How do we maintain a positive dialogue with our kids when examples of adversity seem ever-present in daily life? Journalist and Parenting Editor at Fatherly, Patrick Coleman, joins Adam and Marc to discuss how a set of family values can provide a foundation for engaging in challenging conversations. And how complex, real-world examples, if framed the right way, can be valuable in helping our kids become resilient. Also, the guys each take a deep breath and leap into another installment of the fan-favorite segment, "Confessions." [This is part two of a two-part interview.]
How do we maintain a positive dialogue with our kids when examples of adversity seem ever-present in daily life? Journalist and Parenting Editor at Fatherly, Patrick Coleman, joins Adam and Marc to discuss how a set of family values can provide a foundation for engaging in challenging conversations. And how complex, real-world examples, if framed the right way, can be valuable in helping our kids become resilient. Also, the guys each take a deep breath and leap into another installment of the fan-favorite segment, Confessions. [This is part one of a two-part interview.]
Episode 38 is Part 2 of a two-part episode featuring guest Patrick Coleman, a father of two and journalist who serves as the Parenting Editor for Fatherly.
The episode opens with a comedy of errors as hosts Adam and Marc struggle to nail their timing. They briefly discuss some key takeaways from the first previous episode in which Patrick recounts watching (and discussing) the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building with his family. Patrick offers some wonderful (and applicable) insight into how to approach conversations about tragedies such as the insurrection with young people, and encouraging questions and dialogue as they process what they are learning or seeing.
Part 2 of the conversation takes a step back and looks at how we as parents can help our kids understand and process larger overarching problems such as racial injustice, terrorism, or climate change. Topics include:
• What is "Ecophobia?"
• Approaching and navigating tragic topics with your kids
• How to build a set of family values
• Passing our opinions and biases onto our kids
• Being comfortable with not having all the answers
• How to raise curious kids
The episode wraps up with the hosts releasing some deep, dark dad Confessions.
LINKS:
Fatherly
Patrick Coleman (Twitter)
How To Watch A Coup Attempt With Your Kids
Patrick Coleman’s articles
Researcher David Sobel on Tragedy
Ask The Goodfather
Red Vault Audio
Caspar Babypants
Spencer Albee
Marc: Adam, we're back. Did you know we left?
Adam: It feels like minutes since I last spoke with you, maybe even seconds, at least seconds. We're bookending here, folks. That's an industry term? I wouldn't expect anybody else to know what that means by me, but I know what it means.
Marc: Well, you're in the industry because I'm in the industry.
Adam: You're listening to Modern Dadhood. It is an ongoing conversation about the joys, challenges and general insanity of being a dad in this moment.
Marc: Nailed it.
Adam: My name is Adam Flaherty and I'm a dad to two daughters who are seven and four.
Marc: Yeah. Marc Checket here over on the mic. Um, and my name is Marc Checket and I am a dad to twin boy toddlers. Figure that one out. I still can't.
Adam: Figure that one out. What is there to figure out?
Marc: I don't know. I don't know.
Adam: Well, Modern Dadhood, is is it an interview show or is it a conversation show?
Marc: Dare I say it's a little of both?
Adam: At the very top of our website, it says an interview show.
Marc: It also says it's an ongoing conversation.
Adam: Are those things at odds with one another?
Marc: Well, what's an interview, really? But but an orchestrated conversation? Maybe it's a conversation that begins on paper, as ours often do, but they take their own form.
Adam: Look, once the ice is broken and we know that our guests can goof with us, then all bets are off.
Marc: That's true. Paper gets crumpled, thrown out the window. Here's the craziest thing about this particular episode that all of our listeners are taken in right now. It's part two of a two parter.
Adam: If you listen to the previous episode, you were probably as blown away with how cool Patrick Coleman is, as Mark and I were.
Marc: Patrick COOL-man, more like it.
Adam: Hot diggity damn. Patrick is a dad of two sons, as well as the parenting editor for the online publication and fatherhood resource known as Fatherly. You know Fatherly.
Marc: I do. I do know Fatherly,.
Adam: I wasn't...
Marc: Oh, you're talking to me.
