Quality Time With Your Children: Making Every Moment Count

00:00 Welcome dads to the Team Superdad podcast this week. Quality time with your children, making every moment count! Yes it is the true essence of being a dad and we are here today with you to talk all about it and uh... I pressed the wrong button! Live with power let's roll Welcome dads, how are you doing today? Yes

00:45 It's the Team Superdad Podcast. It is great to have you here if you're on the live remember to comment, if you're watching replay well just tell me where you're at and a good old hashtag replay always works and uh the subscribers to our lovely podcast thank you we're on season four now over I think it's over 150 episodes so you are the guys and gals mainly guys but you are the guys and gals who've been with us the longest If you're tuning in today, it's great to have you on board. Share this! Hit that share button we've got you on LinkedIn YouTube Live Facebook it in the Team Superdad group on Facebook as well if your part of the community especially you guys give us a good morning and hello and of course as you share this why are you sharing?

01:34 Team Superdad is all about lifting men up. You know, we are creating the life that you want not a life you feel stuck in and for many of us business-owning career focused men who have trying to juggle all these balls and then wondering why despite maybe our success We don't feel fulfilled or we haven't got the relationship we desire Or when not as connected to our children as much as we want to be The struggle, the sense that we're putting all this work in and still it's not giving us the results we want. Still it's not giving us the life that we want. That is what Team Superdad is here to fix, to solve, to move you forward okay? If you don't know the backstory to Team Superdad then by all means go back and look at some of the older podcasts I'm a dad, I'm a coach, I work with men

02:30 And mostly they're midlife. They're mostly business owning, career minded dads who as I just said who are looking to get more out of life and my story ended in a bit of a car crash with divorce with a breakdown with With pretty much losing everything that I'd always wanted outside of my gorgeous kids, it was a complete reset. And it was out of that experience that Team Superdad has been created and it's important that I mention my kids there because today we are looking at the module, the chapter from The POWER CODE. The POWER CODE is my core method of training inside of Team Superdad and we're on E for engage and we're talking about our kids

03:18 Quality time with our children, making the most of every moment. And there's an important distinction inside of that title is that whether you're still in the family unit or whether you've broken up, the amount of time that you have with your kids may not actually be the amount of time that you would like. You know clearly if we're working with single dads if we're talking about that subject then we are always looking to achieve a 50-50 contact If you're in a family unit, your work may take you away for a set period of time. Now, of course we can't necessarily do anything about that if you're choosing to work away for a large percentage of time then maybe you're growing a business and creating something or feel family that you feel is worth it okay I can go along with that all of these subjects though

04:13 When you do have that time with your children, making the most of it is vital. Making that quality time so that your kids feel that they're getting your 100% attention So they feel your love and energy And so that you're really building up that relationship That will not just see you through their childhood but will roll on into the rest of their life You can create that at any time, okay? It's not a shit or bust situation. But clearly the longer we can be putting our vision, our values, our core parenting skills and desires into our children... When we put it in at a young age then

05:09 Just interrupting myself there for a second. Good morning to our commentators, I'll bring one in you can see this here look. Morning old pal long time no speak see here well if you go to streamyard.com forward slash facebook on a device where you're logged into Facebook it will Click in, tick in, kick in even and you'll be able to see exactly who you are. If you look on any of the show posts for this event then that link will be at the bottom actually and Facebook will pick up on that and tell me who you are so Morning Old Power! Long time no C-Speak here well that means you haven't been either reaching out to me or watching my lives anyway back to the point about parents and quality time

05:59 The amount of time you have available, it's about giving your kids all of that. You know? You'll see the classic videos on Facebook of the soldier coming back from some kind of battle war insurgence wherever we are around the world and those children And that father will run into each other's arms. There is that moment of realization where the dad is actually the person serving the ice cream or I saw one the other day, where a kid was doing a karate thing with a mask on and they were spoofing an exercise where he was fighting when he couldn't see. Then when he took off his mask it was his dad. It was awesome moment

06:46 And as dads we all want those. You know I've got a picture here on the wall, i don't know if you can see that it says you're my hero! It's grammatically incorrect and spelt wrong but my boy made me that when...it's Eero good morning Eero My boy made me that when he was about seven years old and it was always my desire through bringing my kids up that we would have this The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE.

