Are You Parenting on Autopilot? How to Become a More Intentional Parent

What if some of the skills that make you a better leader at work could also make you a better parent at home?

And what if parenting could make you a better leader, too?

In this episode of Parenting Shrink Wrapped, Sam and Melissa sit down with executive coach, leadership expert, and Ambitious Dads founder, Jeff Hittner, to explore the surprising overlap between leadership and parenting.

After interviewing more than 200 fathers, Jeff discovered that many dads care deeply about being good fathers but don’t always have the tools, role models, support, or even language to talk about the challenges they’re facing.

Jeff shares what he calls the six dad gaps, including challenges around time, confidence, brotherhood, role models, co-parenting, and legacy.

But this conversation isn’t only for dads. Sam, Melissa, and Jeff explore how all parents can become more intentional about the way they show up for their children, especially when they’re tired, stressed, frustrated, or running on autopilot.

About Jeff Hittner

Jeff Hittner is an executive coach, leadership expert, and founder of Ambitious Dads, a movement helping fathers lead with as much clarity and purpose at home as they do at work. After discovering he couldn’t become a biological father, Jeff reimagined fatherhood as an identity grounded in emotional presence and intentionality, and is now the proud dad of two boys. Having interviewed more than 200 fathers about the challenge of succeeding both at work and at home, he began writing extensively on the topic and launched the Ambitious Dads Podcast, sitting uniquely at the intersection of executive coaching and modern fatherhood.

Learn more at ambitiousdads.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What makes a great dad? And I say, look, what makes a good dad is very simple presence, being present. But what makes a great dad is being intentional. So having a vision for how you want to father, having a vision for how you want to share values and lead like your kids and your family in a certain way. That's the distinction I make between a good dad and a great dad.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Welcome to Parenting Shrink Rap, where two mental health professionals will get real with you about the joys and the challenges of raising children and teens. I'm your co-host, Dr. Melissa Wellner, a double board certified psychiatrist and child and adolescent psychiatrist and mom of three.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

And I'm Samantha Straub, licensed clinical counselor, longtime educator, parenting coach, and mother of two. Together, we'll explore all things parenting, from handling monumental meltdowns to first-time drivers. We're all about giving you practical strategies that work. Parenting Shrinkwrapped is more than just advice. You'll sit in with us for compassionate conversations about the complexities and the absurdities of parenting. We're here to support you and your kiddos.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So grab your cup of coffee, take a deep breath, buckle up, and join us for this journey called Parenthood. We'll laugh, learn, and commiserate about the joys and messiness of raising kids.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

And this it was a private school, so not a very large, like a student body was probably 400 something, low 400s in the upper school and the high school. And this event was not open to freshmen. So let's just say it was eligible for just over 300 kids. Invariably, about 75% of them show showed up to this to this event. Like this was an optional thing before school. You can show it. I guess what I'm saying is kids were craving leadership. They were looking now now. Some of them were doing this for the camaraderie because they were coming back to school early and they could see their friends. Some of them were doing this for the resume building. But once we got going, what they realized was, oh, the skills that I'm learning here are very relevant to me being a team captain, to me being just a human, just existing with my friends. They were just, they were learning ways to operate in groups, learning ways to be influential without being bulldozers, and learning ways to accept and listen to people around them, which I think are important explicit things to be teaching kids. And what I'm excited about our conversation today is we are going to be talking to Jeff Hittner, who is the founder of the Ambitious Dads Project. And that's not just his background, we're going to talk to him in a second, but he brings leadership training at the corporate level, that's his background, into dadding. And I love it. I love it. It is a verb. It's a verb. And so we're going to talk today about the overlap between leadership training and leadership work and being a parent. And I know from leadership training that I've offered to high schoolers that I just feel like we should all, all of us humans, should go through leadership training and we'd all be better at every job we have. Whether it's one that we were we signed up for and we get paid for, or it's one that we signed up for and we don't get paid for, we'd all be better at it. So let me introduce Jeff. Jeff is an executive coach, a leadership expert, and the founder of Ambitious Dads, a movement helping fathers lead with as much clarity and purpose at home as they do at work. After discovering that he couldn't become a biological father himself, he reimagined fatherhood as an identity grounded in emotional presence and intentionality, and is now the proud dad of two boys. Having interviewed more than 200 fathers about the challenge of the challenge of succeeding both at work and home, he began writing extensively on the topic of fatherhood and launched the Ambitious Dads podcast, sitting uniquely at the intersection of executive coaching and modern fatherhood. I can't wait for this conversation. Jeff Hitner, welcome to Parenting Shrink Rafft.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

