A Man's role in Family Life with Dr. Michael Jaquith

Dr. Michael Jaquith is a Ph. D. Chemist who left the corporate world and now helps men everywhere discover how to get more of what they want and live the promise of abundant life. By combining analytical science, psychology, and the time honored teachings of the Faith, Michael helps men who feel stuck, confused, and powerless to unlock those chains and find what they really want. Michael is married with six children and lives in rural northern Idaho.

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Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:02.84)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children. My name is James Moffitt and I will be your host. Today we have a special guest speaker or a guest I should say and his name is Jack.

Where is your name, Jack? No, Michael. Our guest speaker is Michael, and I don't know how to say your last name, so go ahead and say that. Michael Jakewood. No one ever gets it right. You're golden. OK, great. So Michael, go ahead and introduce yourself to our listening audience. Absolutely. So thank you so much, first off, having me on. I'm really excited this conversation. I'm a bit different. I'm a life coach. I'm a consultant. I'm also a PhD chemist. I'm a Christian. I have six children. I'm married. I live in northern Idaho.

So I look at this a little differently than a lot of other people do in the self-help world. And I'm excited to be here and to kind of talk. And I'm hoping that we get to talk a little bit about some dad stuff today. Yeah, that would be wonderful. so my wife and I started a, a parent, private parenting support group on Facebook back in 2015 when we had two teenagers still living in home. I cannot imagine having six children under the same roof. So you're, you're a very brave soul.

And so I told my wife, said, you know, my, teenagers were giving us a run for our money. And I was like, Hey, let's, let's start a support group on Facebook and see if anybody else is having the same issues. And we started out with 10 people in 2015 and we're up to like 1.3 thousand now. And so come to find out there are a lot of parents out there that are looking for support, struggling with all sorts of issues. And, we have several themes.

that run through a lot of our episodes, boundaries, transitioning into adulthood, addiction, things like that. So, I'm glad that you're here today and I like having fathers, dads come onto the show and there's a lot of support out there for the ladies and for the moms, not so much support for the guys, right? I think it's like 70 % of my, you know, I look at the demographics for my podcast and 70 %

James Moffitt (02:16.271)
68 to 70 % of the listening audience is female and the other 25, 30 % is men. And mostly it's in the United States and we've got some people from Australia and a couple of other countries. Primarily it's mostly the people in the US. go ahead and, well, you already said you're, already introduced yourself, right? So let's talk to dads.

No, I think maybe what here's where I'd like to start because I was as you're talking I was kind of thinking about this and I want to start a little bit by talking about some of differences the genders and this may seem silly these days and I don't want to dive in the politics of it but let's just consider men and women for the moment now when you consider a woman she is a mother she has this immense love for her children in the now the desire to comfort them now whether whether this kiddo is 20 10 or 2 when they're hurting mom's hurting too mom wants that pain solved

But let me contrast a little bit here with dads because dads have a little bit different type of love as their primary form of love for a child. When a dad looks at a child, I call this future love and dad sees whether again, the child is two, five, 10, 20, whatever they see into the future and they say, if little Tommy keeps up this behavioral pattern and a certain number of years down the road, it's going to be so painful for him. And so dad in a funny way is loving that child of the future.

And it's a wonderful, noble thing, but it causes tension right out of the gates. And the reason I'm starting with this, because I think it's so critical to understand that when we get into stress, when we are in a stressed, activated state, particularly with parents, our vision diminishes. This is both literally true physiologically speaking, but it's also psychologically true that what we're able to comprehend, the differences we're able to assimilate in real time, decrease. And so if I'm a dad and I'm loving my teenage boy by

imposing and holding standards high to mom that might look like cruelty. And so it's it's really critical as we start this conversation to understand the message I give to dads is going to be a little different than the message I would give if I was being to moms that generally don't speak to moms. You know, I feel much more qualified to speak to men to happen to be one, but the phrasing here, the world perspective is fundamentally different as a dad and bluntly what children need from a dad.

James Moffitt (04:42.063)
is also fundamentally different. Right. I agree. And I think that I was sharing with the, uh, the guest I had yesterday, uh, and I was kind of sharing some of my, my childhood and, uh, I was a child of the seventies and eighties and, uh, men were not encouraged to cry. As a matter of fact, men were, were explicitly told men don't cry. And so men were, were not encouraged to share their emotions or to

to explore their emotions or to have a healthy emotional, you know, healthy emotions or good emotional health, right? So in a lot of ways dads are somewhat emotionally crippled and they are, they don't know how to, they haven't been raised or taught how to engage in self-care.

and to deal with the emotions that are within the stress, the anger, the anxiety, pressures of the world. know, my dad, when he was growing up, you know, he was born in the forties and, you know, back in the John Wayne era where you men didn't cry and you pulled up, pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and you just got it done, right. And at whatever cost. And, uh, sometimes that cost became your family as well. Right. And, uh, my dad was very heavy handed with me and my sister and, uh,

He had a temper, he had a little bit of alcoholism going on. And so we as kids kind of flew under the radar and did our best to stay away from dad because we didn't want to set him off, you know? so I want to think that in today's, in today, the era that we're living in now or the times that we live in and the culture that we live in, I think maybe dads are more susceptible or more open to self-care.

and possibly talking with somebody, whether it be a therapist, whether it be the pastor of a church or a counselor or whatever, you know, they're going to be a little more open to speaking about what's going on in their lives. And like our church, have life groups, you know, and there's life groups for men, there's life groups for women, there's life groups for couples, for teenagers, all sorts of life groups so that people of the same gender can get together and talk about

James Moffitt (07:09.251)
those issues that affect one another or affect that gender per se. So, no, I think we should definitely dive in this idea. This is what I would might call men's mental health. And let's make dress a few things there that you just brought up. And I think you've got some really great points. I want to start by talking about this emotions and how do men process emotions and all virtue is always resides between two opposite vices. Virtue is always a balance point.

