Building Bonds That Last Intentional Parenting Strategies | Steve Ward

D Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] Steve, every dad has that story that just puts a smile on their face that just moves ’em when they think about it. What is your favorite dad story?

Steve Ward: Well, I’ve got one. Uh, it does put a smile onto my face, but it also makes me think a lot as well. Um, there was, uh, a long period of time when my older son was struggling.

He was a great kid. He really was. He was a good athlete. He was smart, he was popular as a young kid. Everything went well until the middle school years when they didn’t. So for about 10 years, uh, he struggled with drugs and alcohol. He had picked the wrong crowd, uh, to, to hang around with. And times were very, very dark for our family.

And, um. As, as many things as could go wrong, very often were going wrong. And when you’re in those situations, if, if you’re a dad or even a mom, you know, your relationship with, with your son, in this case, the son struggles and, and, and you’re, he’s [00:01:00] trying to form his identity and you’re trying to maintain that precious relationship.

So we had struggles at times. And flash forward a few years and, uh, God blessed that he worked his way out of it. Uh, you know, it took a while, but he worked his way out of it. And, uh, about three years ago, uh, he had found, uh, the woman of his dreams and was getting married. And so that’s kind of symbolic that, uh, of how far he had gone.

He had found a vocation that. Fit his skills and he was doing very good at it. So he was in a different place. Uh, but he and I had had the conversation many times that you know that you are now the man that you were meant to be, not just in spite of what you went through, but in many cases because of it.

And he gets that. He understands that. So on his wedding day, uh, he wrote my wife and I a card and it, it’ll only take me a few seconds. I’m gonna read it. When I, when I talk about this in seminars, I normally don’t get through it, but I, [00:02:00] I, I wanna make a couple of points about our journey and what it’s like for dads in general.

You know, he said, uh, mom and dad, it’s been a crazy ride, hasn’t it? Sometimes it feels good to reflect on the journey. You never lost faith in me through all of my downs and screw ups. You kept believing in me and giving me your unconditional support. I wouldn’t be in this position this weekend without it.

Y’all made this happen, and I will forever be thankful today. Your son is getting married and starting a life and family of his own, but I’ll never forget what got me here in the first place. I’m honored to be your son and I love you both. Uh. Immensely Love your son. Now I, and I read that not to say that my wife and I did a great job because I often give seminars that tell all the ways we screwed up.

We do a lot with parents, but I do it to send the message that if your son or daughter or a loved one [00:03:00] is struggling, if you only do two things, is keep loving ’em unconditionally and hang in there. Hang in there, uh, and, and persevere and keep doing the next right thing, one at a time, and make sure that they know you love them.

If you do those two things, it will be what it will be. You know, you don’t, you don’t control your son or daughter and, and you can’t fix their problems for ’em, but you can be there and you can love ’em and you can give them advice. So I just, I read that. Because it, it makes me think of the whole journey and thank the Lord he has now come out the other side and seven months ago he gave us an incredible granddaughter.

So that’s the, the story I tell, um, because it has so much meaning to us. It’s an encapsulated around one card he wrote on one particular day. But, uh, it’s a 15 year journey, you know, in that microcosm. So.

D Brent Dowlen: Man, that’s an amazing story. [00:04:00] And as, as the son who has been on that side of that story,

Steve Ward: yeah,

D Brent Dowlen: I, I can’t like echo your sentiment enough.

Guys, don’t give up. I, I’m here because my dad didn’t quit on me. So don’t, don’t give up. Uh, you, you make such an incredible difference in the lives of your children just by loving and hanging on. That’s an amazing story, Steve. Thank you for sharing that so much. Gentlemen, I sleep on a MyPillow. I sleep on a MyPillow Giza sheets with a MyPillow body pillow.

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Welcome to the Dad Hat Shenanigans podcast, the unfiltered truth of being a dad. Real dads real stories, unfiltered, candid conversations on fatherhood. I’m your host, Brent Dowlen. Today my guest is Steve Ward. Steve, welcome to the Dad Hat Shenanigans podcast.

Steve Ward: Brent, it’s great to be here. Uh, first podcast I’ve been on where it was mandatory to wear a hat, [00:06:00] but I love the vibe you got going.

I love what you’re doing. Uh, so it’s, it’s, I’m ecstatic to be here.

D Brent Dowlen: Thank, thank you. Thank you. I, I get a lot of people are like, really? I gotta wear a hat? Yeah, you gotta wear a hat, man. It’s, yeah. And you’ve got a great hat. So right off the bat, let’s, let’s, what is the story behind this amazing hat you’re wearing?

Steve Ward: Yeah, well you, you’d said you, you know, most dads have a lot of hats. I don’t have a lot of hats anymore. I think I used to wear hats, but I don’t, the, the reason this one is meaningful, ’cause it, it touches on several aspects of my life that were important. One is I, if, if you can’t tell, it has a, a Georgia Tech logo on it.