Adam: Talking.
Marc: Oh?
Adam: To you.
Marc: Did I?
Adam: I was talking to them.
Marc: Now you go.
Marc: He's also.
Adam: Patrick has written dozens.
Adam: I quit
Marc: He's also... Hey Adam... Just a quick question. Now you go. I'll go. He's written dozens of articles, including a fantastic column called "Ask the Goodfather," a fantastic little name right there.
Adam: That's right. So if this is your first time listening to Modern Dadhood, or you might have missed the last episode, go back and consider listening to that one first so that you can hear the part one of our awesome conversation with Patrick Coleman. Is there anything that Patrick said in our conversation that totally caught you off guard or you weren't expecting?
Marc: Here's the thing that I took away from the conversation. Here's a guy who he's sitting in his house with his kids in one room and his wife in another room. And there's this really heavy thing happening on the news, the insurrection. He's got this inner dialog in his mind going on the entire time he's keyed into what's happening. And he's also considering I have a partner in this. His wife is in the next room. He knows it's a historical event that's happening, that people are going to look back years from now and it's going to be studied and it's going to be talked about and it's going to be looked at as a moment in history. That's got a lot of gravity to it. And he's he's processing all of it in real time in a way that is just like so considerate of his kids and how this affects their lives in a way that's like so important. And I absolutely aspire, and this is what I took away from it. Like, I need to aspire to be able to get to that point because I'm listening to him talk about that. And I'm thinking, man, there is not enough room in my brain for all of that. There just isn't enough.
Adam: Yeah
Marc: Maybe I'm not there yet or it's just the sheer amount of what's going on in the world right now. But it was inspiring to hear him talk about that. And it really gave me a thing to look back and reflect on and say there's something that I can I can try to get better at.
Adam: I mean, when you're watching something that heavy, there's so many variables being tossed around here. I'm considering my own feelings about politics and about what's going to come after this or when it's going to end or how it's going to end or if people are going to die. I'm not thinking about how can I position this to my kids in a way that is transparent and honest with them, but also isn't going to scare the shit out of them and scare them.
Marc: Another thing that really struck me in our conversation was and I think this is actually in the article as well, he had the wherewithal to think to himself, my kids have questions and they might not know that it's OK and appropriate for them to start firing off questions to me.
Adam: Right.
Marc: And so he gave them that permission, which to me seems like I just never would have thought of that. And when he gave his kids that permission, he said it just like the floodgates opened. And that blew my mind a little bit. I just thought that was really amazing that he's got that ability to be able to be thinking like that. In those moments.
Adam: We can all stand to learn from that, like we could all say that, but. To have the the knowledge and experience, to think of that naturally, to just know what to do or what to say in that moment is what a powerful tool.
Marc: Let's dive into the second part of our conversation. Whatta you say?
Adam: Patrick, so this awful insurrection in Washington, D.C. ended relatively quickly, and the fact that they were able to reconvene and finish their work that night is symbolic of our democracy not being that easily penetrable. Right? So it's easy enough to draw a moral to the story, so to speak, for our kids, you know, when we're trying to put things into perspective. But there are plenty of other tragic and grim topics that don't have such a clean, clear resolution or moral to draw from. Like I'm thinking of things like racial injustice or the devastation that covid has created in the last year or the dangers of climate change. I mean, it's one thing to unpack a specific tragic incident like the insurrection at the Capitol or the murder of Breyonna Taylor. But when it comes to the bigger stuff, you know, sometimes our instinct maybe is to try to shield our kids from the larger sort of systematic issues, particularly when they're young. And you may not want to expose them to violence or profanity. Do you have any advice around sheltering kids versus exposing them to larger scale tragedy like that?
Patrick: Yeah, and there's there's also some pretty good research about it, too. There's a researcher who coined the phrase "Ecophobia," and it comes from this work that he was doing looking at environmental education of the mid to late 80s, early 90s. I'm of the age. I can remember that environmental education where we would have people come into the classroom and they were talking about the devastation in the rainforest and all the animals and the trees and everything that was being hurt. And it was very dire for young children. And what they found is that a lot of kids who were exposed to these dire warnings about crumbling ecology or or the dying and burning and despoiling of the rainforest often would go to this place where they would shy away from nature. So instead of instead of inspiring them to want to do something about it and to embrace the natural world and and be a protector, it did the exact opposite where they just they sort of started avoiding they developed this this eco phobia.