07:42 The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE I heard this as some kind of experiment in Russia, like in the Soviet Union. So I tried... This is how I'd heard it before. I searched it up and the thing on YouTube that the video I found on YouTube, in fact Google and then YouTube told me that King Frederick II a German king in the 13th century he decided to create a test where if you if

08:23 Love or attention they weren't spoken to, they weren't touched and they were just fed and changed that they would grow up and speak German. Genius! That's a king I want to be ruled by, right? It's amazing how the human species has evolved. So King Frederick II's test was brought to an abrupt halt when all the babies died so they did not speak German They didn't speak anything okay so poor King Frederick might have had to keep the wraps on that experiment but

09:04 Through no touch, through no interaction, through no audible love and attention the babies died. And so as humans you know that relationship between us and our children it's so vital that they receive that love and attention. Do I have that with my dad? The bloke is 80 he has always been a maverick He's always struggled with the words I love you. I do squeeze it out of him sometimes but he has not struggled with showing his love and he shows love through laughter, through adventure, through experiences and in his own way through dialogue

09:52 Random stories through stupid jokes and days out, and big groups of people holding court. And I'll tell you what as well on a practical level reading is a story every night when we were kids. So in this 49 year old son 80 year old dad how that looks today is that we speak most weeks Do I see him enough? Probably not, but we speak most weeks. And so that relationship that's created my boy calling me his hero it's something that i nurtured from a young time and so in today's episode we're talking about quality time with the children and there's some core aspects to this which will go through in a moment but I want to start with something I like to call family brand this is again particularly important

10:56 For fathers in a breakup, of course. But as a family unit You and your wife getting on board with this and being on the same page, really important. It's part of the reconnection conversation of the relationship side of ENGAGE but also vital with our children so that they grow up having a true understanding of what it is to be Team Jensen or what it is to be part of your family. And so your family brand right? Your values What is it that you stand for as a family? How can you get that across to your children and of course they're going to come from your core values and from their mothers, right. So you know as the family brand you're looking to see well what do we stand for then your vision where are we headed as a family now there's nothing wrong with wanting to go on that trip of a lifetime that Disney experience or the safari adventure

12:01 There's equally nothing wrong with wanting a big house or you know like these kind of materialistic things they're okay particularly in the eyes of children. It's about putting something out there in front of us that we're moving towards, that's our vision and then as part of the conversation about vision you can then broaden it into other areas of what do we want to create as a family? What do we want The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE.

12:57 It's easy for a kid to paint a picture of their future. It is as we become adults that we become really quite stuck in the idea that I can't do that because what if it doesn't happen? So, The Family Brand... We're going to create those core family values. We're going to create a vision about where we are headed and what we want and what we are doing in the world. And then come down to some more practical stuff What do we like doing? What do we do? What do we like doing? What kind of routines can we count on as a family Where do we have fun? What do we enjoy play, what kind of exercise and entertainment do we like. Having this as something you can chat about as a family and create turn it into a family brand board or painting a drawing a bunch of pictures you download off Facebook and turn into a collage and print off It's a good baseline to come back too in the same opposite vein of course what are we not like doing This is an important part the conversation because

13:56 There may be things that we don't like doing, that we have to do. In which case you can talk about them. You might be able... Let's say something practical like homework I don't like doing homework! Okay okay i get that kid but we said one of our values was excellence one of our values was success or pride so you can't see that okay well you don't know how to do your homework well not everyone does but if we want those things then we might have to just push through that okay i got that part of the family brand And of course what we don't like as well, you can have a play with. Your teenage kids might be quite serious in some of their stuff I don't like tidying my room or being told off that's an important part the conversation which is will come on to it in a moment around how we communicate with our kids but opening these conversations up in a casual way very very powerful and

14:54 The final part of the family brand is what can you count on us for? And if you think about other brands, Coca-Cola, Virgin Airlines. I don't know even your favorite supermarket or just think of a brand that you can connect with, a clothing brand. A lot of music artists and bands these days will try and create a brand around themselves. What can you count on us for as a family to your friends, to your extended family, to your community. You can see part of this conversation how we have worked in marketing to understand what our brand is and now we're creating a family brand! Okay all this by the way is part of the work we do inside of The POWER CODE Programme if you're a dad who wants to kick start take control be the man that you know your family needs you to be the man that you want to be then come on over

15:53 In fact, grab a discovery call teamsuperdad.com forward slash 15 call and I will tell you all about the POWER CODE. You can chat with me about what you want to be achieving and you understand how the POWER CODE can help you create that so The next part of engage and quality time with our children is just the practical aspects of What I've taken from my experience of being a child in my experience of being a son and how I want to create my own version of that and teach it to my kids. So you're going to start with thinking back to your childhood, thinking back to what your relationship was like with your dad not everybody will have a good relationship with their dad and that's absolutely fine right? It might not be what you wanted it might not be something you enjoy looking back on but if you can see that it's helped you realize what you don't want to be then it was actually very powerful