So, uh, I went to Georgia. Which, A, it was a good school, but b it’s where I turned from a, uh, a social drinker to be cool in high school to a, a semi-professional. So, so in, in, in school, I was trying to, you know, work real hard to make good grades with, [00:07:00] but, so I could spend my time six days a week drinking as much as possible.

So it, it anchors me, uh, in that part of the story. Right. It’s, it’s also anchored in the fact that, uh, my younger son went there. So, and, and he chose to chart a certain path through life, which was enviable y you know, he, he, he found his faith in the sixth grade. He’s consistently made good directions, so it makes me think it’s of him as well.

The third part and final one is, it makes me think of my older son, right? Who, uh, the reason it makes me think of him is I wear this whenever we play golf. Uh, he went on a journey that was very dark at times, and so there were times when, when our relationship was strained, you know, there was one time. Uh, I’m not a small guy, but he’s six four and athletic and on his baseball team.

And there’s one time he was bowing up in front of me and I’m thinking, is my 17-year-old son about to take me out? You know? But now we have a wonderful relationship and, [00:08:00] and it, it’s exemplified when we play golf. So I, I, I wear this hat when we play golf. And every time I do, it’s a reminder. It’s not, yeah.

It’s just a fun, casual time on the golf course, but it’s also a reminder of what we went through to get to that point. So a lot of different stories wrapped up in the same hat. So

D Brent Dowlen: see, that’s the joy of hats. They, they make these journeys with us. I, yeah. I, I filmed one episode of this solo, just to explain the whole dad hot theory to everybody.

Right. And so I got down my, my kids had a great time ’cause I got down and started digging through my stacks of caps. Oh yeah, yeah. No idea how many hats and what a variety of hats I have. And, and they’re like, well what about this one? I, and there are, there are stories connected to every cap I have. Yeah.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: I, I had like, I, I fished out my hard hat from when I worked hard construction and my beret from when I was in the military. And, uh, I still have my brother’s bucket hat from his [00:09:00] basic training in the navy. Like a original bucket hat.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Um, that I stole from him when he came home from basic ’cause.

Yeah. He was a lot older than me and I wanted to be my brother, so I stole his hat, you know? Yeah.

Steve Ward: Metaphorically. It certainly works as well, right? I mean, you know, we are a certain persona at work and we’re a different persona with our kids and with our spouse and with our buddies, and hopefully all those different hats we wear are those personas that we put out there are all grounded in the same thing.

Very often they aren’t, you know, we, at, at work, we may want to try to really impress people with how incredibly competent we are. Even though inside we feel, you know, insecure and wondering if we’re good enough. You know? And with our kids, we may put on another persona that has, so, you know, these, these hats we wear sometimes they have, they have flaws in.

And then, and, but we put ’em on as [00:10:00] almost a, a fake image of who we think we want to be. You know, it’s a defensive game for sure.

D Brent Dowlen: Steve, how many kids do you have?

Steve Ward: I have two boys who are now older. Uh, one’s 33 and 31, so they’re a little bit under two years apart.

D Brent Dowlen: Okay. And now a grand. Is it grandson or granddaughter?

We do,

Steve Ward: uh, you, you, you’re, you’re lucky we’ve talked this long and I hadn’t pulled out a picture. So we, we do have, we do have one granddaughter who’s seven months old and, uh, I had heard that the grandparenting gig was pretty good and so far it has lived up to the billing. You know, it’s, uh, and, and I’m sure you hear this from every grandparent, but it’s, it’s really factually true.

Well, I think we have the best grandparent of the best grandkid there ever could be. You know, so. I know, I know everybody else says that, but I, I think it’s really true.

D Brent Dowlen: My, my mom lives with us and she’s pretty hard with all of her grandkids. I, so I, I understand entirely.

Steve Ward: Yeah. Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Have the babies in the family.

That’s one of the reasons [00:11:00] she lives with us is Yeah. My nieces are all adults now. Uh, and so it was my nephew on my side of the family, and then on my wife’s side of the family, there’s a lot of young ones. My mine are actually two of the older ones on their side, but Okay. My wife married a youngest child, and I married an oldest child.

Uh

Steve Ward: oh. Okay.

D Brent Dowlen: I inherited four siblings when I married my wife. Wow. Wow. Overnight or, yeah, sorry. Three siblings. Yeah. Sorry guys. Uh, so I, I went from being the baby in my family to all of a sudden having three younger siblings, it was like, oh, this is interesting.

Steve Ward: William, while you’ve experienced the, uh, the kid order dynamics and the pecking order at from multiple different angles, you know, so yeah,

D Brent Dowlen: it, it was a, it was an interesting turn.

Now, Steve, I, I’m not huge in the introduction, so tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, where you’re coming from.

Steve Ward: Yeah, [00:12:00] well, I’ll see if I can make up a story wearing different hats. So, um, I was, uh. Good at school and good at work. Um, but I wasn’t as good as I could have been. Uh, so I always, uh, struggled with that.