You know, if I just take a look at eating, for example, if I eat way too much, that's just, that's a problem. If I eat way too little, it's a problem. The virtues in the middle. Now we look at emotions. When I could say the virtualized in the middle, you accurately observed that for quite some time, men have been living on one end of the spectrum, which is suppress your emotions. Don't even go into them. And this is really problematic, but let's also acknowledge that there's a reason why we start there. Because if you're in survival mode, the job of a man is to go out, conquer the dragon.

carve out a piece of chaos and get it done so his family can survive. And when you're in that mode, you don't have time for emotions. Now what's happened though is instead of being in that mode sometimes or rarely, the way that we live our life now puts us in that mode most of the time. You'd know this when you look at the blood levels of different hormones, say cortisol. If you look at the average male stress state, he is in his sympathetic nervous state condition. That's the flight or flight.

aggressive, there's tiger about ready to eat me kind of state most of the time. That's not what your body is designed to do. Now, if there's actually a real tiger, you know, actually a funny story, there was a real story. There was a couple of years ago, a bear that came out of the woods and I came onto the property with my kids are outside. In that moment, you better believe I wasn't going to stop and explain my feelings to anyone. There was a problem to solve. And rightly so. However, we're not supposed to live in that state most of the time. And when we do,

Our bodies pay a heavy penalty for this a big price. When the sympathetic nervous system is active, it literally drains resources that we've stored up normally and leaves us in this depleted condition. And so what men, modern men need to do is we need to learn to understand that these feelings we're having this underline what's driving these feelings, these perceptions, the thoughts behind the ideas behind these feelings are causing us to have a misconstrued view of the world.

James Moffitt (09:33.483)
It puts us into the stress state where we get burned out. Our resources get consumed. We're stressed. We're tired. That's what I call blasted, bored, lame, lonely, angry, stressed, tired, excited and depressed. And when men get to these states, we do what your father sounds like he did. We turn to alcohol, we become explosive, and this is not healthy, but let's understand it's coming from this place of poor mental health. And so the first thing a man needs to do when he identifies, Hey, look,

I probably have some of that going on because most of us do is to really slow down, give himself permission to evaluate the world, start to confront some of these ideas. There's a of work that I do with coaching is we just go through the life and say, okay, let's put your job in perspective. Your boss says you have to have this done when 30 seconds or else, but that's probably not true. How do we regain some internal control and allow the brain to go into the parasympathetic state and to begin to have healing and repair?

Well, it's very interesting. I've obviously you're a chemist and you, you, understand the chemical makeup of what's going on physiologically in a, in a person. that's a, it's very interesting to hear that because I, I never even knew any of that, know, or I maybe on the very periphery, understood some of that, but, yeah. dads are not, it's like you said, moms are more nurturing. They're more.

They're more hands-on, touchy-feely, warm, fuzzy. They're interested in the emotional well-being of the child, and they don't want the child to be hurt. They don't want them to suffer. No parent likes to see their child make mistakes and have to the consequences of bad mistakes or anything like that. And dads are more in tune with preparing the child for the real world.

And, which is certainly not nurturing, you know, and it's, it's more of, know, we know it's, yeah, it's tough love. we know, we know that when you step outside that front door, literally nobody gives a flip. It's like, it's like, yeah, little Johnny is special inside the front door and he's special to everybody in the family, hopefully. But when he goes out the front door and goes to school or he's on the football team or he grows up and he goes to work for the first time.

James Moffitt (12:02.435)
He's not going to get a participation trophy. He's he, nobody's really going to care about his feelings, right? They're going to, they're going to want him to live up to their expectation. If it's an employer, then they're going to say, okay, here are the boundaries. This is what I expect you to do. I'm going to pay you 20 bucks an hour. And this is what I expect you to do during the day while you're here at work. And so little Johnny's got to live up to those expectations. And he's got to understand that, Hey, if I don't do my job, my boss is going to be mad and, or he may even fire me.

right? And so those are some of the things that dads are processing and thinking about and trying to relate to as children, I think. You know, can I maybe say that in different way? Dads teach the whys, dads teach the values, moms teach the hows. Let me explain upon this with a really cool study that was done back in the 80s. So the United Kingdom did this cool study where they looked at these parents growing up that were of a Christian faith.

And then the kids, and the question was, do the kids stay in the church when they leave the home? And the parameters of the study were, is mom faithful, is dad faithful, or both? And here's what the study kicks out that was really, really interesting to see. It actually doesn't almost matter if mom's faithful when you're asking, are the kids going to be faithful? The question is, is dad faithful? If they're both faithful, great, the kids tend to. If it's just dad, they actually tend to be more likely to stay in the church.