17:01 If the father you are today had to happen from your experience as a child, then maybe it was a good thing. And if you haven't come to terms with that yet and you're walking around with it like I am the way I am because... Then you need to get free of that okay? That's part of ownership in The POWER CODE You need to let that go because he's holding you back from being the man you want to be Your dad likely did the best job he could do Given the circumstances, given how he was brought up. Given whatever was going on for him He may not even be that proud of it. He may not give a shit either way What we take from it doesn't have to be negative So you're gonna look at your childhood okay and take the best memories and the worst memories Right? You could draw down as draw line down in middle of page put your best and worst memories on either side Really allow yourself to dig into this

17:58 The next exercise will be, what do you want to say to your dad? Okay. So given the introduction I just gave and what you might be holding onto having done this exercise looking at the best memories and worst memories What do you want to say to your dad if he's alive maybe go have that conversation with him If he is dead maybe write him a letter There is moment here of completion by getting clear on what was good or bad what you want to say to your Dad Something very powerful can happen in those conversations. I've talked about this a lot before so without going into too much detail, i got the thrashing of my life one time when i was about seven years old and it was possibly not possibly definitely unacceptable um and it wasn't until i was about 30

18:58 I was eight years old sometime around that, maybe a bit younger 36. I had a conversation with my dad about what the bloody hell happened there and it transpired that that was the day that the doctors had told him and my mum that she was going to die. And right or wrong when i came home from Cubs that night and had a bit of attention about my Lego being broken he took it out on me! It just transforms The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE

20:02 How do you want your children to talk to you? So this connects back into the family brand, it goes back into the vision boards that would have created in purpose of the P of POWER CODE. Knowing what you wanna create with your kids is absolutely vital right if you don't have a clear direction where you're headed how on earth do expect to get there It's just not gonna happen right so how do you want your children to talk about you The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE

20:57 Then you don't really have a rudder or moral compass or an emergency brake to operate by. So, then the final part of this exercise is that you create another list lying down in the middle of dad qualities on one side you're going to put repeat and on the other side you're gonna put leave behind So that you're taking forward the experiences that you've had, that you want to pass on to your children and you're leaving behind the crap. That you think actually I don't want that and one of the ones for me was yeah of course generationally was the discipline hitting your kids right? There's like

21:45 It is evident that that's not appropriate in this day and age, but more to the point it was just like no we're just leaving that behind. And repeat well repeat to have the amount of adventure and fun and laughter that my childhood despite their crazy ups-and-downs was full off. That is testimony to me, testimony to my dad. Hokey dokey! Right a couple of areas where In terms of the regular routines and activities with your kids, it is about a blueprint. I've written myself notes here in case you're wondering what the hell i'm looking at... Giving yourself the blueprint that you can follow to a regular basis so these may be in no particular order. Children want our time right? Quality time with our kids

22:44 It's about consistency. It's about sticking to the promise that you made and when you're with them as much as you can, having that be time that your phone is away You know? And it doesn't mean that you can't work or I say to my kids sometimes, I've got to take this call The only reason i'm able to pick you up at three o'clock and go to the park Is because I work in this way But then you've got to catch yourself as well. Was it time that you promised with the kids or was it a spontaneous moment in the park? If you promise time to your kids, then it needs to be in your diary as ring-fenced time where they are getting 100% of your attention and going back to the idea that some people only have a certain amount of time with their kids make it count is the second part of the title of today's live is absolutely make it count so give them your all give them your undivided attention

23:43 Talking to my children. We need to give our kids much more credit for the idea that they can understand what we're talking about, whether they're a young kid you know all this kind of baba baba baby talk There's a place for it, but more than anything just speak to your kids. Like it can still be play but speak to them like my kids both spoke so early and I'm absolutely convinced particularly my daughter blimey that she could understand what was being said way before she could even speak So the importance of speaking to our children starts even when they're babies But going right through

24:27 The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE. Being something, a practice called active listening. We've spoken about this in the relationship side of the Team Superdad training but active listening being absolutely connected to your child so that you can both see and hear what they're saying seeing the emotions in their face and in their body language noticing where they're uncomfortable when they're saying something or when they start fiddling with something noticing the emotion in their words

25:21 Did it go up with excitement or did it go down with concern? This is real active listening. Being able to repeat back to them what they said, is part of active listening and when you practice active listening You will find yourself connecting with your children and your relationships And anyone important in your life on a whole new level because they get that you're listening to them They get that they've been heard and that just opens up a wonderful richness to communication and relationships By the way, the complete opposite. If you want to test it do the complete opposite give someone the most minimum amount of attention when they're talking to you and you will quickly see how frustrated they get Routine! Okay? Kids love routine