Um, I’ve been a husband for 38 years. Um, I, I try very hard to be the best on that, but we all have. Foibles and flaws that that we do, and somehow I keep repeating the same mistakes with my incredibly lovely wife. You’re amazing. You know, I guess, I guess husbands and dads get this. We can make the same mistake about two or 3 million times you’d think we would learn, but I’m, I’m, I’m a, I’m a husband to a wonderful wife.

As I mentioned, I’m a dad to two great sons. Um, now, uh, I left the business world seven years ago to, to found and lead a, a nonprofit [00:13:00] ministry. Um, I am a brother. Uh, I am a friend. Um, I am a. Confidant at times. ’cause I’m around a lot of people who are struggling in various ways. So we wear a lot of different hats.

Y you know, and uh, I try to be as. To wear them as authentically as as I can. But, um, even though I study things like personal development and emotional wellbeing and all that, uh, you know, very often I’m teaching to myself when I’m writing or speaking or something like that because we, we all have things that we struggle with inside and we put on a, a persona that we’ve developed over our lifetime on how we’re gonna cope with and deal those things.

And we wear a face to the people that we’re around. Maybe we put on a hat to act a certain way. We, we, we try to portray a certain face to people, whether or not that’s always authentic and real. So those are the dynamics in which we all live, you know? Um, but I, I’ve been blessed so [00:14:00] far with a wonderful life, and I get to wear many, many hats.

So

D Brent Dowlen: congratulations on 38 years, man. That’s, I was hearing those numbers. Uh. In a day and age where 50% or more people end up in divorce, it’s always amazing to me to talk to people who have been married longer than I have at this point. ’cause people think I’ve been married a long time and it’s like growing up with parents who were, like, my parents were together for forever.

Uh, my, my parents went to kindergarten together. They

Steve Ward: Wow.

D Brent Dowlen: Um, so, you know, they, they were married for, I wanna say 43 years before my dad passed

Steve Ward: Uhhuh.

D Brent Dowlen: So, you know, I, I don’t think I’ve been married a long time, but it’s gotten to where the 24 years I’ve been married seems to be really long to people. Uhhuh.

It’s a horrible trend. Uh, yeah.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: No, no. That’s, you know, used to, we celebrated 25th anniversaries a lot. Those were big deals.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Happens less and less. So [00:15:00] congratulations on 38 years of marriage. Uh, well

Steve Ward: thank you very much. Thank you everybody.

D Brent Dowlen: Someone who makes a lot of the same mistakes over and over again.

I’m always in awe that my wife still puts up. Totally get that.

Steve Ward: Yeah, yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Now, Steve, you, uh, you work, you said you started non tr profit ministry and one of the things you do is work with parents. Yeah. Program. So let’s dive into what we wanted to talk about today. You said you wanted to talk about proactive parenting.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah. And what do you mean by proactive parenting?

Steve Ward: Yeah. Well, you, you know, our experience was right. Three of the four members of my nuclear family struggle with substance abuse, myself, my wife, and our older son. Um, and my wife and I were in a different place. We were in recovery by the time he started struggling.

But I, I started very early being very, very intentional, uh, about being, ’cause I, I’m kind of an engineer by training, so I’m kind of a nerd, right? I, you know, I think methodically and I [00:16:00] thought, you know, well this is pretty important, you know, to, to raise their son or daughter. That’s a pretty important role.

And when they’re struggling, the stakes are even higher. So I started reading a lot and about, uh, you know, a how do you coach people to live life effectively, right? Because when you think about, you ask the question, where do people learn how to live life effectively? And unfortunately answers, most people make it up as they go.

You know? Um, they, they aren’t really intentional about it. And since we started steps, um, you know, I’ve. Taught or talked, met with hundreds or thousands of parents, and even the good ones these days who love their kids desperately are busy and distracted and sometimes naive about what their kids are really facing and they may misinterpret or, you know, underestimate the challenges their kids are facing.[00:17:00]

So we wound up branding our, our parenting about proactive parenting, which means to be intentional about it. You, you know, to, to think about what stage are your kids going through. ’cause the stage that they’re in and their personality and how that you relate to them and what they’re facing at the time.

All those things affect how you parent. So to be very intentional about it to be. And that’s preparation. We have a methodology called paces for parents, and that’s a. Acronym, I think I love acronyms. So the P is for preparation, being intentional. The A is for awareness to understand what’s going on in their life, what, where their struggles are coming from, and what are the risks they’re facing, uh, and also to understand what’s going on in you, uh, and, and to be balanced.

So that’s another cap aspect of being proactive. And so the A in paces is for awareness. The C is for connection. Your kids are gonna change as they grow up, and especially as they become teenagers, they’re gonna communicate differently. And if they’re struggling, they’re gonna [00:18:00] communicate even differently.

So you’ve got to be very intentional about being relational, you know, and, and sitting in the stands at their soccer game or band practice is great, but that’s not enough. You, you know, you have to be able to relate to them where they are. So the, the C in pace is for connection and the, it, it reminds us to be relational.

The end pace is, is for education, right? They’re gonna be struggling with things they don’t understand, and you’re gonna be facing new challenges as a parent. So you need to be thoughtful and to be thoughtful. You may have to get educated on some things like what should I do if, if, if, if they start vaping, you know, should I be worried about their level of anxiety or not?