But if it's just mom, they tend to fall away. Dads teach the values. Dads teach the why. And the why is a much harder thing to articulate and encapsulate in a warm fuzzy bundle. When moms teach the how, they have the option to literally role model that how out. How do you deal with someone who's hurting? you hug them. You comfort them. You draw them in. You care for their injury. But the whys and the values, those take some strategy, some perspective. You have to think outside the moment when you want to look at a why.

Why do I need to be to work on time? Well, the truth is one particular moment's not that critical. But as the pattern evolves, well, I might lose my job. But there's a deeper level of that. There's a much deeper why, which is what sort of man do I become? Do I become a man who is habitually late for work? And that's actually a way bigger problem than any one particular time that I'm late for work. And so when you look at this thing that dads have to teach, and they're doing this whether they realize it or not, this is baked into our biology. It puts a lot of different perspectives.

James Moffitt (14:30.671)
for as a dad, what do I want my children to experience from me? And it's almost like if I were to hire someone, and let's say imagine I hire one person to paint the house and one person coming here and clean the house. You'd say, oh, at first glance, they're going to step on each other's toes. one's going to want to be painting, while the other one's just cleaning. It's going to mess up the paint. And you'd be like, well, what's the resolution here? But this is what's happening with dads and moms. They actually have fundamentally different jobs on this deep psychological level.

And so they do step on each other's toes a little bit. But we need to create space for dads because here's one of interesting things when moms are really struggling, they throw up the flag quickly. They do sometimes. That's not always the most perfect way that they try to get attention, but they let you know something's going wrong. They might be complaining. It might be whatever. Like there's ways that women can work on how to affect the communicate a struggle to men. But when men are seriously in mental trouble, you tend to tend to go very quiet. It tends to be much, much darker, much more.

much more invisible men can suffer and soldier on in a state of depression for years. And sometimes those people around them don't even know it. Their wives are oftentimes intuitively know something's off, but maybe not what. And so I think for men, we need to understand that just like women, we get ourselves in trouble physically, mentally, all the above. And we need to learn how do I get help? Because I do have a different chart than my wife. My job is going to look different than hers. We are going to step on each other's toes. We're going to have some injuries, but how do I get help to deal with it?

And the natural inclination of most men is to soldier on and that's not very helpful. Right. That's I like that explanation that that kind of brings it into perspective. So one of the things that that I did when I started this podcast is of course the first episode I introduced the podcast, what was the vision, what was the mission statement, what was I trying to do, which is reach out to parents and provide them with hope.

Redemption and support that they need give them the tools in their toolbox that they need to be able to be better parents more successful parents So the second episode I I sit here and I thought about it and I thought well, what is the very first? I'm building a foundation here. So what is the foundation of this podcast? And so I thought about parents and the men the dads the moms and I thought we got to back up a step because before you become parents You fall in love and you become you become one

James Moffitt (16:56.519)
right? Two become one. And so I discussed, or I kind of broke it down and talked about what does it mean to be a husband? What does it mean to be a wife? And who's responsible for what? You know, obviously both man and wife are responsible for their faith to God, right? And God being in the middle of the relationship, He's the glue that holds it together, hopefully, right?

and some days we're more successful at that than others. And so how men and women communicate to one another and how successful they are at having a healthy relationship as man and wife is so critical that they get that understood and get that established before they bring a child into the world. And we both know that sometimes they're still working on all of that when the child does come into the world, right?

And so sometimes we find ourselves figuring the mom-dad-god, you know, the triune relationship there, and then all of a sudden we've got this helpless infant that's depending on us for everything. And so one of the things that maybe we should talk about a little bit for moms and dads is the love language. Why is it so critical and important for men and women, husbands and wives, to understand

What is a love language and how does it how how important is that? Absolutely, I I think you're hitting a lot of great topics here. maybe can I set it up this way? You said when you started first start thinking about father mother you went back to husband wife But i'd i'd offer to you that I think we need to go back further in order to set this up correctly Which is the first fundamental relationship is son daughter and you that's the first new established then you establish brother sister Then you establish husband wife then you establish father mother

And each of these levels builds upon the previous. And if you don't have the foundation, and let's be blunt, no one has a perfect foundation. Like I love my parents. I love myself as I'm trying to be a parent. I'm flawed too. All of us have flaws in these foundations. And so as we progress and build this arc, this architecture on a somewhat faulty foundation, what we find is these disordered love styles creep into our heart. And oftentimes the way in which we have some of a disorder

James Moffitt (19:20.615)
It becomes an expression, a desire to be loved in a way that we weren't. I'm going to use an example here and I'm just going to, for the moment, my wife has going to be permission to share this story. My wife's primary way that she feels loved is by gifts. you know, Dr. Gary Chapman talks about five different primary love languages. I think it's a phenomenal book. The five love languages, my wife, those gifts, but we look back and as a child, she was wounded in her identity as a daughter.

through several events that occurred regarding gifts. And so because those wounds were there and established in these formative ways, even now it means something extra to her. If I bring her just today, for example, I stopped by, we have a cute little boutique grocery store, and I picked up this little chocolate mousse pudding cup. It's about this big, like two bucks, right? But I bring that home, and I just gave it to her. I said, I thought of you, and I brought this gift for you. And that is a language that to her means a great deal.

