Yeah.

Our house has been up and down.

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's a big age gap between my oldest and my youngest.

There's eight years in between.

So the friendships for a six-year-old look a lot different than the friendships for a teenager, you know? And so, you know, when they're little, it's like, oh, we're not friends anymore.

You took my crayon.

And then like five minutes later, oh, we're friends again.

And I would highly recommend you find the cheaper way to do it.

Maybe even just kind of, okay, what type of person do I want to be in five years? and, and live that out every single day.

Yeah.

I mean, humans, I think we're one of the only species that know we're going to die, right? Like I, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think chipmunks know they're going to die.

Like we have this unique perspective that one day all of this is going to end.

And at my funeral, I will be so disappointed, probably won't hear about it, but I'll be so disappointed if they're like, oh yeah, he was on a podcast.

Or he wrote a book or he was a writer.

Like, I'm like, gosh, that can't be that can't be it.

What can I be teaching my kids that, that takes your fatherhood from average level to expert level in terms of how we're living this thing out.

You know, I'm tired of waiting on

you.

Why is it so tough? We have gone so many places and realized halfway there that one or more than one of the kids don't have any shoes.

And that's not my fault.

Like they have their own two feet.

Where are your shoes? You're old enough to put them on your feet.

And yet we've been going on vacation and driven two hours.

So all of those things are really important.

I'd eat the

marshmallow personally.

I mean, it's right in front of me.

I love marshmallow.

I do think that this is a tricky thing in 2026, 2027 and the years coming.

This is going to be harder and harder for kids to remain focused and not be so distracted.

But it's also going to be hard because, you know, the self-starter mentality that maybe I would have had as a kid where it's I really got to get motivated to go find this information.

And so giving them control and getting out of the way a little bit, age appropriate at least, I think really helps.

Yeah, I think this is a huge

problem.

I remember being 18 years old and finally old enough to buy a lotto ticket, right? And in my head, I'm like, winning's easy.

Like that's the way I'm thinking is there's these scratch offs or whatever.

I remember buying a ticket and not winning and being like, I want my two dollars back.

Like I was mad at like 18 years old.

I bought like three tickets for a lot of my entire life.

Like you have to bring clarity to all these things to them.

weight of that i think you

know uh professionally i felt that weight and it over my head a little bit uh i worked in three different television markets as a sports reporter uh before i started working with all pro dad and the first one was in lafayette louisiana Pretty small market.

I think it was like market 123.

Like they expect you to make mistakes.

No big deal.

I moved from there to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It's like 61, 62, whatever it was.

Mm-hmm.

I think you have to pick up on it.

Yeah.

I think what we're learning is every kid deserves an uncle with a Corvette.

Like that's, you know, you're liked when Corvette uncle comes around.

No, you're right.

Kids absolutely pick up on the difference.

And I think we sometimes as dad make the mistake of kind of thinking, Hey, if we're around, You're just going to feel like we want to be around you and we want to like you.

So thank you, BJ.

it's you know and you can have a set amount of time you're going to do it but I think it's just the spirit of that too right I am not going to rush you through this this is not something I'm checking off my list this is something I don't have to do this is something I get to do

Yeah, I'll be real honest with you guys.

I don't think I've been doing bedtime very well lately.

And I'm trying to rush it.

Not because I want it to be over with, but because it's just been so contentious.

One of my kids, he's 11.

He's just, you know, like a lot of other kids, he's got some afraid of the dark stuff going on.

does it, can I ask if it, why does it get, why get, it gets contentious?

Hmm.

Um, newspaper, radio, TV, it doesn't matter.

Um, and it, it's backed up by the statistics.

You just gave a pretty nasty one, 84%.

[laughs] That's a pretty big number.

But Gallup also did another study that found that trust in mass media fell from around 70% in the '70s to just around the mid-30% in 2024.

Um, I experienced this in my own house, if you can believe that.

Mm-hmm.

Bobby's a Christian science practitioner from Buena Vista, Colorado.