All right, back us up. Tell us start our audience off by introducing yourself and then lead us into how and how ambitious dads got got started.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Sure. I mean, yeah, the long version and the short version. The I guess the long version, because you get you just gave the short version, is I knew my entire life that I wanted to be a dad. I mean, I remember in high school, like when I would have a crush on a girl, I would think like, oh, like would she make a great mom for me as a dad? I mean, I just I don't know why. I was just always that way. And about 13 years ago, uh or maybe 12 years ago, I um uh found out that I couldn't be a biological dad. Um, you know, we went through a very painful and and uh difficult infertility process as many people have gone through. Um and I I just remember like after that, I remember crying on a beach, um, going and thinking like I'm gonna have kids one day. I I don't know how yet, but I'm gonna have kids one day, and I'm gonna have messed them up because they're gonna become teenagers and they're gonna be dealing with the identity crisis that every teenager has, and then on top of that, they're gonna have to deal with this like duality of me not being a biological dad to them. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

So you felt like your inability to be a biological dad was going to be a shortcoming for your children, your future children.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah, and um and and I write about this a lot, but what that actually did was it freed me of something that too many of us as parents, but in particular as dads, because I I can only talk to the fatherhood side, feel, which is like that they need to be perfect because they love this creature, these people so much, and that they're screwing up when they make these mistakes. Well, I screwed up even before my kids were born. Like I felt like I got that sort of failure out of the way. And failure is not the right word, I understand that, but what I just mean is like my imperfection was built in from the beginning of my fatherhood. So I didn't have this, you know, worry that that if I if my if I dropped my kid, that that would be the first moment where I realized I'm an imperfect dad. No, I got to realize it well before I dropped my kid. Um, and so um it just made me enter fatherhood from a very different angle. Um, and more than this idea that I was entering it imperfectly was this idea that I was gonna enter it with intention because obviously, with no biological connection, um the nurture was gonna play a pretty huge role for me. And so it was really important to me to do it really, really well. Um and so all of those things kind of transpired. And um, as a as an executive coach and leadership expert, the other piece of it was um I realized that if I could transform my mindset about something as foundational as what it means to be a dad, then I could help people transform their mindsets about anything. And so fast forward many years later, and um, you know, I have a nine-year-old and a six-year-old boy, and they're the absolute lights of my life. Um, but about three years ago, I was I had just lost my biggest client. Um, I mean, huge from a revenue perspective and and normal, because they had rolled off after years of me working with their teams. And so I went for a walk. Um and I started asking myself this nagging question, which was why, you know, I I coach uh CEOs that are men and women, and but it was the men, whenever I would ask them, like, what you know, what are your goals around your career, around your company, they could answer it in a second. And then when I said, Okay, well, what about as a dad or with your family, they would give me this look like no one's ever asked me that question before. I started getting curious, and I decided that I was going to like declare my ignorance and interview 50 ambitious dads just to understand what on earth is going on around modern fatherhood. Um, and it was totally selfish, too. I I was dealing with like I couldn't get my kids to stop fighting and because they're like what's going on, and so I would interview these dads, and I got to interview number four, and I was like, holy crap, I am learning so much. I need to start writing about this.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

And you know, four turned into 50, and 50 turned into 100, now 200 interviews later. Um, I've just got a lot of interesting knowledge now about like the challenges of modern fatherhood for the dads that really want to co-parent with their partners. There are so many things that um are making it very challenging. I call them the six dad gaps.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about those gaps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

And and then beyond those gaps, it was like, why? And I started looking around as a leadership uh expert and started going, why aren't we talking about how fatherhood is the ultimate leadership lab? Because there is no place like what I say happens is we have default dads. And you have we are default dads and default moms. And what I define for default dad is the moments when you just have nothing left and you just kind of fall back on these patterns of just like how you react to your kids, to your spouse. We all know what they are like. Like we all have them, but those tell us so much about what we need to learn and change in our leadership. Um, and there is just so much opportunity to grow in our fatherhood or motherhood and transform transfer that into our leadership at work because if we're a default dad at home, we can be a default boss at work. It just looks a little bit different. So instead of you know, shouting at your kids for procrastinating for 20 minutes on their bedtime routine, at work, you just don't ask the opinion of someone on your team, right? You just tell them what to do, or you cut someone off in a conversation. There's, there's, there's, it looks different, but it comes from the same place. So if we can start to understand these moments at home, we can actually create much better leaders at work as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