Now I'm sure about myself. I'm the exact opposite. I could care less about gifts Honestly, like I tell my family don't buy me Christmas gifts. I don't want you to buy me Christmas gifts I'm gonna go online research the heck out of something buy the perfect one I want and be happy as a clam without anyone else need to buy me a gift my love language physical touch Why because as I was growing up my father the only time he touched me was out of anger generally hitting generally with a closed fist my mother She Lord lover

was overwhelmed trying to placate my father and I got very little affirming physical touch growing up. Now, is that the only reason why I love physical touch? Probably not. But there's many different sources here that will contribute to here I am now. And for me, if you want Michael to feel loved, come up, my shoulder, come up and give me a slow hug that you lean in and have that physical connection. Now, here's Michael and his wife.

We speak different languages. This is true with our English, by the way, men don't want to speak different languages in English. And if you don't, if you don't understand that yet, just wait a while to your first fight marriage and you will start to understand the words mean something different. But in a similar way, we communicate and receive love differently. And in the same way that today I tried to love my wife by picking up this little cup of chocolate pudding, she tried to love me by coming up and giving me a hug when I gave it to her. Now that's not her love language. She doesn't love physical touch. Actually, she actually has very sensitive skin. And so because of that, like,

James Moffitt (21:43.829)
She doesn't like being touched a lot, but she understands that's how I receive love. And so as we go through this journey, like it's so easy to become focused on if I see the world this way, surely everyone else must, but that's not the case. I have a different history. have a different biology. I have different programming. And so as a man who's trained to engage with my wife, I have to learn her love language. But here's what's fun. My kids also have their own love language. My, I've got six kids.

And I haven't quite pinned all of them down yet. And by the way, they do change a little bit over time. But my oldest one, it's starting to get there to be quality time and words of affirmation. She just thrives on that. She lights up on that. My next one down there really likes gifts too. She's got her mom's love of gifts. And as you go through this journey, you just discover it. I can throw one more thing here about love languages. I think this is a really cool tool for men to use.

If you get the sense that your wife's love language is changing through a marriage, it's very likely that whatever one she's starting to want more is a way that you are not loving her well. And I'll again use myself as an example here. Um, at one point in my marriage, my wife said to me, honey, I really just want you to say more nice things to me. And she said, this is funny because in all my life, I've never really thought of words of affirmation, my love language, but I realized that's because I was not speaking kindly and praising her.

It wasn't that necessarily there was a gap. I was given to the gifts, but we all need all of these ways of affirmation. And as an engineer, I walk into a situation and I'm like, problem, problem, problem, problem, solve problems. And what my wife needed was, honey, you're amazing. I love you. You did a great job here. You're so good with the kids. You're so good at taking care of our relationships with our friends. You're better with my mother than I am. Like there's ways that she needed to be fed through these words of affirming the goodness in her.

That I wasn't doing and that showed up in her actually starting to crave that love language about more That's awesome Yeah Here's a saying that I'm sure you're familiar with happy wife happy life I'm gonna go on the record don't say actually I disagree that one entirely Let me tell you another story, this is a great song hold your hold your hands over your ears

James Moffitt (24:04.269)
no, I think this isn't powerful. think when a woman has a man who loves her more than her momentary happiness, she will recognize the value of that in spades. So here's the story. We had, at the time, three girls who are older, three boys who were very young. The house was chaos. My wife is a dog lover, like through and through, through to the bone dog lover.

Alright, and so she finds this she loves border collies super high-energy dogs super high amount of her care required She finds this border collie pup she falls in love with that's three states over and she's like we should buy this dog And I'm like no way terrible idea to buy a dog right now We should not bring a dog and we had we still have two kiddos and diapers at this point like right not a good time for dog But I caved happy wife happy life. said, I'll make my wife happy I should do it Well several thousand dollars later with the plane tickets and buying the dog equipment this this puppy wrecking ball arrives in her house

It is an unmitigated disaster. There's stuff flying. There's kids crying. There's mom yelling. There's dad yelling. And maybe about a month later, a horrible tragedy happens. And the dog, who has always been a tire chaser, caught a tire that the poor soul driving the car was going five miles an hour down our country road. They come to our house. The dog made a run for the tire and managed to catch it. He slammed his brakes. He did everything he could. But the dog, unfortunately, perished. The very next day, walk out there and I sit down the chair next to my wife.

And she said, I had no idea how much stress that dog was bringing to our family. All of a sudden I feel like the stress level in this house went down 10 levels. And I really struggled with this. And I was talking to my coach and I said, you see, this is why I can't trust my wife. She has bad judgment. And my coach looks at me and says, no, you don't trust yourself because you knew the right thing to do through prayer, through discernment. I knew the right thing was to say no to this dog. And I didn't do it. I caved because in the moment I just wanted my wife to be happy.

And the reality was, and she will back this, that when that dog was gone out of the equation, she was actually happier. And there's other stories I could tell you of times where I've stood my ground and said, nope, we're not going to do that. And six months later, she's like, I'm so grateful. We did it. Now, I don't advocate doing this lightly. This is not something that a man should run around and say, because I'm the man, I get to make the rules. This is something we do rarely, and only after, at least in my case, a great deal of prayer, reflection, pondering.