Marc: Making them feel as if some things are just too big, some problems are too big to be approached and tackled.
Patrick: just not manageable.
Marc: Wow.
Patrick: And I love this phrase that he has. And it's "No Tragedy Before Fourth Grade." Right?
Marc: Intresting.
Patrick: Which does it which doesn't mean the tragedy doesn't exist. I mean, some kids are going to find themselves exposed to tragic situations regardless, particularly if they're poor, particularly if they're a minority. You know, they just can't be shielded from these things.
Marc: Right, right.
Patrick: I think that's a really good point. Yes, kids are very resilient. Like like luckily we know that kids can experience a huge amount of tragedy and grow up to be productive citizens and somewhat well-adjusted individuals, like experiencing tragedy at a young age does not necessarily mean you're broken for the rest of your life. And good thing, because we wouldn't be where we are now if that were if that were the case. But at the same time, we don't want to willfully expose children to tragedy if it's something that they don't have to experience. You know, that there's this idea that all kids need to get toughened up. And that's, frankly, are the language. But that's, frankly, bullshit. Like kids are going to figure it out, like the world for them is going to be hard. Making it hard now is not going to make it any easier in the future.
Adam: Right, right.
Patrick: Giving them the tools to process that will make it easier. So Sobel has has a great way of introducing this kind of stuff to children. And for him, it's a year long process where you start really early giving children foundations. You know, if you if you want children to understand ecology and and connect with with the natural world, you don't throw them into climate change immediately. You connect them with with the way the seasons change. You take them outside, you look at leaves, you look at worms, you talk about snow, you talk about the way the world changes around them. You sort of connect them to these things. Then you get a little bigger. You know, you maybe give them responsibility to to pick up trash in the neighborhood or trash in the yard. You give them a responsibility to work on recycling or something, you know, and and as they get older, then they can have more and more agency in the issue. You can do the same thing with racial justice issues or social issues. You know, you don't want to throw them into that immediately. They understand fairness, like kids understand fairness. So there's ways of talking about the anger of minority communities and black communities in particular. There's a way of talking to your child about that anger that they can understand. They understand fairness. They understand when a classmate gets something that they couldn't get or they've been at a birthday party where the cake wasn't distributed fairly or whatever. Like these might sound like trivial things, but these are these this is where a child lives.
Adam: It's important to them, I'm sure.
Patrick: Yeah. And if you can frame it in those age appropriate ways, then you can begin to build on it as they as they get older.
Adam: I'd love to hear your thoughts on teaching your kids about things like politics, and obviously this particular event was was very political, but whether it's fair to them to bring your own opinions into it. So, for example, when my wife and I talk to our daughters about something regarding politics, because it's obviously been a very present topic everywhere for the past four years, when they ask us questions, again, they're seven and four. So the questions are very simple questions like we try to be very honest with them, but I feel like simplifying things in a way that they will understand it inherently, our explanations are shaped by our biases. So when they're too young to have enough context to, like, form their own educated opinion, is it unfair to them that they inherit our opinions?
Patrick: Well, Adam, I mean, you use the word "biases," inheriting our biases, which is certainly something that the children can do. But but that also sort of points to a way of looking at it that is growth oriented, which is that children will also inherit our values. Right. And something that I've that I've really become a champion of is for families to develop a set of values. And I don't mean like focus on the family, family values type of thing. Like, that's not what I'm I'm not talking about like a dogmatic sort of family values that's rooted in some sort of cultural argument. That's that's not at all how I'm using this term. When I talk about family values, I'm talking about those values that that you hold dear as a person and that your family holds dear as a group. So these are these are values like like charity or togetherness or social good or love or laughter or humor or play. I mean, there's a huge swath of variety of values that when we're single, we develop them and hold them silently.
Adam: Sure.