I love that. I love it. And I see it. I see it so much. Like I I was working with a family um not that long ago. Um, and this was in therapy. I I split my time between parent coaching and therapy. So this was a fair therapy situation, and um, and I had the privilege of working with the whole family sometimes. And the dad was known for trying to get his point across by telling, telling, telling, telling, telling, just telling his point over and over again. And he was never wrong about the point. Like he he always had a point to make. And it was wise and like the straightest line between where his kid was and where he needed to go was exactly what the dad pointed out. It was sensible. And invariably the kid would not listen, didn't, didn't want to hear his dad's, you know, sage advice, uh, because the kid was trying to like figure it out on their own. And and and interestingly, it wasn't landing right. It wasn't landing, but it came out that this dad had the same problem in at work. Like he volunteered this in a session. He was like, because he had this aha moment where I was like, listen, what you're saying is not wrong, but unless you say it in a way that your kid can digest, you're just gonna degrade the relationship. So can you accept, you know, and and he was like, Oh my god, this is like I get this. I just had a had a HR meeting where I got some similar feedback.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yeah, I I say, you know, I I I write a lot about this, right? And one of the big mistakes we make um uh at home and at work is we fix before we connect. Giving feedback, whether it's to a five-year-old or a 40-year-old, still requires connection first, or they're not gonna hear it. And I had this.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

You are screaming Sam's language, right? Yeah. Screaming her language, Jeff.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

But it also doesn't mean that we do it well. I even as a leadership expert, I was having this moment with my now six-year-old. It was probably when he was five, where you know, he hit his brother, and I come into the room and I'm about to deliver a lecture. Like, you don't hit your brother, and he takes his hands and he puts them over his ears. I'm like, oh my God, what the hell is this now? Like now I search what this is. Like, I can't. And then like the next it literally, then the next day, I was running a leadership workshop on how to give feedback. And one of the things in in work that I teach is you you don't give feedback until you ask first, is now an okay time to give like some feedback? And I realized my son was giving me the biggest gift in the world. He was telling me, I'm not ready for feedback, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Not an okay time.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

No, not for feedback right now. And I was like, actually, this is great. I hope he keeps this for a while. Um, and and that's just one of the examples, right? Like, but unfortunately, at work, our our our colleagues aren't gonna put their hands over their ears and tell us that they would they're not ready for feedback. Instead, they're just gonna ignore us. Um, so this is one of the many ways that you can think about it, and and it can start from either side. So this is what I want to bring into my work, both at a corporate level and at home. It's like if I'm talking to someone at work and they tell me they're a parent, and I say, all right, well, think about connecting first with this person before you deliver this feedback. The same rule applies at home with your kids. Um, and it's hard because it's hard because we we really want our kids to grow and we care for them, but they don't want to listen when they're mad. Who wants to listen when they're dysregulated? None of us.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

No, and neither does your employee though, either. I mean exactly you know, I you know, I've been in leadership roles plenty throughout my career and have people who work for me, and sometimes I don't want to have those tough conversations either, and I don't want to be the one giving the feedback, but necessary to do and necessary to receive feedback even as the boss, too.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah, 100%. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Okay, you talk about these six gaps that dads struggle with. Um, and can we get granular on those? Can we talk about some of these gaps?