James Moffitt (26:23.029)
And really ask myself is my opposition to this for my own selfish interest or as my opposition to this really because I think it's what's best for our family. But when it is a woman needs a man she can trust, depending on to be that rock, that foundation for her and a man who's willing to do that is worth a lot more than a man who just makes her happy in the moment. That's true. So, so there was a lot of discernment there and you know, when you, when I say happy,

happy wife, happy life. I kind of say that jokingly, but I think there still is a little bit of truth to that. And I think there's several aspects to that. There's an emotional aspect, there's a physical aspect. And a lot of times women want to be adored. They want to be cherished.

They want you to understand their love language. They want you to take out the trash, to help do the laundry, help them support the family. And so some of those things are very easy things that we can do. And obviously there are some deep-seated emotional things that we may not be equipped to understand initially or to understand how to handle. that's where we...

That's where we talk to mentors and we talk to therapists or talk to the pastor or or other older, more wise, married men that have been down the road longer than we have. So, so, yeah, I want to, I just want to be clear about that for sure. I think it's really important to note that if the question is, should I out of an act of love give myself to make my wife happy? Hundred percent. Yes.

It's this deeper level of sacrificial love that creates this deeper level of happiness that makes that statement true. And maybe just to expand upon that a little bit more, if you don't have another man in your life who's helping you to see what's going on, you're in trouble. Because all of us human beings, we have these stories. We tell stories in our head, and we get stuck in our little stories. And as Tony Robbins says, we don't actually experience life. We just experience the tiniest slice of life that we focus on.

James Moffitt (28:46.025)
And when you allow a story, a narrative about your life, about your marriage to grip you, to possess you, then all of a sudden your focus warps. And so that's all you can see. And you know the man to walk up, slap you upside the head with a dope slap, and hey buddy, that's not true, get out of that. You gotta do it this way, this is what's going wrong. And you're laughing right now, because we've all had this happen to us as men. And let me be crystal clear, do not do that to your wife. That is not your job to do that in the same way. Men speak to men in a very different language than women speak to women. We'll leave that there for now.

As a man, I need another man to whack me upside the head and say, yeah, don't do it this other way instead. You're, you're messing it up. And when that happens and when another man can pull me out of my story that has consumed me, then I have the option to love my wife on that deeper level that makes that statement so much more true. Right. And that's, that's one of the, that's one of the advantages of being in a house of faith and having a relationship with God and, and

being able to meditate, be able to pray, and be able to talk to other men in our lives, like you said, it is very advantageous and very important to have somebody, a close friend, confidant, a mentor, somebody that we can feel safe sharing our heart with, sharing our lives with, and saying, this is... And that's what fathers want to be for children, by the way.

fathers want their kids to be able to come back to them and say, know, hey, how was your day today? And they need to be able to feel safe no matter how their day sucked or no matter what bad mistakes they might've made or what those consequences might be. You want your child to feel safe and be able to go, well, this is what happened, you know, and you just let them talk, you know, and then at some point you...

You wait for them to ask you a question or you can even share your life with them. You can go hey, you know I had a similar situation, you know 20 30 years ago and this is what happened with me and this is what I this is how I responded whether it was good or bad, but ultimately this is the lesson that I learned right and um So so it's it's you know The men listening to this podcast episode. I would encourage you to to seek out um

James Moffitt (31:11.989)
somebody that you can trust, another man that is probably married, you know, whether it might be some guy on your bowling team, you may go shooting somewhere, you may, you know, you may or may not go to church or you may have friends that are Christians. I don't know where, I can't speak to where you are at as you're listening to this, but I think it's a very good, it'd be a very good tool to add to your tool chest to have somebody else in your corner that can help you work through these things.

You know, I'm going to say something here that might strike some people a little bit, you know, hard, but I believe that there are some ways that a husband should not completely confide in his wife. And here's what I mean by that. In the relationship of marriage, a man is called to be the order, the foundation, the stability, and a woman is called to be the chaos. Now, chaos is not bad. And when we talk about, you know, the older view and the philosophical way of view in the world, chaos is the of life, it's the source of all that is new and novel, and everything you need is to be found in chaos. So...

when a man is himself falling into chaos, and that could look something like, have no idea what we're doing for money, I have no plans, everything's terrible. When a man falls into that state, he violates the nature of his role within a marriage, and he forces then his wife to assume the role of order. And this is actually a little bit disordering to the marriage. And instead, what I encourage, the one that I work with, I say to this, if you are having a feeling that you can share in a way that allows you to remain

in your role as husband, by all means share it. But if it's the sort of thing where you're just like really at your wit's end, call another man and share it with him first. Because maybe you and I are having a real conversation. And a real conversation, by the way, does not just say, how's the sports? How's the weather? Blah, blah, blah. It's something like, you know what, James, I am messing up. I'm doing this thing, and I know it's bad, and I don't know how to stop, and it's impacting my marriage and my life. I'm stuck. And then I can express this in a way

that allows you to be the order for me, one man to another. And then go back to my wife and say, you know, honey, I'm really struggling with this thing. I have a plan, whether it's faith, whether it's, you know, whatever your worldly external rock is. Then I can say, this is I have a plan for this. It's a big deal. I'm worried about it. But you still have that foundation of order within you. Now, you can't share the topic with your wife, but it needs to be shared in such a way that does not violate you being the order. But with another man.

