My Son, Casey, Explains How My Changing As A Dad Affected Him #560

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So you have heard me tell countless stories about our son Casey over the years and people said, we're tired of your voice. We want to hear from your son, but always respect his privacy, whether he wants to do an Instagram video or not or be on the podcast. And so last fall, Joe Sannock, he's the host of the practice of the practice podcast. He's a therapist. He's got two daughters. He said, Hey, I really want to interview you and Casey. I want to hear from him. And Joe asked great questions, right? Like, Hey, do you remember when your dad made that shift? How did that affect you? What did you learn from watching your father navigate fatherhood and masculinity? And Casey's answer is actually surprised me. I hadn't heard him say some of these things. So I said, man, I really want more people to hear that. So I asked Joe, Hey, can I play replay that podcast on our podcast feed so our listeners can hear from Casey. So I hope you find this very enlightening and helpful. It's a good one to share with husbands because there's a lot about fatherhood in there. Couple quick notes. One, we have a live free event in Frisco, Texas, North of Dallas on Monday, March, second from 68, 6, 8 PM. Look it up on the website, celebrate home.com. We've got a big winter sale going on. If you need help with that email, Casey, and we've got the ad free version of this that's available at the website as well. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as we enjoyed recording it with Joe. And so my 11 and 14 year old girls now, I know her stories and I'm so excited today. I have Kirk and Casey Martin who are the father and son duo behind calm parenting podcasts a show that's reached millions of parents looking for practical empathetic strategies to manage behavior without yelling shame or punishment. Together, they've built celebrate calm, a movement helping families rethink discipline, emotion regulation and the parent child dynamic. What makes their story unique isn't just their expertise is their relationship as a father and son. They model a kind of emotional intelligence humility and openness is often missing in cultural narratives about masculinity. Casey and Kirk, welcome to the practice of the practice podcast. Joe, it's awesome to be here. Thank you. Yeah. Well, let's let's start with with you, Kirk. Tell us a little bit about your involvement with the podcast. So kind of started with my dad, who was at old school authoritarian career military kind of my way or the highway approach. And so like you when you were teaching parenting, well, I became a father for the first time to the young man next to me. And we always like to joke that Casey came out of the womb with boxing gloves on because he was just love to argue. And I thought, oh, I'll just do what my dad did with me. I'll shut that down. And the strong will kids just fight twice as hard. And so what I learned was it wasn't about changing Casey's behavior. It was learning how to control my own. And that's what ultimately changed our relationship and kind of launched us on this path was there's one person life that I can control that's myself. And that's the quickest way to change your child's behavior. So parenting for me became more about kind of coming face to face with my own immaturity and breaking some of those generational patterns. And hopefully when Casey becomes a dad, he's not as much of a jerk as I was. Casey, do you remember when there was like a shift from kind of that old school approach to more calm parenting or was it kind of slowly integrated in? No, it was a very distinct shift. The first I would say like the first eight to 10 years of my childhood. I mean, my dad was always a good involved dad, but he definitely had those harsher patterns from his dad for the first like eight to 10 years. And so that was what had a lot. And then around the time I was eight to 10, he started to shift into controlling himself being a little bit more, I don't know, conscious and taking interest in the way that my brain worked, which was very different from from his. And so there was definitely a shift there around the time I was eight to 10. I know that it was probably six months ago. I was interviewing someone and that's you know when you're a podcaster, you get to interview all these amazing people and have all sorts of self learning. And they were talking about kind of the danger of matching a child's emotions, you know, the kid escalates you escalate. And so I really started to just notice that myself and even just the other day my 14 year old was having a really tough time. And so that's what she had had, you know, an overnight from the weekend, it was tired from that. They made a whole tube of cookies and ate them all. And so it was just like, everything was set up for her to have a temper tantrum like a two year old on Sunday night and she did. And it's like for me to just think through, I don't need to match that. I don't need to control that was newer for me, not that I would escalate to that full level, but definitely going to like Western Michigan University, which is a behavioral psychology program where it's like, reinforcers, punishers, like very clear type of thing that was hard for me to shift away from as much of giving consequences in those moments. And wondering as you guys have explored on the podcast, what have you seen shift in how you think about parenting, kind