SPEAKER_00 16:43

We definitely can. So um this is from all my research, and the the six biggest dad gaps that um are challenges for modern fatherhood are several of them I think moms would a hundred percent like shake their head and and agree completely with. Because the first one is is the time gap, like work-life balance, right? Yeah. Um, we, you know, it's feels impossible. Um and we don't really know how to manage it. Now, the interesting thing is there's no solution to this, you know, time gap, um, whether you're a man or a woman or a mom or a dad, but the the thing that moms have realized is that it helps to talk about it. And and that kind of leads into the next dad gap, which is this like what I call the brotherhood gap, which is dads just aren't talking to one another about dad stuff. Um, so where when we're struggling with our like work-life balance and like not feeling like we have enough time to manage um our kids and our work and our self-care and our our physical fitness and our you know, our aging parents and everything in between, moms know how to get together and talk about how difficult this is, and dads don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

So um, I call that this literally came up in my house this past weekend. This is literally like a conversation my husband and I had.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, and it's true. And then it's also um kind of leads to the next gap which dads have, which is the confidence gap. So, you know, while the the the percentage is something like 92% of um men that are dads identify first as fathers. It's like their primary identity. When asked if they think they're good at being a dad, only a third of those dads would say yes. So we have this huge gap of confidence. People, these men want to father well more than anything else, and they don't think they're doing it well. And why don't they think they're doing it well? Because they're also not in conversation with anyone else about the challenges that they're having in their fatherhood, amongst other things.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

But so they don't learn two things. They don't learn one that it's hard and and like it feels messy, and that doesn't mean you're not doing a good job. They don't learn that. And then they also don't learn skills and tools to amplify and enhance the job.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Exactly. And then you can end up with a very dangerous shame gap, a shame cycle as a result, right? And then another important gap um for dads is the role model gap. Like we all love our parents, or most of us loved our dads, um, but they don't father the same way we want to father. And so we don't really have the right examples around us. And oh, by the way, there are lots of dad, because I run a bunch of programs. One program I run is called the Founding Fathers Program, and and um, you know, together with uh about 25 or 30 dads at a time, we build what's called our our fatherhood philosophy, which is how to become an intentional father. And um uh all of these dads, right, they they talk about, well, I I have meet at meetups with other dads. We go out for beers once a week or once a month, but the conversation stays super official, like all the time.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

They're talking about like who's what who's playing, who's starting which quarterback for my fantasy football team, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yep, and they talk about money, right? They're talking about their mortgage, they're talking about, but they're not talking about vulnerable things around fatherhood. And and it's because we haven't, again, been unfortunately raised to do that well, and and most of us don't have a natural facilitator in our group of friends that's going to ask these vulnerable questions.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yes, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:28

So we've got this time gap, this role model gap, this confidence gap, this brotherhood gap. Then the next big gap is the co-parenting gap because moms also weren't raised to to have a uh a husband or a partner that wants equal say on all the emotional and challenging, difficult work of parenting. And nobody is prepared for this, like as partners. And so there's so much uh potential for conflict and misunderstanding and um and growth, of course. Yes, um, but it's difficult. There's cultural issues around it, depending on how you were raised as a mom, uh, and same from the dad's perspective. I I run into this all the time with my with my wife. Um, and then the last one is the legacy gap, which is um basically that that too many of us are stuck in this reactive mode of fatherhood and not being intentional. And um, I get asked all the time, by the way, after all of these interviews I've done, like what makes a great dad? Um, and I say, look, um, what makes a good dad is very simple presence, being present. But what makes a great dad um is being intentional. So having a vision for how you want to father, having a vision for how you want to share values and lead like your kids and your family in a certain way. That that's the distinction I make between a good dad and a great dad. And this legacy gap is too much too many of us, almost all of us, spend our time in in reactive mode. Oh my god, this is the new situation that my kid is going through, not like, okay, like I know, I know what I'm anchored in and how I want to like be a dad for my kids, and and I know how to get through this situation as a result.

unknown 22:12

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

And when you have those anchors, it doesn't matter the situation. Well, not that I'm saying that certain situations aren't gonna, you know, outpace your present skills, but some will. But if you've got these anchors, like this is who I want to be and who I want to raise and how I want to operate within my role, whatever the world throws at you or your kid throws at you, you can say, Well, if my North Star are these values, I can at least navigate towards them. But it it tells you it it's in it's they're instructions as well, or they can be.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Out of the stuff you mentioned, Jeff, I think the ones that are resonating the most. For me, just knowing my husband, um, I think the time gap is significant, um, and then the brotherhood, because yes, I can talk to him about this stuff, but I'm not another dad. And I do think there are some differences how mom and dads approach parenthood, and culturally, sometimes and societally, there's some stuff that kind of divides. Like, I can I can turn to Sam and talk to her about parenting stuff anytime I want. And I do. Um, but I know for sure, like, my husband doesn't have those those groups when they get together. They're not talking about that stuff. And I think talking to your co-parent is different than also too than talking to just another friend or colleague or um 100%.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