You know, things like that. And finally, the s and PACE is just for, for steps, is to follow through and to be. To proactive, to put, to build a plan in place. I mean, you know, most of us have a plan for what we do at work and probably a plan for our finances. We might have a plan for our vacation, but do we have a plan for raising our kids?

You know, so, [00:19:00] so, so the aspects of being proactive are kind of built into that, and we’ve developed it into a methodology and it’s, it’s to help good parents. Be great parents even when their kids are struggling. That’s, that’s one way to think about it, because I understand that, that parents are under a lot of pressure and in many ways they’re the heroes out there.

But you know, they’re, they’re busy and they’re struggling and sometimes they don’t know what to do. You know,

D Brent Dowlen: you made a point early into that said, you know, being aware of what our kids are facing and struggling. I think, uh, one of the, one of the things I picked out when my. I was growing up is how much my dad always thought the world was exactly like the world he grew up in.

And trying to convince him otherwise was almost impossible sometimes.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: And so it was something I’ve been trying to be very intentional about as a parent of I now have young teenagers, um, is the world. Is evolving so fast, right? I, I’m, I’m a [00:20:00] huge nerd and so I, I geek out on technology and can trace back like just the pacing and how much faster has gotten every evolution, everything.

I, I had one of the first mobile phones, like the actual modern mobile phones, right? That was 1996. That was really not long ago. If you’ve lived life for a little while and how fast and far we’ve come so quickly. And I think as parents sometimes we often miss, it’s like, no, no. Your kids are not growing up in exactly the same world you are.

Yeah. And yeah, be really distracting as a parent because we want to go, oh, well, you know, we, we survived, so we know what they’re dealing with.

Steve Ward: Yeah. But yeah, by the way, kids, and especially teenagers are. Excellent at detecting, um, lack of knowledge or hypocrisy, right? So if you wanna lose your kids, start the sentence by saying, well, I know what it’s [00:21:00] like for you, you know, they’re gone or, you know, so, but you’re right, the kids are growing up in a different world.

You know, one way to think about it is. We all have kind of anxieties and insecurities going through those years, right? We all want to be a certain way, we wanna be accepted, we wanna be seen as something. So we’re all, we all have that. Well, kids still have that, but you multiply that times about a thousand in terms of the pace of which they’re dealing with.

You know, one is, as you, I guess, implied, they’re carrying around a device, which is throwing. Hundreds of thousands of messages at them every day. And guess what? Those messages aren’t all the truth and they’re not all positive. You know, for example, what they’re seeing about their other friends is that every one of their other friends has life figured out and is incredibly happy and it’s joyful.

Just look at their TikTok or Instagram, you know, so, so then when one of our kids is struggling, they’re thinking, well, shoot, it’s just me. It’s not [00:22:00] everybody else. And, and then that, that, that slows them down from getting help. So you got all that going on. You got the, uh, incredibly easy availability of very dangerous drugs that these days.

Cannot just get you addicted but can kill you, you know? Um, and you’ve got the culture, which is throwing messages at our kids much more rapidly than ever before, and coming from a widely different sphere of thought that is probably a lot different from the worldview that most parents would like to represent.

So you’re right that things are moving faster and broader, and all those things are. Stacking up on your kids, you know, even kids in, uh, later high school to, to, to college. If two thirds of them say that they have dealt with severe anxiety at a time, young people deal with anxiety and all human beings, if you throw information at them and throw clutter and throw choices at them, it increases [00:23:00] anxiety.

But now there’s a lot of things to be anxious about. So, yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Steve, I’m, I’m curious in your experience working with parents. Um, you know, there are, there are commonalities in all parenting journeys, even though they’re very individual, right? Because you have different kids and every child you have has a very different personality and very different needs that they need from you.

But while every journey is very individual at the same time, there are some very universal issues facing parents. In your experience working with parents who are trying to be good parents, what is one of the most common. Roadblocks. You see people stumbling on,

Steve Ward: uh, I, I think they underestimate, uh, the pressures of the circumstances their kids are in.

They underestimate how much those are affecting their kids. You, you know, um, generally kids are, are struggling a little more than they want to share it with their parents, you know, for a [00:24:00] variety of reasons. Um, either, uh, they may fear, they may be embarrassed to say that I feel insecure at school, or I want to fit into the crowd and I don’t, so they may be embarrassed.

And by the way, a lot of this is influence. By how their mom and dad deal with them. Um, they may feel like there could be repercussions or they may feel like they will be ched for it. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing how even really good parents, you know, can have a, a son or a daughter who’s, who’s has been feeling anxious, not just for a little while, but for months.

And they’ll say things just like, well, you, you just need to get over it. You, you know, so kids, that’s not an empathetic approach to what could be a very significant thing going on in their kids. So generally, I think one of the biggest thing parents can do is try to go deeper and be more empathetic. And, [00:25:00] and, and try to understand their world and how they’re feeling about it, and don’t tell them how they should feel about their world, but just first try to be there with them, you know, and don’t underestimate the struggles that they may have going on.