of the typical view of parenting is often kid does negative behavior, kid gets negative consequence. Is that still true? Does has that shifted? I think Joe for me, like the kids we work with are very strong will kids and consequences don't work. They just don't care because they don't they don't care about losing stuff. They care about losing their autonomy and their agency. So you'll see these kids and maybe one of your daughters is like this where you say, hey, if you do this, this is a consequence and don't like think it through like, yeah, I think it's worth me continuing to do that. I'll take that consequence. And so I think the big shift that I've seen, especially when it comes to men, is from my generation, kind of that very authoritarian, I'm going to shut that down my way or the highway approach. It shifted. Now, I think it shifted a little bit too far the other way. And this is where men get left out is a lot of moms now talk really sweetly to their kids all the time like this and men just won't do that. So a lot of men are like, hey, if I can't yell and scream, I'm also not going to talk like this. So where we come and I think where we resonate a lot with men is it's a podcast by a guy with a son and we can model. Hey, I can be the calm authoritative leader. I can be tough, but I can also be patient and understanding. So for us, the shift we try to get is right in the middle between the two extremes. If that makes sense. Yeah. I'm Casey. I'm wondering what did you learn from watching your dad navigate fatherhood masculinity? The biggest thing honestly is just humility to be eight or 10 years old and watch your dad go from a guy who yells and just barks out consequences all the time to a dad who kind of steps back tries to understand your behavior and give you tools to work through things rather than just barking out consequences was huge. So to watch that and realize, okay, you can step back, humble yourself, learn new skills. That was huge for me. And that's also what helped build the relationship. I mean, it was kind of subtle, but like realizing that he cared enough to change the way he was doing something to make our relationship better. And now as an adult, I appreciate that a lot more because I realize how difficult it is to change patterns. You know, as an eight year old, you're kind of like, okay, cool. My dad's a lot nicer now. But as an adult, you're like, okay, he had, you know, 30 years of handling conflict this way. It's hard to shift that. So that was that left a huge impression. Kirk, how did you shift that? I think it was the first realization of, I can't, I shouldn't fix this kid. And it's not my job. It's my job to work on my own issues. Because I just did a podcast or video on this of basically what we end up saying as a man is, hey, child, you need to behave because I didn't do the hard work to work on my own triggers. So you need to behave so that I don't react. It becomes kind of, I don't want to be harsh, but it becomes kind of selfish, right? Like, hey, child, because I can't control myself, you need to control yourself. So I don't get angry. And so the other part, Joe, which is very liberating is, I, you can't really change the behavior of another human. I mean, if you try that with your two daughters or your wife, it's not going to end well for you. Everybody's going to be frustrated. But if I, so what I started to do is say, why don't I take all that energy that I put into building my career and put that energy into just changing myself. And I began with simple things like, okay, I'll do the opposite of what I normally do instead of walking to a room like this standing over my son. I walk into a room and sit down because it's really hard to yell at someone when you're sitting down, which is changes the dynamic. And then, and then it became addictive because I was like, wait, I'm not even trying to change him anymore. And his response to me is changing. And I did that solely by controlling myself. That gave me a lot of power. And it was kind of a really cool insight. And it reminds me of the sign fall episode where George Costanza decides to do the opposite of everything. And he gets, it's like highly successful and gets promoted and everything gets the girl. My brother just sent us that clip because everything you asked my brother has a sign filled reference and when he went up like, hey, my name's George, I'm unemployed and I live with my, my parents in the basement. She's like, oh, vulnerability is so attractive. I don't know what kind of masculinity George Costanza, we'd have to explore that on a different episode. Well, I'm wondering. So, you know, I think for a lot of guys, calm isn't just the absence of emotions. And maybe for a lot of men, it feels like that's what calm is. You just don't have any emotions and you're just like floating around all Nirvana style. What is healthy emotional expression look like from men and boys from your perspective? 