You know, I had um during this same this uh founding fathers program that I run, this one dad was came into the session and um it's a virtual, it's a virtual uh program, and he's like, I am the worst dad. And we're all like, what happened? What happened? He's like, I I was responsible for my like his eight-month-old, and he's like, and I dropped my kid. And basically everyone's like, Me too. Yeah, that was the thing. He was saying, you know, he had his his his son has just started kind of crawling and moving, and he left him on the couch for a second to go get something, and he came back and his son had you know fallen off the couch, and he was feeling horrible. And I did I did exactly what you said, Sam. I was like, okay, wait, wait, wait. Everyone in this room right now, raise your hand if you have dropped your baby. And like two-thirds of the dads raised their hand. And I was like, welcome to the club, right? And that's all it takes to take that sort of like shame and pressure off ourselves is we're we're gonna make a million mistakes with these with these kids. You know, we're learning as quickly as they are. Um, and so that that's super important. And then um, I also think, you know, um the the fact that we we just don't know how to ask other dads about these things that are troubling us, but that's exactly why I launched the Ambitious Dads Podcast. So my podcast, which I did as again, another selfish excuse to talk to even more dads, in a year, in a year, it became it's now one of the top 10% um uh podcasts listened to globally. Um, and I'm like, how on earth? I I I don't know why that's happening, but I think it's because in in place of dads talking to other dads, they're they're at least listening to other dads talk about some of these things. And and parts of my programs that I always run for dads is asking them, like, what are your biggest fears? What's keeping you up at night? And you know, they overlap tremendously with each other, and just hearing that they're all fearing some of the same things, which by the way are different than than what moms um you know struggle with. Um, some overlap, some but most don't. It's just really important, um, really important for dads, and um we gotta get there. And this also connects to all the other masculinity and boyhood and manhood things going on uh in the Western world right now.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

For the sake of our audience and for for our listeners, can you talk a little bit about what some of the fears that dads report having are?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah, um, I mean, there's a lot of them. Um, you know, one is am I, you know, am I always gonna be able to have a special bond with my kids? They have this tremendous fear that as their kids grow up, they're gonna outgrow them in some ways. Um uh they're they're worried about like how to teach them independence without abandoning them. Um they're worried about am I pushing too hard or not hard enough? Right. Um they're worried about the bigger picture things, like how do I prepare my kids for this future that I can't predict yet because the world is so unpredictable. Um they're worried about the intimate vulnerable stuff, like am I passing along the flaws that I'm still working through as a dad? Um and um they're worried about like, am I doing this right? Uh, you know, these are these are are some of the things. But for instance, like um, because you know, I I've got uh several um mommy focused podcasters that I also speak to, and and they say, you know, the thing that moms talk about is maybe a school shooting or something um more directly related to their parenting, which is going to be different than how dads are looking at things. So I know there are some points of overlap, but there's also plenty of points of of difference here. So yeah, what would it be for you two? Yeah, now I'm putting you two on the thing.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

You mean what would what fears do I have as a parent?

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Yeah, what would be your biggest fear as a parent?

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Oh god. What how do I pick the the biggest fear?

SPEAKER_01 28:17

I don't that's what I just got stuck to. I mean, I think I think what where I struggle the most, Jeff, is probably work-life balance. Um, you know, I run my own practice. Sam and I obviously have a podcast that's separate from both of our, you know, day jobs. Um, I've got three kids that are 12, um, eight, and six. Um, they all have activities like, and I think where I struggle the most really is like the the time gap and like the being present because I get pulled professionally um very frequently. I I have a large you know private practice. I have a caseload of people who work for me. There's always stuff going on. Um and you know, recently I felt really guilty. My youngest, who's six, got asked to try out for like a competition dance team, and I I can't make the schedule work. Like it just doesn't the practices like and my work schedule don't align, and we don't have family close by, so like the logistics just aren't working, and she can't try out. Um she's not devastated by it. I think I felt worse having to like say no, but I I think those are where like I end up, I feel like I'm not doing enough um because I am a full-time working parent.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Melissa and I are 10 years different in age, and I I and our kids roughly are the same age. Like she had children about the same age I did. So so 10 years ago, my kids were the age that her kids are are now. My kids now are 20 and 22. And uh, so I have the work-life balance, uh, it still remains somewhat of an issue, but my kids are out of the house mostly. So I actually my fear is more um, are they gonna make it in this world? Like are is like is are they going to be happy and successful and fulfilled adults? Um, which I guess we all have that, but but like my kids are on the cusp of adulthood. And and will this will the current world take them in and will they be happy or will they be will it be drudgery and all of that? So that's my that's that's what keeps me up at night right now.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