So

D Brent Dowlen: I did a interview with the lead polygraph for the Secret Service. Uh. A couple months ago on my other show, and he said that he has a ratio of at least three, if not four to one. He asks questions and digs deeper into those questions, right? He’ll start with, you know, what are you doing this weekend? Or wHata are you looking forward to this weekend?

And he’ll dig in. But he’ll ask three to four questions for everything. He actually offers out Uhhuh in the way he communicates with people. I’ve been trying to do that with my daughters a little bit more. It is really easy. I, you know, I’m, I’m like every other par parent. I get busy and I’ve got a lot of stuff going on.

Steve Ward: Yeah. Yeah. [00:26:00]

D Brent Dowlen: Stop offering advice. Let’s, let’s ask some more questions here. Let’s gather some more information. I think easy to shut down as parents and be like, just blah, right. I,

Steve Ward: I, I think most parents, even those that get the point, they would be shocked if someone was, uh, invisibly following them around and keeping a log of, of all that they say Saints during the day to their kids.

How many of them are negative and how many of them are positive because. We tend to speak to the exception, like, your room’s not clean. Why haven’t you done this? Why haven’t you done so one is the ratio of negative to positive, but the other is assertive, stating a fact, trying to fix, versus empathetically listening and asking questions.

You know, if we just switch those ratios from more positive than negative and more listening and questions versus. Preaching, yelling, [00:27:00] stating, teaching, instructing. I, I, that’s it. Your, your relationship with your kids will change. You know,

D Brent Dowlen: that’s an interesting, when, when I’m talking with men about their relationship with their wife, it’s one of the things we talked about frequently.

It’s like, okay, you gotta put the, I need to fix it down. She, she wants to be heard, she wants to talk about it. She wants you to listen to her, talk about it. Attentive listening, but she’s not asking you to fix it. And yeah. Sounds like that would be a valuable approach, even with your kids. Yeah. Let me, let me listen to what you have to say.

Let me listen to how you’re feeling and not try and fix it until you ask me to.

Steve Ward: Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, and that’s like, um, I think I mentioned before, right? I, I, I do wanna be real in this, that very often what I’m studying and talk about and teaching, I’m speaking to myself, you know, like what you just said about how, how we should be around or [00:28:00] wife.

Yeah. Most, most wives are like that. They would rather have an empathetic listener who supports them. And it is encouraging rather than someone who tries to fix it or tell ’em what to do. Why can’t I do that? I mean, I, I know that, you know, I, I know that to be true, but, you know, guys are many things, but very often we’re stubborn and stupid.

You know, we just keep doing the same things over and over again, even when we know. So, but that’s okay. We, if, if, if we’re trying to work on it and trying to improve. Generally our, our, our wife will give us some grace and if, if she sees we’re trying, but

D Brent Dowlen: you, you get bonus points for sure. I I tell you.

Yeah. Like, look, they’ll see if you’re making, even if, even if you don’t execute perfectly, they’ll see the effort and you at least get bonus points for trying.

Steve Ward: That’s right. That’s right.

D Brent Dowlen: That’s important to understand.

Steve Ward: Yeah. Yeah. I’m, it’s, it’s, it’s certainly better than being oblivious or acting like. We know what we’re doing all the time.

Yeah. It goes a long way, [00:29:00] right? When we admit to anyone in any human relationship, it goes a long way to be transparent and humble and admit when we have something we need to work on. YY, you know? So

D Brent Dowlen: I’m curious, how do you recommend for parents to work on that awareness? Right, because it, it is, the world is changing very fast.

I know a lot of parents who, you know, they go to work. 10 or 12 hours a day. And they still wanna be good parents. They want to be a good spouse and they wanna be good their kids, but they work 10 to 12 hours a day, five to six days a week, and they’re exhausted all the time. How do you encourage parents to develop that awareness of what is going on in the lives, their children in the world they’re growing up in?

Steve Ward: Yeah. Uh, first off, everybody’s situation is different, right? So there are some circumstances. Like how many hours we have to work or how hard that that vocation is [00:30:00] that may be somewhat outside of our control. That said, there may be some of it, which is within our ability to control first. So if we have the option to give ourselves more margin to be parents.

We could do that. And again, I’m saying that understanding that, you know, God bless the heroic mother who’s, who’s a single mom working two or three jobs, you know, 17 hours a week to keep food on the table, a hero, right? But for those of us who might have some discretion, like for example for me, when my boys were, uh.

Three and five. Um, I was working for IBM at that point, I was in a sales position and I’d found out in recovery that not only was I addicted, addicted to alcohol, but I was also addicted to, uh, performance control and perfectionism. Right? So I was working a lot of hours and I was traveling a lot, and I thought, well, it’s no big deal.

I, I, I can just start doing less. My [00:31:00] boys are now old enough to see me as a father figure. I need to work less. Week to week to week, I couldn’t do that, right? My sense of self was so wrapped up in my work that it was hard for me to do that. So I had to kind of like take a long-term view and say, in the long run, how many hours will I allow myself to work a week?