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I think for me it like I always say that like you don't become like Gandhi or something like oh nothing bothers me like I am still very intense. But I've learned how to channel that and for me it's like you can feel frustrated angry, anxious about your child's behavior. You just don't want to react out of that because it just sabotages every interaction. What happens is I escalate like with your daughter the other night like if you would have reacted to her attitude. It just would have escalated and you would have had like a three hour meltdown. And so for me it's part like a lot of it I was raised kind of with that like servant leadership thing of like okay I'm the guy I'm confident I don't I always tell guys like don't take things personally like your I was going to use the f word there but like you're grown. You can let us put an explicit on it. No, I don't need but sometimes for emphasis like your grown and then like stop taking it personally that a four year old or a 14 year old was sassy or had a little attitude is like what did you expect from your 14 year old daughter after she had been up on night and eating so Joe I think you know one thing that helps men when I talk to them is almost treat your kids like their their colleagues at work. At work when things go wrong we're not like you know what sales are down everybody's fired if you don't start selling stuff. Now we walk through and we're like okay let's problem solve why are sales down what's going on but when we come into our home it's like their legos on the floor why aren't you doing anything and then we escalate. So I use the example sometimes of like an ER doctor right like an ER doctor late at night brings in a patient that's bleeding they're not like what were you doing out this late why did you get shot you're making my emergency room all bloody good job that's what we do to our kids all the time like what were you thinking instead the ER doctor slows their world down inside takes the vitals stabilize the patient then problem solves and leads their team. So I found that analogy for guys is really helpful of like treat your kids issues like you do at work or like a quarterback does it'll go much better so I don't know that. I mean for me it's not I still get frustrated all the time I still have anxiety all the time we still get into the arguments all like it and I'm in a different I'm in a different stage I don't have kids I just got married last year but for me I'm not going to get it. But for me a lot of it is learning how a it's okay to ask for help it's okay to talk to older mentors or therapists about okay I'm really struggling I get angry in these situations and I end up taking it out on my wife and then just learning tools to okay I'm going to feel the anger I know I need to take 15 minutes to go on a run or go do something that kind of relaxes me before I like remove myself from the first day of the day. Like remove myself from the situation and then connect with my wife versus you know the initial blow up reaction. Yeah you know with my daughters you know we often talk because I'm a single dad and have primary custody of talking through just like you're a roommate to me there's that side of it that like if we look at that category we've got to keep up with the dishes we've got to keep up with food we've got to go grocery shopping we've got to get laundry put away like that's roommate type stuff. And there's an expectation of for your age as 11 or 14 there's certain things that you do you know just to be a good roommate. So sometimes it'll even be right now you're not being a very good roommate like it's just tough to live with you the way that you're acting over dishes we all have to help with dishes. And then there's other things that are more you know family connections type of things and there's other things that are more kind of training them or teaching them about the world. You know we have this thing where since they're really little and I don't know if I made this up or picked it up from someone but I always say you know you always have three options because when I was a kid there was just you listen to the parents or you get in trouble there's no nuance to it. And I hated that because there were times that I got really far on the video game and I wasn't to a place that I could save it and it was time for dinner and I just needed two minutes to get to that final spot where I knew I could save it. And so you know with the girls to say you know if I ask you to do something you can say yes you'll never get in trouble for that. You can just say no outright you'll probably get in trouble for that or the third option is you can respectfully advocate for your position if you do that in a calm voice if you advocate and say hey I'm two minutes away from the end of this Netflix show I'll help set the table at that point for dinner. Yeah if you do that in a calm way it's a lot easier to then let you have that flexibility and for me then when I have those moments where I'm like no this is just a hard like no you can't do that or I need you to do that I'm not using that card all the time so then they know no we seriously need to get in the car now like we can't be late to this thing drop everything like we need to hustle. What are other things like that that maybe you guys are seeing it in as you explore these topics. I would say I mean honestly something that we used to do a lot and that I would talk to kids about is learning how to disagree respectfully so kind of what you were talking about with advocating is like I had a curfew that I disagreed with wholeheartedly. And like what teenager doesn't disagree with their curfew but I disagreed with that I wanted a later curfew but eventually it came to hey mom dad like I would like to earn a later curfew what can I do to earn that something I started doing was coming home a couple of minutes early each time so that my parents learned that they can trust me to come home on time. And I you could apply that to video