I get it. And and you know, um another big one for dads too, by the way, is is success. Like what meaning of success do I want my kids to inherit from me? Do I want it to be m all about money and getting a job? Or do I want it to be much deeper than that? And the challenge often is they say they want it to be much deeper, but then when they look at how they've kind of how life has organized itself for them, um, it's difficult to get those values to bubble up uh in the way that they want them to. Um, these are really profound things that dads and moms worry about, and um, you know, society's not making our culture is not making it very easy at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Um Jeff, speaking of culture, only because we didn't mention this yet. So Jeff is, you know, a native, it sounds like, of New York City and lived there for years, but is coming to us from Spain right now. So um I'm curious too if you've seen differences culturally living in the US in New York City, which is a very diverse, you know, very highly populated, expensive city to live in, versus he is in Valencia, Spain, which I'm very jealous of because I visited Spain in March and I loved it.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

I mean, one of the first um articles I wrote that kind of got um a lot of traction was I moved to Spain to become a better dad. Um because there's so many things here that I feel for me make being a dad easier. Um at the cultural level, it's that families are cherished here. Um and you feel it from that makes me want to cry.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

I felt it even in the airport in Spain, in Barcelona.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

In the first place you feel it is when you arrive or leave from any airport, there is a separate line for families. There's a separate line for security, but also go through passport control when you're arriving.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

And I know every time you hold us in front of a two-hour line, Jack.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, but every time I fly with my family back to New York, and we do that once or twice a year, usually twice a year. You know, we get in at 8 o'clock at night New York time, right? So that's 2 a.m. in the morning. We stand in a line that is at least an hour long to go through passport control. No one is letting the families go to the front of the line. And my kids, I mean, they're dead. It's 2 a.m. So I'm holding, you know, a 50-pound nine-year-old in my arm. I mean, this is it's unreal. And that's just the start. I mean, I I have no problem leaving my kids in the playground. There's a playground near our house. If when the when the bus drops them off, if one of them wants to play and the other wants to come home, that's fine. There's uh I'm not worried about you know all the things that um real or imagined are gonna happen to them like we are in the States. Um, definitely no one in my family knows what an active shooter drill is. Um and food. I I mean, uh health, health and like just good eating is a part of the culture too. So my kids are required, like literally required, to eat their three-course meal every day at lunch. They're not allowed to go to the playground until they're done eating their meal. Um, and by the way, I didn't even know it was like forced upon them until two or three years into school. And they're like, oh yeah, you know, we can't go play until we eat all our food. And then still, by the way, because they're still our kids, right? They'll come home and I'll prepare something and they'll be like, no, I don't like, I don't like fish. And I was like, I'm pretty sure fish was on the menu at lunch yesterday, and they're like, Yeah, but we have to eat it there. And I was like, Oh, what did I do wrong in my parenting? So um there's all there's a whole host of things that make it um truly wonderful here. And and uh that's not to say that there aren't amazing communities all across the US that um care deeply for their kids, whether there's you know, um kind of villages that we carve out ourselves or they're they're towns. Um, but I don't get that feeling when I'm like culturally indoctrinated into the the television and the media and everything that's going on. And and that's just one extra weight that we don't need since we're you know we have very little extra space in our lives to parent.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

If you had um if you had some advice to pass along to to parents and co-parents, um I'm I've got two two parts of this question. What can we be doing now to create sons who turn into dads who have a smaller gap in all of those things? That's question one number one. And number two is what can society or co-parents be doing to support to close the gap for current dads?