James Moffitt (33:36.807)
It's okay if you fall into chaos because we men can be order from men as well There's nothing sexual about that that that has to do with the psychological roles of me being a guidepost for you now five minutes later We may switch roles and you may go into telling about all the stuff that's falling apart in your life And I may have to the order for you and that's okay, too Yeah, that's real good stuff. I like that. Absolutely One of the things that I had to deal with we're talking about dads here dads and children

One of the things that I had to learn when I became a father was that I couldn't be heavy-handed with my children. I couldn't be that alcoholic, that enraged alcoholic that would fly off the handle every 10 minutes. Or he would come home from work tired and stressed out, and mom would go to him and say, well, guess what little Jimmy did today? And then he would just, he wouldn't respond well at all. And if he responded at all, he responded by blowing his stack and

and hitting on us or using a belt or whatever was laying near him, you know, and, and so I knew when I became a father that I had to learn how to demonstrate love to my children because my dad, bless his heart, he didn't know how to do that. And I don't, he probably didn't get that as when he was a child, he was a drill instructor for 26 years. And so he's constantly on the drill drill field and drilling privates and

teaching them how to march and do calisthenics and do all this performance based stuff, right? And so he would come home and I think, I really think he forgot that he, he left work, you know, cause he brought work home with him. And so parents do the best they can with what they have. Right. And I, at least that's what I want to believe looking back at my childhood. And, and so I, as a parent, I had to learn how to

demonstrate my love for my kids. I needed to, like you talked about words of affirmation, you talk about a gentle touch, learn how to hug your children, not in a sexual way, but in a way that you're like, hey, I'm hugging you because I love you, you know, or I'm hugging you because you're upset and you're crying, or, you know, teenage boys may not want that, teenage girls probably do want that, you know, I don't know. So,

James Moffitt (36:01.606)
all children are different but I knew as a father as I look back because we don't get manuals with our kids when they're born. Yes we do have the Bible and there's a lot of wisdom in there if you know where look for it but in and of our self we revert to how we were raised when we start raising our kids right and it takes a little bit of wisdom and introspection to realize that

I didn't like this as a kid, so I'm not going to do that to my children. right. And so what do you think about all that? Let me tell you another story. So I mentioned earlier, my dad was not exactly the breaker of awesomeness of dads. One of his many interesting characteristics was he was extremely angry. And so I promised myself growing up, I will never be as angry as my dad. boy. For those of you who've made some sort of similar vow, look out, you always know that leads to problems. And I thought I was doing great until we had our first child. And I remember this day that here I am.

Church and she's just being a six-month-old who's having the worst day of her life and I was livid Like I mean I wasn't hurting but I was just like so mad I could feel the anger just boiling in my body and I was probably like I was just holding her I was probably holding her little tighter should have not not enough to cause any real anything But the anger was in my body and I remember looking at something like what is this? Where is this coming from? This is I told myself I wouldn't be this dad and here I am being this dad

Well, two things happen. Number one, I realized that just saying something doesn't actually make it true. You got to do more than just say the words. Number two, there's that turned out to be such a blessing because unknowns to me, there's another man named Ben watching and he saw what was going on with me very well. And the very next Sunday comes to me after church. He was so bold with this. He walks up to me and he says, hi, my name Ben. I want to introduce myself. Our wives know each other and they did. It turns out I've been set up. I didn't know that yet. That's a different story, too. But anyways, so Ben says to me, I'm going to give you a gift. And he has this little flash drive. This was the area. And he says, on here's a bunch of audio talks.

that really helped me. And he said, I also give you my card anytime you want to lunches on lunches. My treat. We'll talk. He said, you don't have to. He said, look, you could throw this in the trash can as soon as I walk away if you want. I don't mind, but I'm I'll put him, I put my hand out there and I said, thanks. I grabbed it and walked away and I load up the flash drive. Guess what? The first talk on there was about, of course, his anger. So he got a new, he was going with this and I had ended meeting for lunch, but there is this realization that I had to work on this.

James Moffitt (38:26.212)
And there's some real heavy-duty psychological work to be done internally. And I tell men that if you love your wife, if you love your children, the number one most important work to do is the work on yourself. What you live is so much more important than what you tell them. If you don't live it, it doesn't matter what you tell them. Or to put in the words of great John Maxwell, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yes.

Was that Maxwell or was...

He wrote all those books on compassion. I'm drawing a blank. There are little self-help books on compassion. Whoever was he was a wise guy. Yeah. Anyway, I can't think of his name, but that's a good saying. So let's hit some of these questions that you have. How do you, how did your corporate exit shape your coaching approach? So I think when you look at

the coaching landscape. Life coaching is a new trending thing and it means a lot of different things to different people. One of the things that inspired me to go into this career was that I realized after about a decade of corporate research, I liked working with people more than I actually liked working with the technology. I had people that were in previous groups coming back to me after the fact, wanting to meet just to talk about what was going on. And I think when I bring to the table as a coach that's unique is that I'm very practical.

First and foremost, I'm an engineer. I'm a scientist. I think a lot of people sit back and are like, well, let's just talk about feelings. And hey, look, we can talk about feelings, but only as a drive towards some sort of result. And when I work with men, because of this relentless focus on finding results, we get there. It's months, and men have their lives transformed. And I think men, unlike women, need a bit of a kick in the butt. Women respond differently. You don't kick a woman in butt. That's not what she needs. That's not how she thrives. And watch how women encourage other women. It's very, very different.