How many days a month will I allow myself to travel? And yes or no, if they tell me they want me to move somewhere, like to New York, am I gonna go? And in the long run, I was able to have the perspective, my kids are important enough that I need to set some boundaries, and then I had to enforce ’em in the short run.

So, so one is, can you build more margin into your life? That said, with the margin you have, what do you do with it? And, and, uh, and. It doesn’t mean never have fun. Uh, I, I, I think maybe the first thing you want to do [00:32:00] with your kids whenever you encounter them should be casual and fun and lighthearted and connecting.

Right. So that when they see mom or dad coming, um, they think something pleasant is gonna happen. You know, it could be a joke, it could be a goofy hat. Uh, it could, you know, but that said also finding ways to, to have conversations. And yeah, we actually do a class on, on 10 minute conversations. You can have a very important conversation in seven or eight or nine or 10 minutes, you know, if, if you, if they’re in the right vibe and you ask some leading questions and you shut up and listen and, and let them process it and that, you know, so I guess those are the things that occurred to me.

One is, can you adjust the. The margin and give yourself more margin, because sometimes quality time does come from quantity time. So if you can get more time, do it based on whatever you [00:33:00] have, make sure that your kids see that they want to be around mom and dad. But then find a way to have conversations including that go deeper and that are mostly empathetically listening, rather than telling and scolding, you know?

So

D Brent Dowlen: communication, it becomes a really fun issue. Uh. You were saying try not make every start with something pleasant. I, I obsessively, like I hug my daughters if I walk outta my studio and my, so we homeschool the kids. They’re here a lot of the time. And so when I finish recording this, I’ll walk out and if one of my children is standing anywhere close to my path to the kitchen to get my coffee or whatever, I’m going to hug them on the way by.

I mean, I say a whole lot. I may just hug them and kiss the top of their head and greet them, but I always, I always try and lead with a reaffirming, because both my kids are, that’s, that’s a very strong [00:34:00] love language for them. Is that reaffirming hug, that closeness. Uh, we just had a date night last night.

I have one night a week that is my daughter’s from 4:00 PM till they go to bed. It, it belongs to them. Like I barely talk to my wife even. Mm-hmm. From 4:00 PM till they go to bed, it’s their time exclusively. Uh, and I’ve always got, even my 13-year-old was cuddled up on her one arm and yeah. Uh, we’re a very affectionate family, but we always try and start that way.

But I always try and talk to them. It’s like, Hey, what you got going on? What’s going on? Tell me what’s happening. Hey, you, you’re looking a little tired. Are you okay? Did you sleep well last night? Right. I’m always trying to start some kind of dialogue with them. Mm-hmm. Now it’s fun because my kids are hitting that teenage years.

And so every now and then I’m starting to get that, uh, right. I’m starting to get that grunt and that little eye roll every now and then. Yeah.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Uh, but learning to keep that communication open with our kids as they move through those various stages [00:35:00] of life, take some adjustment on our parts, is we’re gonna have to learn to speak their love languages.

We’re gonna learn how to communicate in a way that they’re receptive to. So, you know, you said C is for connection and I’m, that connection with your chi children is so important, guys that will follow you if you establish a strong connection with your kids that will follow them through their whole life.

Yeah. And into your grandkids eventually.

Steve Ward: Yeah. You know, there, there’s, I guess, another clue for parents to keep in mind. ’cause they sit as they become teenagers, this, this is gonna get harder and they will have more stuff going on that they’re a little more scared to share with them. So I’ll have the concept of is, is give them permission to be imperfect.

You, you know, um, a be very wary about setting. Expectation. And by the way, these could be the words you say or what they think. You mean that you expect them [00:36:00] to be perfect and that, in other words, ask yourself, do your kids know that you’re proud of them even when they don’t do well at something? In other words, don’t make everything performance based, right?

Let it be okay to be imperfect. And that includes emotionally, right? Have. Conversations about yourself, about people in general, about other teenagers. So they come to accept the premise that the normal person has some anxiety and feels sad at times, and feels left out at times. That’s not abnormal, that’s normal.

And so they now feel like they have permission to talk about things that, that are real. And when they do. Listen and encourage and, and withhold the opportunity to, to jump in with both feet and fix or scold, you know, and, and if you, if you earn that right, if you earn their trust. And let them know they have permission to talk about things that are real and then [00:37:00] reward that when it happens by being empathetic and accepting.

You know, it’ll happen more often, you know, and, and by the way, that doesn’t mean you turn off boundaries or right and wrong. It doesn’t mean that, it just means the way in which you conduct your relationship is different. Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: I wanna, I wanna really hone in on that word you used. If you earn that right. A lot of parents I know early on, right.

I was like, I’m the dad. That’s, that’s just, you know. Yeah. It took some growing on my part for sure. Uh, I’m far from a perfect parent to understand. I was like, no, I, I have to conduct myself in a way with them. That I earn the right for them to trust me, to feel safe, to talk to me, to share with me. That’s not a foregone conclusion.