games or screen time it's like if you have 45 minutes get off after 42 minutes come down show your parents you can control yourselves. And then they're going to trust you with maybe a little bit more freedom and that's kind of we we did that a lot where it's advocating for yourself but also asking okay what do I have to sacrifice to get more time playing video games or so that you trust me going out with my friends. That was highly of manipulative he knew what he was he was smart about that so what I love about that is that then it also makes the parent think like why do we have a 930 curfew why do we have a 27 minute limit on video games to then say like what are the actual concerns here for them to think through it on a deeper way that maybe they haven't. It also gives your kids a chance to learn how to sacrifice for future gain so I mean that was a huge lesson for me the other one we would do a lot was I mean our ultimate goal yours like for your two daughters is for them to be independent and control themselves right so it was always that thing of like I don't want to be the boss of you like I want you to be the boss of you. But oftentimes I was just thinking with your teenagers if they sometimes when our kids open up to us we do that initial oh let me give you lecture 43 be on how to choose good friends and then they shut down so oftentimes I'd say you know what I appreciate you sharing that with me I've got some ideas about that I need to go get started on dinner I'm going to be in the garage if you want to hear my ideas sometime come get me. Well now I'm not forcing my ideas on the child now later if they do come to they may come say okay what are your stupid ideas dad and then you have to not take it personally because I've just opened up and said okay what are your ideas and I found sometimes that helps a lot better especially with teenagers in that space but I you're all the things you're saying it's like problem solving with your kids and treating them. Kind of with respect and like adults like you believe they're capable of having a rational conversation just think it works a lot better. Well you even recently so this school year my 11 year old really wanted her own alarm clock and it's like great like I don't want to be having these fights to get you out of bed in the morning either so she got her own alarm clock she's been awesome with it and then I had early morning stomach scope I had to be at like 5 to 45 a.m. or something super early. And I just my parents were out of town you know it just didn't work where I could have someone come over and I think no I think we had to leave like 6 30 so it was like an hour before she had to be out of bed and so we talked through it with her alarm clock and then having her iPad as a backup and then having another alarm that went off when she's supposed to leave to walk to school and literally she did the entire thing on her own flawless and this was a thing that I just thought oh man like I didn't I didn't know how it was going to go but since then since that kind of. Brave independence that she had every morning she started waking up earlier so that she just has more time she's realized she likes that autonomy she's doing her own breakfast she's getting her stuff ready literally she just knocks on my door and it's like dad I'm headed downstairs and it's gone just in like a week from me getting out cereal and things to her just doing it all and I think a lot of times parents especially in this generation I mean I see so many parents carrying their kids backpack to school which sometimes I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that in school and which sometimes are really heavy and should happen you know because these kids are carrying a lot of work sometimes but it's like you know to just see how accommodating to to kids oftentimes this generation of parents are that that independence point I think oftentimes this generation of parents is often missing. I'm wondering when you specifically when the two of you look at kind of redefining masculinity and virtues for this generation of parents like what would you want to include what would you want to leave behind and even knowing you know case of your recently married to know like what do you what do we hope would be the virtues that are passed on and things that maybe we can say that served that last generation but it maybe doesn't serve us as well anymore. A few things from from me I mean the willingness to admit that you're wrong that's a huge one I feel I strongly feel like your generation no I don't want to you know lump y'all in but there wasn't a lot of like yeah I'm wrong about this let's let's talk about a different way forward so just being able to humble yourself and admit that you're wrong. Yeah, yeah, never you actually you're right. Yeah, you can never have that he's wrong. You don't send him this episode. Maybe should. Being willing to ask for help. I think we'll be I mean jumping into. Okay, yeah, yeah, let it fly. I kind of want like masculinity in a sense like personally I want that to be measured by like what are the relationships that I have. How are my friendships, how's my relationship with my wife I want a relationship with my kids when that happens. So kind of all of that I would probably leave behind everything I did everything that no no no you know what I have seen that Joe because people get on like the millennials and younger generations but they're very self aware in ways that like we weren't until