SPEAKER_00 35:51

So the first one to um is I strongly and this again, this um this is a sad, this kind of connects to both. So culturally, I actually, through my experience in all my interviews with deep, deep men, um, is that most of us as as men and as fathers learn about emotional regulation when we become parents, which is very late. Um I think moms learn it culturally much sooner for a lot of different reasons. Um but like me as well. I mean, my youngest, he didn't used to have like short tantrums. He would have 30-minute tempered tantrums. I couldn't get past minute one without my own dysregulation. And it was so I was I had a lot of shame about it. It was so difficult for me. I had to work really hard on understanding why I had a trigger around it, what I needed to do about it. And slowly over time, I my wife was kind enough to like I call it tagging out, be like, yeah, I did two minutes today, I'm I'm I need to tag out now, I'm not gonna be helpful. And and slowly over time I got better. So I think a big piece is actually that as men, as dads, we need to learn about our own emotional regulation and and dysregulation. And if we think about how we teach emotions now in schools, um, you know, and we've got these, what what what are the the movies, the two movies that were all about our emotions?

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Um inside out, yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Yes, yes. Like just think none of us had this uh as a baseline for understanding emotions when we were growing up. I I teach emotions as a basic skill set for leadership. I mean, it needs to be taught to adults because we have zero background in it. We think there are good and bad emotions and there are not.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

And I was gonna say, most many men learn that there's three ways you can feel good, bad, and bad.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Yeah, and and and also that there should be that that um, you know, I I from a leadership perspective, I talk about emotions as data signals. They're telling us important things. And they're they're not good and they're not bad. Um, they're just different signals. It's how we respond to them that can be good or bad, right? So I think um emotional regulation is a big piece, and and you know, doing the work, whether it's therapy or deeper conversations with other men, men's groups, fatherhood groups, all of these things, those are are critically important. Um, and then at a at a national level, um I think the problem is um uh I mean we're I don't want to I don't want this to be a political conversation because there there's but there's so much um evidence that um we're talking about uh um you know this this negative view of one type of masculinity and then not filling in the gap with what a good type of masculinity is, and then the gap is being filled by people saying, well, traditional masculinity, like traditional roles is the way, but that's not what everyone wants. Um and so we need to have articulate much clearer what like a healthy masculinity can look like. Um and um a big piece of it is is just being communicative, being um, you know, uh having the capacity to be emotionally vulnerable. Um and also all of these things, again, from a leadership perspective, we know that the best leaders develop trust through their own vulnerability, through making their own mistakes and repairing. And all of these are the best parenting skills as well. That's why it's all connected.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

It's all connected.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

And and if we if we can only hand this down to our to our sons and our daughters, right? But like if we can take this and change and grow and hand this, we we do stand to um to raise world changers. That's what Melissa and I we always end our podcast. Well, you'll hear us say that. But um so but but before we end, tell our listeners where they can find out more about the Ambitious Dads Project and you.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Um yes, so go to ambitiousdads.com, uh, sign up for our the newsletter. You can also um uh find out more about the podcast, but it's also the Ambitious Dads Podcast. It's on all the different uh platforms. And um if this resonates, I run programs on a regular basis. Uh dads can join any of those programs. Um and I write regularly. So um again, join my email list. Um, I have a sub stack, but you can also read it just by going to ambitiousdads.com.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Jeff Hitner, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. Um, and I love your perspective. Um, and if you're a mom listening, um, feel free to share it with all the dads in your life because I definitely think this is a very fresh, relevant conversation that we just had. Um so thank you again for joining us and to our listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode of Parenting Shrink Wrap. We love your We love you, we love your kids, and thank you for raising next generation of world changers.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

Thanks for joining us on this wild ride called Parenthood here at Parenting Shrinkwrapped. We hope today's episode gave you some useful tools and maybe even a few laughs to help you navigate the twists and turns of raising teens and kids.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Remember, parenting is a journey, not a destination. And no matter where you are on the road, we're to help you stay on course. Whether it's monumental meltdowns, teenage turmoil, or just the everyday chaos, you don't have to travel this path alone.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

So until next time, keep your seatbelt fastened, your sense of humor intact, and your eyes on the road. We'll be back soon with more compassionate conversations and practical strategies to support you and your family.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

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SPEAKER_02 42:25

If you have suggestions for topics you'd like to see us cover in the future, feel free to send us an email at parenting shrinkgraft at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Until we meet again, take care and enjoy the ride.