I think a lot of parents sometimes think, well, I’m their parent. They’re gonna talk to me. [00:38:00] Not necessarily.

Steve Ward: Yeah. I I I think again, you talked about how can parents be more aware if they don’t wanna be naive. They, they’re opening. Hypothesis should be on the average. Teenagers are not gonna share deeply with their parents and they’re gonna lie to ’em.

You know, that’s just the norm. That doesn’t mean your kids are, you know, so therefore you have to be intentional or proactive about earning the right for them to actually share their real life and maybe meet more truth with you. That’s, it’s not a given, you know, on the average, it’s not gonna necessarily happen unless you’re proactive about it, you know?

D Brent Dowlen: I like it. We have to break the sub serious subject for a minute though. And Steve, do you have a dad joke for us?

Steve Ward: You know, my, my wife hears way too many corny things, but when you, when you asked me to think of a dad joke, I [00:39:00] kept coming back. I don’t know if this is a, a mental flaw in guise or something, but it’s my hypothesis.

That, that men have this uncanny ability to remember those individual lines from stupid, funny movies that just, it seems like there are some that just. Resonate, you know, throughout people, you know, like, um, for me, these may have no meaning to some of you people, but I guarantee some fraction of the men who are listening to this know the expression.

You know, we don’t need no stinking badges, you know, so I. Yeah, I won’t even say what movie that’s from. There are men who know what I’m talking about, but the one that hit me is from Dumb and Dumber, right? Where it just shows the, the naive optimism that many of us guys live with, where I forget, Lloyd, or one of the characters in Dumber.

Dumber is, [00:40:00] is being told by an attractive female that he’s got. No odds whatsoever of having a relationship with her. And finally it gets her to admit. So, so you’re saying, so there’s like a one in quadrillion chance that maybe you would go out to lunch with me and she said, well, maybe she so said so you’re saying there’s a chance, so I’ll, I’ll leave it with that.

Right. By the way, that’s not a totally flawed way to be. It’s, it is to be naively optimistic. And to always see that there is a chance. But, uh, yeah, again, I, I, I would bet some number of the men out there know what I’m talking about, and they, and they use it with their friend. So you’re saying there’s a chance, not really a joke, but, uh, you know, a, a dumb line from a dumb movie, you know?

D Brent Dowlen: See, but there’s a lot of value in that, I think even, uh, as parents, right. We can turn that right back into parenting because I, I do this with my kids, right? [00:41:00] I, I, I tease them all the time. I’m like, uh, you know, do you wanna do that? Like, no, not really. Are you sure you don’t really wanna do that? Right. And I’ll just keep changing the question and poking a little bit, and I’m like, uh, so there’s a chance you might want, right.

And they’re like, dad, will you quit? No.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: I really want to do this with you. Right. Yeah. Uh, that, that naive optimism can be really beneficial, especially as your kids turn into teenagers.

Steve Ward: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: You will get bonus points like we talked about earlier with your kids when they see that you are desperately wanting to spend time with them and interact with Oh,

Steve Ward: yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Yeah.

Steve Ward: Well, by the way, it’s not right. It, it’s a mistake. Uh, most parents, as they get to be teenagers too. To automatically out of our insecurities respond to their changing signals to us. You know, like with your kids, right? You said you, you now [00:42:00] hug ’em and you have physical contact, and so they’re gonna start acting like that’s not cool anymore.

To some degree, that didn’t mean it didn’t impact them, it doesn’t mean that they still don’t like it. They j they may just send the different signals for a while. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and so. If you’re doing what’s right and, and, and what feels right and what is sincere, you, you know, sincere is, is big with kids.

You know, they’re, excuse my French, you know, they’re excellent bullshit detectors, you know, and if we’re living in hypocrisy or if we’re complimenting them, just. Falsely because we’re you, you know, we want to give them a feeling of false. You know, they, they detect all that you, you gotta be real, and you gotta since be sincere, but you can be naively optimistic about what you want for your kids.

And I think it can still work. You know, you, you can, you can just say, honey, I, I know you’re struggling with some stuff, but I, I mean it [00:43:00] sincerely, I absolutely believe in you. And you don’t, I don’t know how you’re gonna get through this, but you will and I, and I’m gonna be there with you. I, I believe in you.

You know, just that feeling. If it’s real and if it’s sincere, you know, it, it can mean a lot, even if we don’t know the answer, you know? So. Oh yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: It’s, it’s really,

I found that the more you can engage more senses with your kid. The more they’re gonna open up. Right? Uhhuh? Um, there are times where you have to communicate with your kids, like you do with other men. Men, men communicate side by side. We, we don’t communicate face to face, right? Guys talk in the car, we talk, sitting at a bar, we talk, doing projects, and it’s always side to side.

And so. I experiment that without my kids, right? My daughter and I did a fundraiser [00:44:00] a year last year. Um, it was Ruck rucksack challenge and we had to walk so many miles with rucksacks on raise money for Stop Soldier suicide. Uh, and we have a lot of military people in our family and, and our community, our friends.