Patrick: You know? The best of us, I guess would have those sort of codified. And we would live with this code, this value. A lot of times people use their religion to establish those values. If you don't have a religion or a spiritual path that you're looking to, it's harder to sort of establish those. But the idea is for a family to make those as as apparent as possible. I think of it like building a coat of arms or looking at the words in Game of Thrones. You know, every every family has a set of words. You know, "A Lannister always pays their debts," or "Winter is coming." These speak to the values of the family. And we can do that, too, as as families, we can build, you know, a mission statement or a coat of arms or something, and if we build it together, I mean, Marc, even even though your kids are three, you could build these values now with them,.
Marc: Yeah.
Patrick: You know? Like make a poster board, talk to them about it, talk to your partner about it, put them on the wall like a better version of live, laugh, love or whatever.
Adam: Yeah yeah yeah.
Patrick: But what that does when you do that, what that does is it makes these conversations so much easier. So instead of worrying about the biases that you're going to pass on to your kids, you can route your answers in the values that you know, your family shares. So you can talk about politics and you can frame what's happening in the frame of the values that you share. It makes almost every conversation you'll ever have with your kids so much easier because you're not really casting about like like, oh, God, how do I say the right thing? Because as long as you as long as you can point back to, well, this is what our family believes. This is the values that we hold dear, then then you have something to stand on. And so to that. And when I was answering my kids questions, I wanted to make sure that we spoke about those things. And in our family, that's humor, it's charity, and it's and it's love. I mean, that's really it. I mean, we have three main values that is long is as long as everything we do reflects those values, then then we're in a good place.
Marc: I love that. I love all of that. There's my wife and I have been talking about probably in a little bit because I was preparing for this interview. But also just in general, it's just so I don't know, crazy out there right now. And our kids are getting a little bit older. This idea of just sitting down and writing out a set of values.
Patrick: Right.
Marc: And figuring out a way to distill it down to them, you know, we talked about like we like to we sponsor a child through its children international that we that we chose, you know, like we should put our picture up and we should explain to our kids who that person in the world is. You know, stuff like that. Just start to just ease into these these conversations. But it's daunting. It's a daunting task. And the idea of kind of beginning with that.
Patrick: Yeah, and making it a conversation I think is important. Even when they're they're small, even when they're very young and their vocabulary is limited, they still have a sense of fairness. They still have a sense of how these things work, considering the limited scope that they have. But it's doing more than that. I mean, every time you talk to your kids about anything, regardless of how they're responding, it's healthy for their language development and for their mental development. And so talking to kids about anything is great. Talking to them about this specifically is fantastic.
Marc: I was I was just thinking about that vocabulary aspect to the whole thing, because it's like that's why we start young or at least we tried really hard to start young with giving them the words to use to describe what they're feeling as opposed to just always letting it manifest into an action, which is what instinctually we do with our with our emotions. And so it's a natural sort of extension of that, which I love that aspect of it as well. Gosh, I feel like we can talk about so much stuff in this conversation.
Patrick: Absolutely.
Marc: Yeah. There's one thing that's really interesting. Adam and I both sort of pick this out. You you wrote that it's important to admit when we don't have answers to a question. And I kind of love the whole notion of giving ourselves or allowing ourselves the permission to say something like, I don't know, as a response. I kind of think there can be, I don't know, sort of a lot of power in that in a way. But why is that? Like, how how did you arrive at that at that idea?
Patrick: Well, it comes it comes from the idea of developing resilience, of helping a child develop resilience. I think a lot of parents and I think a lot of fathers often feel like they can't be without the answer. Like it's sort of this dad has to know type of thing. But in reality, we know that there are a lot of times where where we don't know the answer. We don't know what to do. And, you know, there are two paths to go down in those situations. You can either you can either curl up and just and deny that anything is wrong or that you don't have the right information. You can you can pretend that you do have the right information and move on and possibly make things worse. Or you can do the resilient thing, which is accepting the reality of what's happening and trying to learn about it and then moving on based on the new information that you have. That's all very complicated for a child. Right? You're not get you're never going to sit down and say, look, this is this is how you approach problems in your life. Like you like making it like making it some sort of lecture is never going to work for a kid. But if your kid asks you a question, you can model this this behavior by by saying you don't know when you don't know. And there's ways to go about the inevitable aftermath.