James Moffitt (40:27.934)
Even even to the point of just watch when men are joshing and you know kind of like that light verbal Spackling back and forth my wife told me what's if other women did that to her she'd be so embarrassed But as men we thrive off of it and so So to few coaches and especially therapists we can go to that a few if you want are willing to challenge men to walk up and say Bob You're doing this thing and it's wrong the same way my coach can't sit to me when he said to me

It's not your wife. You don't trust Michael. It's yourself because you knew what to do and you didn't do it. It hit me square between the eyes and it hurt, but it's what I needed. And that's I think the, the level of analytical approach that I bring to the table makes it very different. Right. That's very good.

So I guess another question is, is what strategies help parents maintain authority and empathy?

All virtue lies between two vices. And so as a parent, you need to be very aware of where the vices are. understand that when it comes to parenting, there's so many different philosophies out there. And a lot of parenting in my mind comes down to which pain do you as a parent want to experience? But we can start with some basics. Let's imagine a clear safety violation. One of my kiddos, my second daughter, loved taking the fork and going for the electrical outlet. That was her thing. She, every time she had a fork.

She just would run for it. my goodness. I can't believe that girl's still alive today. So of course it's a parents nightmare, Cause cause you're watching situation and you're like, don't die. And so in that context, you know, there's two years old, not much rationality. We, I know some people don't like spanking, but we spank for that particular violation. And my, my logic here is that if I choose a consequence that I impose artificially that is less severe than the natural consequence, then

James Moffitt (42:19.858)
there's at least room to discuss if that's the right thing to do. Now we didn't start with spanking, but this girl, she was determined. And by the grace of God, she's still alive today. But as you go into this parenting role and you need to balance this authority and love, it's really critical that if you find yourself tilting towards one end to intentionally tilt the other direction more so. And so if I'm in a situation where I have to spank this girl because I don't want her to electrocute herself with this fork.

The 19-minute intentionally bending over backwards in creating the time of connection, love, affirmation. For a two-year-old, that might mean something like just sitting and holding her in my lap and being silly and maybe I'm tickling her or reading her book or whatever. But creating that intentional time. Now let's say you move into teenage years. A lot of times for men in particular, when we see teenagers, one of our struggles is we think something like, gosh, you're almost out of the house and you still think it's OK to do that thing you just did there? my goodness, you're doomed. I got to take radical action right now.

But again, if I find myself leaning and tilting in one direction to question, where is the real center point here? Now, I am all for clear rules with teenagers and clear expectations, but to understand that yelling and raging at that age will get you nowhere. Like, know, there's a time when they're little to be like, stop, do not go out that door on the busy road. Fair enough. But the time your teens, like I found I'm the have the most effective conversation with my teenagers when I talk more softly.

when I talk more slowly. And it's a prompting to me to recognize that the compassion and the empathy piece has to be forefront. And the authority is actually in my mind emphasized when I talk softly. It's a form of quiet power. And that quiet power is actually way more effective than somebody who needs to yell and rage as a means of trying to demonstrate authority. They probably don't have it in the first place. But if I can look at my kid and say, hey kiddo, kiddo, come here. That wasn't called for. I love you.

Let's back this up. This is not the direction we're going in. And you know that's not okay. There's such an invitation there that's different that can reach through the fog of teenage hormones in a way that yelling and raging can't. And so for me as a dad, particularly, I watch, am I in danger of sliding towards one of the two vices and not staying in the middle of the virtue? And if so, whoa, pause. Do I need to realign that? And you'll put some emphasis in the other direction.

James Moffitt (44:46.11)
I think for fathers, especially our body language comes into play as well. How we're presenting ourselves and sometimes placing ourselves in a softer position like sitting down instead of towering over them or clenching your fists. Children can sense our level of intensity. They can

when we're stressed out or we're reacting in anger, even if it's just under the surface, they know it's there. All right, that's good stuff. Can I add one more thing real quickly? Because that's a great point. I believe that being vulnerable as a father, especially with the older age children, is a stronger position of power than being a tyrant. And if my teenage daughter is mouthing off to me, which all girls do, that's just what they do. And if I instead say, oh, that really hurt, I...

I don't want you to think that I'm this tyrant and just to have that position of vulnerability with her, that will cut so much more. And I think a lot of men are worried it will undermine their authority. And I believe it's exactly the opposite. Yeah.

James Moffitt (45:56.318)
How can faith-based teachings aid parents in addiction recovery? Okay, so let's talk about addiction here for a second. We don't have time to do this topic full justice. I think we at least touch it on a little bit. So when we look at addiction, we need to understand that you've engaged a part of the brain that uses circuits that are outside of our normal control. It's an addiction because there's some level I can't actively control it anymore, right? Because if I could, it would be an addiction.