And so, you know, something my daughter feels passionately about. And so we were doing this together, but those conversations going for walks together. Like when, when she didn’t have to look at me in the eye, but she was walking along with me, we were in em together. Right. Working towards a goal together.

Doing something together. The free flowing conversations that happened in those movements.

Steve Ward: Yeah.

D Brent Dowlen: Right. That, that made the whole, that that made the 50 miles worth it.

Steve Ward: See, see, see that’s another example, Brent, of being, uh, proactive. Right. Intentionally want to know what is the dynamic in which I can connect well with my [00:45:00] kids.

And then to seek out those situations, you know, even if every parent has a certain amount of bandwidth available to them with their kids, hopefully they widen it. But in that period of time, what do you do with it? Do you, um, sit in the stands at their baseball game? Nothing wrong with that. I’m not sure that’s the deepest connect.

You’re sending a positive message that’s supportive, but that’s good. Do you sit next to them on the couch while you’re watching a TV show? Nothing wrong with that form of connection and or. Do you find that that vibe in those situations where maybe you can actually have a conversation, you know, and, and you just mentioned a very intentional thought process of, when we do this, this happens.

You know, it, it, it can be like that. Yeah. But we have to be kind of proactive and intentional about it sometimes, or it, it, it won’t happen in the, in the busyness and clutter of life. It, it won’t happen on its own, [00:46:00] you know?

D Brent Dowlen: Steve, what’s the best part about being a dad?

Steve Ward: I, there’s a, there’s a million things.

Um, but to me it’s the, just the significance of it. Y you, you know, to, to think, and I’ve especially been thinking about it with, with having a, a, a little granddaughter now where it’s been a minute since we had kids, right? Our boys are 33 and 31. And to see a human being, being born and growing up, it’s like.

Holy cow, what kind of miracle is this? You know? And to think a, that’s a human being. And so to be part of the journey of another human being, or more than one is unbelievably significant, you know? But yet in a, in a, in a warm and hopefully fun and enjoyable [00:47:00] way. So I think it’s just the. The amazing significance of it.

You, you, you know, if, if, if all you do is you’re a good parent, and when I say good, I don’t mean perfect. When you, when you give it your best shot to be as good a parent as you can be with one or two kids, that’s significance. You know, that’s, that’s a sum, you know, no matter what else has happened in your life, that’s significant.

So I, I think it’s just that, that breadth of meaning and significance that strikes me, you know.

D Brent Dowlen: Steve, if the guys listening today are looking to connect with you, where’s the best place to find you?

Steve Ward: Easiest is at our website, which is life improvements steps.com. Life Improvement steps.com. Um, if they’re mostly interested in parenting up at the top, they can click on toolkits and go to Proactive Parenting and see toolkits for raising teenagers, dealing with a crisis, biblical parenting, raising kids, being a grandparent.

If they are, someone close to them is struggling with [00:48:00] perhaps behavioral health issues. Uh, substance use, been there, done that, um, or mental health. Issues. You know, they can go to behavioral health if they just wanna get better at life, you know, and deal with intentionality and productivity and, uh, dealing with relationships they can go to, um, you know, go to life improvement.

So, but mostly just remember life improvement steps.com, life improvement steps.com, and, and then look for, for you when you get there.

D Brent Dowlen: And as always, guys, we’ll have, we’ll have links for, to connect with Steve down in the show notes or the YouTube description wherever you’re joining us today. We make sure that you connect further with Steve.

Steve, we’ve covered several various aspects of parenting today and the idea of very intentional parenting or proactive parenting issues. If our audience heard nothing else today, what do you wanna leave them with?

Steve Ward: I, I, I’ll leave them without talking to [00:49:00] them as, as a person, not as a parent. ’cause we’ve, we’ve talked about parents good bit.

They’re people. And, um, they have their own struggles too. So whether it’s the person listening or their spouse or could be one of their kids, but to know that it’s okay not to be okay, but you don’t have to stay that way. In other words, if you’re feeling anxiety or depression or you have a habit that you know you shouldn’t have.

That doesn’t mean you’re, you’re unfixable or you’re broken in or you’re alone. It means, frankly, you’re kind of normal and millions of people have been right where you are and they’ve gone on to to live a very happy life on the other side. And there are steps that have been proven to take that, that have been proven to work.

You can’t fix your life. Automatically, there’s no magic wand, but if you live life effectively, you will move in the right direction. And there is a guy that lets you individually who will be with you every step of the way. So [00:50:00] wherever you are now, you can have a realistic assurance of a positive future.

Yes, that’s hope, but it’s more than that. It’s a realistic assurance of a positive future that, not that your circumstances are gonna magically get better, but you can take steps in the right direction and other people have been there as well. And God will be with you every step of the way. So.

D Brent Dowlen: Guys for seeing myself.

Thanks for joining us today on the Dad Hash Genetics Podcast, A community of dads navigating life’s challenges together. Until next time, laugh, learn, and live the dad life.

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