For years, I worked in a role that took me to conflict zones around the world.

Seeing that entrenched animosity and violence, whether in person or on a news feed, can fuel a feeling of hopelessness.

When things are discouraging and it looks like there is no progress towards resolution, There are usually two things knocking at the door of thought for one to choose between.

The first is cynicism, that contemptuous distrust of human nature that holds up as evidence the destruction and harm that we've observed.

But accepting that invitation is rooted in the feeling that there just aren't accessible solutions and that we can't do anything anyway to affect the needed changes.

But the other invitation is to trust in God.

Hmm.

You could choose to be bored because you can just pop this little machine out of your pocket and, you know, pull up Netflix or pull up YouTube or whatever, and you're not bored anymore.

You know, you, you have to choose to be bored.

And I love it when my kids actually come to me and say, "I'm kind of bored, Dad," because that's where imagination kicks on.

And imagination is kind of like training wheels for critical thinking.

You want your kids to start thinking long term, well, they got to start getting the brain stewing and thinking about what could be and what do I imagine, what, what's make-believe.

All this sort of stuff is really good.

It's such a dopamine hit, and then it, it causes your brain to crave more and more and more and more like a drug.

And so ultimately I look back and I'm grateful that I got fired.

Yeah, I basically have the same story, a very similar story where I switched careers and it wasn't, you know, exactly how I thought it was going to go.

I was in a previous life, a TV reporter.

I went to a lot of sporting events.

I would cover sports, get your final four Super Bowls, you know, the whole thing, like really big events, enjoyed it.

It was super fun.

But in the end, you know, it kind of was, you know, self-serving in the moment.

There's no cost to a quick, to a quick dopamine hit, you know, with It's so funny.

I don't like roast beef.

Well, here's what.

Let me tell you why I asked the question.

Because when I was a kid, I was introduced to roast beef on Sundays at grandma's house.

And I love it now because grandma made some awesome roast beef.

And it was actually a really cool part of my childhood because Sundays were grandma days.

Every day, every Sunday, we'd be going over.

That's

And so the good thing is that the good thing that we can say is, okay, what, what do we need to do to help you to kind of do better here? What, what do we need to do to, to kind of help you get a better handle on this? What do we need to do to, you know, help with some of your behavior? You're going off, you're doing this, never a

comparison.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that one.

I also think that one of the things that dad should stop saying is, I don't have time right now.

And that might be true.

I've said this or a variation of this many times.

Don't you hear me? And so that was when we got a lot of mileage out of it.

I'm probably right in the middle of the four.

I'm highly skeptical.

I think I'm even less confident than you, BJ.

And I think this is a lot of the former TV reporter in me.

As a reporter, I just daily was tasked with finding as many possible sources for information as possible.

One source doesn't cut it.

In some cases, two or three sources doesn't cut it.

It's going to collect information from your searches and your tendencies and And it's just going to be telling you the stuff that you enjoy hearing and like hearing, which is not always the best advice.

But I seem to strike out all the time when I get up there.

Failure, I mean, that's just part of growing up.

But as we were thinking about this and talking about failure, it made me do some research on famous people who have failed.

You mentioned Mike Schmidt.

I came across a story about J.K. Rowling, who you may know as the author of the Harry Potter series, just millions and millions of copies of these books sold.

Billionaire, like super famous person, right? You think, all right, well, she hasn't failed very much, right? Well, in the late 90s, she had just recently been divorced.

She's a single mom on welfare trying to like sell some copies of anything she's written and nobody wanted any of it.

Yeah.

I go right to the, I go right to the intense control and I'm going to out intense them.

I've caught myself trying to control my kids and calling it parenting when we're at church because after church ends on Sundays, we've got a big room and a lot of the little kids like to run around.

They have friends there and they want to play and they want to do tag or whatever.

And I am so concerned they're going to break some old lady's hip.

Like they're going to run an old lady over.

And that's a legitimate thing.