Adam: Yup.
Patrick: That's usually what I like to do, is what I tell when I tell my kids that I don't know something, especially if it's a very specific, you know, like what "does a whale fart?" Or whatever.
Marc: Do they?
Patrick: Uh... they must? Right?
Adam: I mean, isnt that what the blowholes are for?
Marc: Is that what that is?
Patrick: So you know, if I if I could ask me that, I didn't know the answer, clearly I don't the follow up the immediate follow up to I don't know. It should be let's find out together and all of us have the resources to do exactly that right now.
Marc: I love that.
Patrick: You know, whether you're asking the ephemeral Alexa in your house or whether you're going to the Internet and getting on your your search engine and and and looking up the answer, it helps them to understand that there's a method for we're coming to an understanding. And today, today, it might be whale fars, and tomorrow it might be, how the hell do I deal with with the fact that I miss half of my classes in university or whatever, you know, there's a path forward if you if you take time to research and try to find the answer, starting off early with a kid, instilling the notion that they have the power to go out and seek an answer as opposed to always being spoonfed an answer, and I say spoonfed, not that we're all always doing that. Sometimes we're just trying to answer honestly to the best of our ability to to to satisfy something that our kid is after. But the idea that like showing them that, hey, maybe I'm thirty nine years old, but I don't I don't have all the answers yet. And it and it's a lifelong venture to seek out information. So building that up for me from a young age seems very important to me.
Patrick: And raising a curious kid I think is is is really is really crucial you know? because it helps them learn for forever. It helps them pick these things up on their on their own. There's always the danger of, like, doing your own research in the places that will give you the answers that you want. But that's something that's advanced level stuff. This is those are things you get into when they're when they're in their teens because. Right. I mean, the nice thing, especially where where you're at Mach with three year olds is you can keep the world kind of locked down. Right. The borders of your home are not as porous as they are for older children. As children grow, the borders of your home become more and more porous because you're no longer like the the the sole source of of their knowledge of the world. Suddenly it's friends and it's you know, it's it's television programs that they that they're picking up or podcasts that they're listening to. And as that curiosity sort of broadens and their life and the borders of the home get a little bit more porous. If you sort of established this living with values in this in this living with curiosity, you can manage that, I think, a little better. Which is not to say the parents of older children are lost, that it's lost. You just got to make sure that you're always talking to them all the time.
Marc: Yeah. This is a place where I really get tripped up personally, there is that idea, right, that kids, especially young kids, their world is small and so a piece of cake that's smaller than their friends, piece of cake that can feel devastating and they can really feel that. And navigating through things like that can sometimes be hard because you're as an adult, your perspective is. So, I don't know, different.
Patrick: Right.
Marc: We're constantly sort of trying to instill within our kids to to act with kindness or to be fair, to teach what fear is and then showing what it means to be fair and to be kind. While the flip side of that coin is that we live in this world, that there are so many instances out there in the world that the people who are not being fair, they're winning is kind of how it feels. My kids are going to find that out. They're going to find out that there are very powerful people in the world who get to make decisions, who are grown adults, who do not act fair and do not act with kindness.
Patrick: I think if you can go back to those values, right, you can talk about anything as as long as you have those those core values as a guide. I mean, if fairness is a is a core value for your family, then it's something that you live by with your partner, with your wife. I mean, it's what they do because there's an example right there in your home. I mean, you could say like there's powerful people in the world who who aren't living this way. Really, you can you can almost look in your own home like, okay, well, are you living this way? Like are you are you fair with your kid? I mean, you expect fairness between them.
Marc: Yeah.