like I was like 45 or 50 like they have good honest discussions Casey has like deep talks with his friends like vulnerable like my wife. Friends we I mean most of us go to therapy we tell each other that we love them. I don't know that that was a thing in your generation if you ever said that to your friends but like. No, they just have a good golf shot, which really I love you man. I gave him a fist bump. I was vulnerable honey. No, but it's like and we're pretty intentional about keeping in touch and talking regularly friends that I had in college that. We all live in different places now and we'll talk every week and we're very open about our issues in our relationships ask each other for advice and thank each other for the support and yeah every call ends with I love you like thanks man. It's really cool Joe you know what it's so different from like what you see online with like the toxic masculinity. I watch Casey and his friends and they're awesome like and I hang out with a lot of the younger people. There's so much more in tune with stuff and they work hard they're responsible it's like they took the good parts of my generation. And then they've added to it like emotional intelligence and so I think it's a really good balance that they have and they have life balance which I used to get upset like you don't get work life balance till you're 50 and you're bitter right like that was our thing. I think they're making good choices with it so I kind of have a more positive view of where men are going with that and I've seen a shift in our work. And I've had to address that on the podcast because my generation it's like hey don't be such a hard you know what like you got to humble yourself a little bit and then his generation are younger parents it's kind of teaching them sometimes to even be a little bit tougher. So it's swung but I think they're getting a really nice balance with it. Yeah I'm glad you bring up kind of that toxic discussion and kind of the culture wars of it it feels like there's this binary choice you're either like this traditional male that's toxic and you know on that side of you have a trad wife. And then on the other side you like never stand up for yourself and like you just you know let your your feminist girlfriend or wife just steamroll you and you don't see them and you try to be emotionally intelligent and but you know that like you understand your power and your privilege and all that and it's like. Neither of those are are in and of themselves right like how do you guys think through kind of those binary choices of what manhood means. I think they miss a lot of things like you can be strong without being closed off you can be secure you can be assertive without being like cruel to other people. It's kind of a blend in it it definitely like it feels like it forces you to choose between two extreme ideas that don't really work. Can I be sort of integrating it if i'm being honest we just don't experience those I mean you see it online but like in our daily life and our work i'll tell you to the one. The one that gets me more upset it's an email we got this morning from a mom so son is stealing. Taking money lying about it and then in the middle of the the email it's like oh well my husband thinks that our son is just rude spoiled disrespectful lazy and i'm like i'm not going to dress the lying issue because this is not a behavior issue it's a relationship issue yeah problem isn't the kid here is that you have a husband who's not willing to humble himself. At admit until the husband until that dad. Starts to view his son in a different way we could stop the line but then he'll probably start vaping or using drugs like it so that's the more common thing we get is that like if I had one thing I could change in our country or society it would be the dads who probably didn't have good dads. Who have dug in and are like well it's the kids follow if they will just change themselves they will radically change their families so that's what I see more than i'm kind of curious to meet like a total toxic male. Alpha because you know what I did a video on that once of the guy who like gets up at like 4 30 in the morning is out at his like deer blind and hunts which I think is cool. But I'm like you're not doing anything hard you're getting up in the morning you're being alone you're not talking to anybody which is what you're really good at is a guy and then you're killing an animal like that's not pushing you out of your comfort to what I really want to see alpha male is you come in after long day at work. And their legos on the floor and your kids are screaming and your wife is at that time of month and you handle that well that's way more impressive than like killing a deer. Way harder than doing it so that's kind of where it's really interesting that you talk about kind of that difference between what you see online and the actual reality that you see literally the last episode that I recorded last hour. That you know for the listeners was you know late last week with doctor William Brady he's one of the foremost researchers on outrage and he's a psychologist that was basically saying the same thing that what we see online we just can't believe anymore. That we're getting all amped up over these things that really aren't true and that the outrage algorithm is just amplifying things and I mean that idea of you know when I think about the alpha males in my world you know they're the guys that are really involved at school