change to be better, does it to justify what they did. Sleep training, not sleep training, co-sleeping.

What’s the best pacifier, what’s the best stroller? All of this is really people well-intentioned going, oh, I’m sorry you haven’t slept. Have you tried this? And you feel so immensely stressed about trying to get it right Then I just, that friend gave me that perspective. Everyone’s just justifying what they did, whether it worked or not, ’cause they’re trying to be helpful.

So listen with a little bit of a lens, and that helped me be a very confident parent growing up with my kids for things I’d never really dealt with before. Because I just had to listen to all their perspectives and then figure out my own.

I love it. That’s, that is such insightful advice. I’m, I was always amazed, like everybody and their dog had an opinion on everything the minute I became a parent.

Oh my god. Yeah.

It’s insane. And yet somehow people keep doing it.

David, we’re we’re, we gotta land this plane pretty soon, but we can’t do a dad podcast without a dad joke. So what is your favorite dad joke?

So I have been, um, doing longevity diets now for the last several years. It helps me stay in shape. Um, it’s really good for healing all my injuries and all of this.

So it’s essentially, you know, soup, maybe some crackers every three months or so. It’s a specific thing called Prolong that I absolutely love and. One of my kids was like asking me to tell joke after joke after joke. And I ran out of jokes. I don’t really have that many. And then I came up with one because I was basically just drinking shakes and soups for a week.

So, you know whether it’s good or not. Um, why did the vampire lose such weight? Why? Because he was on a liquid diet. I had come up with it, but it came up, came to me at that moment. My kid, I think my older one like was drinking something and it came out her nose and she started laughing and my son just started twirling and I was just like, wow.

It’s much funnier than I thought it was.

I’m gonna have to go try that on my kids in a few minutes. We’ll, we’ll we’ll give that one a run. If I get the full blown eye roll for my older daughter. I know. It was a good joke. Right, exactly.

Look, and if you get judgment, just be like this dude with the feather in his cap.

Um. Told me this joke. He said it wasn’t funny. I just wanted to confirm it wasn’t funny. And your 13 year will be like, oh, great. My opinion matters. It sucks, dad. And you’ll be like, crisis averted.

Oh, she, she’s a handful. She uh, got me a joke book for the show ’cause she’s like, you’re not really that funny dad.

So here you go. So she got me a dad joke book just for the show. David, where can people connect with you if they want to go deeper with you?

So besides Googling David Homan where everything comes out about my life, um, good or bad, my world is about orchestrating connections. So orchestrated, connecting, orchestrating connection.

All of this is how you can find me. You can also take my last name Homan and put the word music next to it, and you’ll find over 200 of my classical compositions that are on Amazon and iTunes and out in this world. I’m a composer, connector. Very proud father, and really grateful for you having me on today.

I’m gonna have to share that with my wife. She, she plays piano, so I’m gonna have to, okay. You gotta check this out. Now, David, final thought. We’ve talked about a lot. We, we went far and wide today. Uh, I’m not sure we actually even talked about what we intended to talk about originally. And that’s fine.

What do you want to leave? They have heard nothing else. What do you wanna leave these guys with

if they are just tuning in for the tail end of this? Wondering why we’re dressed, how we are the hats on our head or any of it? I just go back to if your, if your father’s alive, what could you say to him that you’re grateful of, that he deserves to hear?

And when you look at your kids next, can you say to them something you’re grateful that they have taught you that gratitude practice opens up the world. It’s very easy to do. And what comes out of it is a ripple effect much more profound than those few moments to demonstrate the value other people have in your life.

Jens, thanks for joining us today. On behalf of David and myself, we hope you enjoyed the conversation. We enjoyed having the conversation even if you didn’t, but we hope you got a lot of the conversation. Thanks for joining us on the Dad Hatch podcast, A community of dads just navigating life’s challenges together.

Until next time, laugh, learn, and live the dad life.