And so when we look at what do we do with an addiction, if you look at the 12 step programs, they're not explicitly religious, but they all do have a religious framework. And there's a key step of the 12 step programs that highlights what I'm to say here, which is when you realize that I am not control and that some higher power is not for me, that higher power is God, especially in the form of Jesus and the relationship I have with him. But understanding that whatever you want to call it, it is a faith based approach. When we go into those domains where our self control is

Sabotage and the truth is there's a lot more of them than we think I think a lot of men out there are addicted to a certain low level feeling of discomfort a certain low level feeling of sadness which becomes the norm we've been paralyzed in it the number of men I know that are stuck in a job They don't really like but there's just that's the norm and they're like I don't know I do I change if I could but of course they could but there's a funny little psychological addiction going on there and As a man my natural inclination is to want to be powerful

And so therefore the proper response is to say, actually, what do I need to surrender? And when a man is struggling, whether it's an addiction, whether it's a struggle, whatever, if he tries to white knuckle it and says, I'll just try harder, it's a prelude to failure. But when you bring in the faith perspective, there's something bigger out there. There's something else in control that flips the paradigm entirely and ironically gives us more control. Good stuff.

What is the key for parents supporting adult children in crisis?

James Moffitt (47:57.086)
I'm going tell another story. So a very good friend of mine, he was a bit heavy-handed and he would acknowledge that he was not the most gracious of fathers and his oldest teenage daughter became pregnant. And he had this moment where he realized that in his relationship with her was not great. And he had realized that he could either continue to be heavy-handed and probably not have much relationship going forward or pivot in relation to support her through this process. And he did.

And I give them tremendous amounts of credit for this. And I think as men, as our children get going older, and particularly as they get into crisis, they don't need the heavy hand anymore. They need the support. Think of it this way. Let's imagine right now I came up to you, James. And I said to you, James, I'm really struggling. I'm going to make one up. I'm struggling eating too much chocolate. It's not actually a real thing. But pretend I did. I'm really stuck. And it's having this impact on my life. If you just turn around and rage at me, Michael.

You bleepity bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep. Don't you know that's ruining your life? Now you bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep stupid. I'm just going to pull back. Like fine, F you. I don't want to deal with that. And it's the same thing too, as our, as our kids get older, that's response. Like, and I think as men understanding that this is the time when they don't need your strength. They need you the same way that Michael needs James is another man to show up. Well, do realize there's now some different borders that are forming that they're starting to have some level of autonomy.

I believe it was C.S. Lewis said that so many parents treat their adult children as if they're still children and then wonder why they don't want to come home. It's the reality is they're not children anymore. They're becoming adults. And even if they're a teenager and thinks they're more adult than they actually are, you still have to respect to some level the process that they're on. Right. Good stuff. One last question. How does communication shift as children become adults?

Well, first off, doesn't have to. I think there's plenty of failed examples that show when it doesn't shift that things can go very much amok. But here's my encouragement to you. When as a father, you say something, it's not merely descriptive, it's also creative. Here's what I mean by this. Let's imagine I go to my daughter and I say to her, you're an amazing artist. You're really, really good with colors. I'm not merely describing something. I'm actually creating something. I'm invoking something. Now I'm going to dive into religious a little tiny bit here.

James Moffitt (50:18.942)
In Genesis, God makes the world through the spoken word. And then we're told we are made in the interest and likeness of God. And I believe that we as all humans, but particularly in a unique way, we have an authority as men and fathers that we have creative authority through what we speak, through what we call out to be. And one good description of a good father, particularly as children get older, is he who calls out the very best in those in front of him. Imagine if you went in front of a magical mirror and the mirror said, here's what you're amazing at this, and you're amazing at this, and you're good at this.

and went through all the list of things you're good at, that would build you up. It would just like light you on fire to change the world. Now imagine the opposite. Imagine you went in front of an evil mirror that all it says, you're terrible at this, you're terrible at this. A, you're probably not gonna go there again. But B, you're gonna leave there feeling crushed and just belittle down there. When a child is little, there's a time the father needs to be, these are the rules, you're doing this. But as the child grows up, my general invitation to, as much as it's safe, transfer more of the authority over.

Become that which calls out the good there's a lot of different psychological texts that talk about the imperative nature of all humans but particularly fathers to call out the good of the desi and their children and that changes the relationship from I am responsible from enforcing the rules on you to I does my job to through this God-given authority Summon forth the best version you could be so that you can live that life and The more that I focus on the good in my children

the more good I see. But there's the old line that which is noticed, you get more of whatever you see, whatever you call out, you get more of that. So if nothing else, as a father, I'd say, decide if you want more negativity, because if you just call it the negative, that's what you get more of. Good stuff. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Well, I think this has been a really good conversation. You bring a lot to the table and, and I'm hoping that the dad's out there.

get something out of this and hopefully we've added some resources for them to fall upon and to, like you said, pivot. Maybe there's somebody out there listening to this that's doing something wrong or approaching something differently than they should and they need to pivot and take a different track, you know, and be a little softer.

James Moffitt (52:41.694)
So to listening audience, I'm going to say thank you for the privilege of your time. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, and Public Radio. If you're on the Spotify, on your own Spotify app or whatever, if you look at the About page for the podcast, there's a website link that you can click on and you can see the scheduled upcoming releases.

You can go to the review section and if you listen to a podcast episode, please leave a review. You can contact me and send me an email or leave me a voicemail and I will answer you and respond back. Thanks for listening. Michael, thank you for being here. I'm sorry I called you Jack. I'm not sure why I did that. I was like Jack. I had Jack in my brain. But thanks for sharing your faith-based approach to

to fatherhood and being a dad. And I'll say James, go ahead. you so much for having me. It's been a delight here talking to you. Amen, brother. So I will say to everybody, thank you for listening and have a blessed day.