Patrick: And you expect them to be fair to other people. But are you being fair to them and can you have that conversation. Can you look at yourself and go. Ehh, was that fair, you know, and can you stop and talk to your kid about fairness and say, you know, I flew off the handle there and that wasn't fair to you and you can make that part of the conversation. I don't think you need to get like it's good to have an awareness of racial injustice and racial justice, and it's good to have a sense of that as an as an adult and to look at it with clear eyes, look at the reality of it with clear eyes. But that doesn't mean that your job is to fix it everywhere out there, because, like, literally you can't do that. Like, it's not something that you can control. What you can control is is inside your own home. It's inside your own neighborhood. So when when I'm looking at these things, I'm looking at where can I help in my community? Where can I model this in my home? And how can I raise boys who are going to go into the world and be the person that I wasn't necessarily able to be when I was their age, when I was growing because I didn't have this kind of education. I didn't I didn't have this kind of awareness. And if you look at it that way, like that's a crucial part of this battle, right. Is what is raising kids who have a better perspective than than we ever had. And the more of us, the more mothers and fathers who are doing this, the more things are going to change in the future. And I think you can already see it with younger generations. I think you can already see this this change. And it's a long rolling change. It happens. It takes a long time. But but just by raising kids, good kids, being thoughtful about it, you're part of that fight, you know, and you're doing something crucial and important. So I think just sort of internalized that also like it's OK if you forget sometimes, you know, it's okay. It's okay if if you're leaning into, like, how great it is to share pizza with your kids and you're just playing around and being goofy and and fun and like, life needs to have that kind of balance.
Marc: Right. right, right.
Patrick: So so as long as you're, like, loving your kids, I mean, and in the end, I think every article I've ever written comes down to this idea, like, as long as you are loving your kids, it'll be OK. Yeah, like full stop. Like, that's that's the basic message.
Adam: Dads, as a reminder of Patrick's book entitled simply "Fatherhood" will be released by Harper Collins later this year. You can follow him on Twitter @TheGoodfather for updates on that. And I highly encourage you to follow Fatherly and read Patrick's articles. He brings such an informed perspective to issues that we all deal with as dads. Patrick, I want to thank you again for joining us. Thanks for all of the important work that you're doing. It was truly a pleasure speaking with you.
Patrick: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me, guys. It was a great conversation.
Marc: A minute ago, you sort of had a glint in your eye that made me think you have some things to confess. Am I picking up on that? Right.
Adam: I do have a few confessions to make.
Marc: Dude, let's cleanse our souls. What do you say?
Adam: All in. All the way in.
Marc: Little bit of breathing... My son was pretending to be a ghost and came up to me with a cloth toy bean over his head and he said, Boo! And I said, ahh you scared me? But I wasn't scared.
Adam: Sometimes when we're in the car, I declare that the cell service is poor, so the song they want to hear is unavailable. And I feel no shame.
Marc: After pooping on the big boy potty one night, my son said, "Daddy, look at my poop. It's huge." I looked. I wasn't only impressed... I was jealous.
Adam: My daughter was recently gifted a collection of Ramona chapter books, and because the internet is listening to us, Disney+ recommended the 2010 G-rated family comedy "Ramona and Beezus." Not only did I watch it with them, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Marc: Sometimes I tell my kids to stop doing something because it's dangerous. And then they keep doing the dangerous thing. And one of them does eventually get hurt and for a brief moment, I allow myself to bask in the warm embrace of schadenfreude.
Adam: I probably threaten my kids with the counting to three thing at least once a day. I don't think I have ever once had a specific consequence in mind for when I reach three.
Adam: Shouldn't we just close out the episode?
Marc: Dads, you can find us at ModernDadhood.com, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, wherever you prefer to get your podcasts, please while you're there, subscribe, write, give us a little review.
Adam: Write the show while you're doing the mouse clicking. Click on over to Facebook and Instagram, even YouTube, where you'll see video clips of all of our guests, outtakes from the show and some hilarious segments that never made it into an episode.
Marc: Why don't you drop us a line at hey@moderndadhood.com. We read everything that comes through.
Adam: Thank you as always to Caspar Babypants and to Spencer Albee for the music in our show, to Pete Morse at Red Vault Audio for making us sound spectacular.
Marc: And thanks to Patrick Coleman, along with Molly Battles and the teamFatherly and Some Spider Studios.
Adam: And last, ( and least, if I'm being honest...)
Marc: Yeah.
Adam: Thank you for listening.