they also every Monday and Friday go cold plunge and Lake Michigan after school drop off and they all you know all are like lifting weights more than I like they're the warrior class but they're also the ones that do pick up most of the time. Like four o'clock and are there you know on field trips and are volunteering and it's not that just like they're cold plunge bro they're nuance and I think that it seems like oftentimes when we just lump men into those categories it's this shortcut that's just not accurate. Yeah and then when you're just critiquing it there's no positive template for what to do like what should what should masculinity look like and I would be curious of your opinions on that as father of two daughters who are coming into their teen years like what are you wanting to teach them about that like what do you want them to like what's what's your kind of view on that. Yeah I mean I think for me and I always love when podcasters flip the script. It's awesome. You can't not ask questions even if we're being in a good way. So I think for me I think through it from a few different angles one is definitely a safety angle and so you know my my daughter my 14 year old she right now is working on like after school thing in the evenings where she's helping with the set design for the high school musical. And that gets done at like nine o'clock in Michigan it's dark the school is walking distance but you know it's a few blocks away and so talking through like can she be on the phone with someone that she trusts can she have a flashlight. Just knowing you know what to do in unsafe situations you know my youngest daughter is really into Taekwondo so hopefully at some point she'll be able to fend off you know whatever may happen and recognizing that teaching them more about just having a good sense of the people around. You know having good friends having red flags for guys that don't respect you early on this probably not going to just be some random person that pulls up and does something negative to them. So I think there's the safety side of teaching I think that also as parents when you think about you know Casey what you took away from your dad. There's probably like two or three big life lessons or big kind of types of things you took away from childhood and so for me both my parents are first born I was the first born of first born the oldest cousin you you connect the dots it's all true. So one of my big life lessons from childhood was that the achievement equals love my parents would be more divided if they said that if they heard that I said that but it's one of those things that I internalize that I've had to deconstruct it all sorts of different things. I want my kids to take away things that I intentionally say I want you to take out of childhood so one thing is I want them to be able to talk to anybody with with the rise of AI and the rise of technology. I want them to be able to talk to anybody so that that then defines my behavior for going to you know the same my partner Claire over to her parents house and maybe there's going to be some friends there of her parents girls what can you do to engage with these people what can you ask them they're brand new strangers there you know in their 70s. On the surface it seems like you don't have a lot in common but what can we talk about where do you live what kind of things are attractions in that town that people like to come to what do you spend time doing on the weekends or throughout the week do you have any travel plans coming up we have some travel plans let me tell you about spring break so kind of having that back and forth in the car right there to just constantly be saying you should be able to talk to anybody you should be able to carry on a conversation with anybody because. AI is probably going to take away the job that you think you're going to have in 10 years anyway so if you can talk to people though like to me that's one of the best things that they can do so I think I think through things that way in regards to the like what values I want them to take out of childhood that's awesome that was a big one with Casey of teaching. The way you're saying being curious about other people which is why he turned it around on you and asked you a question yeah but it's like go into any situation and like my goal is to find out three interesting things about this person I'm talking to yeah it's cool you're good dad Joe. Thank you Kirk you can tell you're good dad I mean it's awesome so. Well I want to ask so let's talk about dads that have their kids still in the house but I also want to drill into a little bit of like adult relationships in that shift but think about dads who have their son in the house you know so they're under 18 I'm not talking about their 34 year old still living with you not another against that if that's the other world but like you know for young kids what are they doing? Kids what are things that fathers can do to start to reconnect more with their sons do you want to do it or you want me to do it for that one. I'd say one is take an interest in what your kids are interested in we always had so Casey struggled in school with behavior because he was a jerk and so I'm kidding no he's just struggle because he didn't want to be in class he's got too much energy and so rather than the weekend being like let's talk about your misbehavior and what you need to do we have a gender free to do. We have a gender free time and so when he was a little he was big