Like I don't want anyone to get hurt.

My kid was, you know, I'm just

Maybe third or fourth grade, somewhere around there, fourth, maybe fifth, and went all the way into high school.

Well, you did that way longer than I did.

I had exactly two sleepovers in my life.

Same house, same kid, just down the street.

The first one I remember was a 10th birthday party.

I had a bunch of 10-year-olds over there.

We spent the night eating Rice Krispie Treats and listening to Weird Al Yankovic.

I've already said a thousand times, but I do think we need to to be wise.

So, um, those could be a lot of the pressures that I think some of the girls face.

Yeah, so if girls feel like they're not enough, uh, I've seen that play out a little bit in my house.

I've got a son, I've got two daughters, and the daughters do music, and they do feel anxiety over performing in front of people.

They don't want to screw up.

Uh, it's just very nervous-- uh, nerve-wracking for them to possibly make a mistake.

My son plays sports.

No anxiety over that at all.

And they're looking for that belonging, and they're looking for that approval.

Mm.

If you love to lift others up, you're probably gonna use your words to do it more and more and more, right? Because y- you enjoy seeing others, you know, who are growing because of the good things you've said.

If you love to see others cry and whimper and run in fear because of what you said, you have this power over them because of your words, y- you're probably gonna continue to do it, 'cause it maintains that power.

The way that our kids use their words is so important, and they're gonna learn it from somebody.

They're gonna learn it from the buddy who gets laughs when he makes fun of somebody, and maybe they're like, "Oh, maybe I'll keep doing more of that." They're gonna learn it from you, hopefully, if you are going to continue to speak life into other people.

I want them to do that.

So my goal is to keep using these uplifting words, and try to minimize these negative words in, in hopes that my kids model that.

And I think the question we need to ask our kids is, are you surrounding yourself with people who are good at that? Or are you surrounding yourself with people who are lesser with, with, with language? You know, who are you listening to? So whoever you're listening to, you're probably gonna end up repeating or parroting back what you've, what you've heard.

Now, I just-

I would tell myself something similar, to be honest.

I like, I, I think if I was gonna go back and encourage myself, I, I would say, "Hey, um, go ahead and embrace failure." Like, good dads are gonna fail their way into wisdom.

Uh, I think that's, uh, it's, that's unavoidable.

You're gonna learn from your mistakes.

You're gonna make a lot of mistakes, so continue to be okay with that and learn from those things.

I remember there was one family trip we took.

[laughs]

"But you're a man."

Right.

That's good.

Yeah, I asked our old buddy ChatGPT about this, um, because I was just curious.

Uh, obviously we can, you know, ask about rites of passage around the world, and we get answers like, "Put your hand in a glove full of ants." Like, that's not something that most people in America are gonna do.

But I did find it interesting that ChatGPT said, "Here are the rites of passage for young people in America." Basically sweet 16 birthday party, okay.

You get your driver's license, okay.

[laughs]

And so, uh, you know, when it comes to our kids, it's, okay, you know, do our kids need to be protected? And maybe we need to have some conversations with, uh, you know, uh, grandparents or family or, you know, a spouse.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, we talked a little bit about some of the, uh, the reasons.

Here's what's maybe driving, uh, sharenting.

Uh, for one, we, we live in a social media culture now.

Like, you can't escape that.

Uh, every smartphone in this country has Facebook on it for the most part, I'm imagining, or Instagram or Snapchat or, you know, any of these other ones.

Avoid revealing location, routines, or uniforms, and consider using email or private group messages for regular updates.

Um, so when you, when do you all struggle, uh, not getting, not, not moving into a frustrated tone or escalating like the situation with your kids?

For me, it's repeating myself over and over again.

And I don't have to do that often.

My kids are usually pretty good about like following through on some, you know, things that I'm asking them to do.

But if I feel like I've had to repeat myself three times, hey, go feed the dog.

Hey, you know, finish your homework.

Hey, go, you know, all these little things you say over and over again.

[laughs]