into like cars so we would go to car dealerships and test drive cars and I hated it but it was a way to bond with him and we have a lot of great memories from it so I think that to for men I give or be interested in what they're interested in just know that you're going to hate their interests for the most part because they're going to like music that you don't like except I got lucky Casey liked good music. And notice that the definition of good is what the parent likes of course. Ah, I mean come on classic rock and blues music coming from and I mean I gotta I gotta say there is something about my daughter being into rage against the machine and M&M right now that is very like oh my gosh and radio head it's like I am very happy that she's not just into like the bubble gum pop. You're blessed yeah. Yeah, that's a good yeah Casey took when he was 10 I took him to a Metallica concert and I wasn't even into Metallica but I wanted to fight against my own like upbringing of like he's going to go to hell and worship the devil if you listen to Metallica so I took him so and it was awesome and then 20 years later this last year he treated me and took me to see Metallica. Pretty well. It's funny you say back in 2021, 2022 my dad and I went to see guns and roses. It wasn't even like a band that the two of us knew the other person really liked we weren't like oh we're all like guns and roses people like I liked a lot of their hits but it wasn't like I loved loved them but it was just like a fun thing to do together. So I'd say bond over that and then ask your kids to teach you something because when you're a parent about gotta do this do this and you're teaching them but when you allow your kids to teach you something there's some measure of like bonding that happens it's really really cool and once you have that bond then you can be tough with your kids they'll listen to you because they respect you but I think it's because you first kind of respected them if that makes sense. I love that. As adults, you know like on Friday my dad and I are getting breakfast together and I you know he and my mom both helped out a ton with the girls and so I see them several times a week but what are things you know maybe Casey that you think that I think adult sons can do better to understand their fathers even if they see the world differently. Coming to the table with a little bit more humility and curiosity I think we have a tendency to be young and idealistic and think that we know everything and there's a whole generation of wisdom out there. So it kind of the same thing like what's what are your thoughts on this situation that I'm experiencing or what was your experience growing up. Our parents have vastly different experiences than from us like my dad and I went on a hike last week and spent an hour and a half talking about how his the relationship between his dad and you and your three brothers. So it's something that I can barely comprehend because my is a perfect father now. No but it's the experience is completely different so I mean asking more questions and I mean kind of as an extension of the golden rule here like we all want our parents generation to understand our beliefs and our views on things and maybe we're a bit more like progressive and like liberal as a cult as a younger culture and feel like you guys don't understand that but we also don't really make a huge I'm generalizing bit my friends and I don't always make the greatest effort to understand why older people believe what they believe. And even just acknowledge and respect it and say you know we disagree on that but that makes that like just in your history given your upbringing it makes sense like we talk about it like with a couple of his uncles like I'll explain our childhood and it's like oh given what the experience with my dad it makes sense that my brother would respond in that way. So yeah that's a good point yeah your friends need to do a little bit more asking me questions like I could actually help them yeah but they're he's got good friends. Well the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world we're listening right now what would you want them to know? Oh you want me to go first? Oh yeah. I'd say trust your instincts just trust your instincts and go with that and don't overthink your answers to things trust trust what you know and share that and I think that authenticity is what people relate to more. That's a good one. Yeah okay come on with your house. Come on with mine. I just spit something out. Keep it just my head. When you would see a therapist what was it that you liked about that one lady that you saw? Honestly that she was just extremely open and made me feel comfortable. It just acknowledging what I was going through the number one thing normal that thank you that was helpful. The first the most helpful thing the first time I went to a therapist was just realizing that oh you're struggling with these things and that's like totally normal. So it's very basic but just starting out the relationship that way makes especially men who may be coming from a more critical background feel safer opening up about things and realizing that other men also struggle with. Good answer Casey. Thanks for prompting it. Sorry. So awesome people want to follow the podcast follow your work where should we send them just look up the calm parenting podcast or were at celebrate calm calm. So awesome thanks so much for being on the show today. Enjoyed it Joe thanks. Thank you Joe.