26:06 And being able to stick to that routine is really important. A good friend of mine, Hamid he told me we were chatting about I said...I was asking him used to work at Nickelodeon and i was asking him why do kids like watching repeats? He said it's a comfort to them the routine the familiarity is a comfort to them so for young kids going swimming watching cartoons in the morning Particularly, you know breakfast routines these are all absolutely vital. As your children become teenagers your time with them becomes more precious it becomes harder to grab so having those routines it gives them something to look forward to whether it's a favorite tv program whether it's a Thursday night meal whether it's you know um a trip to a coffee shop

26:56 Like what can you create with them that becomes a routine where you have that quality time together? Play. Play fits into all those previous subjects but I find myself with my boy in particular at 13, end of term exams coming up now it's very easy to be a bit too serious too often and we've got to remember that our kids don't really want that from us what our kids want is love and laughter Make sure that as you reflect on the week that you've just had and then the week that you're leading into, have you scheduled enough time to play and laugh with your kids? I guess the flip side of that is discipline. And boundaries! You know if your kids haven't got a clear

27:49 The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE Do you have the right to get annoyed with them for how long they've been playing on their Xbox? What was the time that you put in place. By the way, this is probably the biggest challenge that I have with my boy is how much does he stick to it and what do I do about it.

28:31 But the whole point of creating boundaries and rules and expectations with our children is that they are learning how to operate with inside them. Don't expect them to become experts at it, do expect them to break your rules! It's about how you manage that and how you speak with them. You know as far as discipline goes You know, make it clear what the outcomes are. The Supernanny Program which I know she took it to states so that will transcend across the Atlantic but super nanny she had the naughty step and if you've ever tried this with your toddler they what they say is a minute on the step for each age they are. You put a toddler on a step for three minutes oh my gosh! You will know how hard that is for those three minutes

29:20 Will a 13 year old sit on the naughty step? No, they won't. But making them have a timeout sending them like I'm not having this argument we're gonna have a timeout like go and take yourself away for 10 minutes and then we'll come back and we'll reset And a cool thing I've done in my family is we created something called lockdown and it's like a trigger word basically. And if an argument is starting, a situation is descending into um...an unhealthy row then any of us, Jago, Rose or I can call lockdown. And the idea of the word lockdown is that it stops nothing else is said nothing else is done nothing else no other you know the tantrum has to end like lockdown

30:07 Because it's far easier to calm down and come back to an argument than it is to recover from an all-out family war, basically. So that's another key part of communication and discipline and expectations and active listening And the final thing I want to say on all this is apologizing I don't really ever remember my dad saying sorry to me or helping me understand what had happened. Like why had i got shouted at? What was wrong? As much as possible now when I talk to my kids if there's been a row, if I think I've overstepped the mark, If I have to be really stern with them about something then I like to follow that up with a clear...I don't mean like immediately but you know quite often on reflection it's a clear explanation

31:04 Are you okay? Did I come, how did I leave you feeling after that. And if it wasn't what you were hoping which quite often it won't be then be prepared to apologize for that. Do you know what that wasn't my intention. I really wanted to help you realize that you needed to do your homework and I'm sorry that it got heated. I'm sorry that whatever is there needs to be said And a powerful apology is where the other person really gets that you understand what it was like for them. So I apologize, I did this...I realized that it felt like that and what I want to promise for the future is this. That's a powerful apology!

31:56 My vision for all the dads in Team Superdad is that they understand how to be a powerful father. Is that they have the confidence to manage their relationship, to actively communicate, to interact, to have a laugh, to know their friends... To be the dad that is quite honestly the envy of other dads and not in a jealous way obviously but like wow how do you create that with your kid? And by the way, I don't know everything. I'm not a child psychologist you might not agree with some of what i've said today you might have experiences that are different it is ultimately about creating a model that works for you You know famously as I'll leave you with today Philip Larkin's poem and they'll fuck you up your mum and dad they do not mean to but they do you know that's how that poem opens up and go and search it up and read it because

32:58 It ends by saying that they're just trying to do their best. They're just trying to take the bits from their childhood and their life and turn it into something called fatherhood in the vain hope that it does you the good that it needs to do but, by the way my childhood was 48 years ago! My dad's childhood was 70 years ago so he was my influence I'm trying to like repackage that and deliver it but I'm doing it in 2023 Mike, have a look. I'm streaming live on the internet to multiple channels people are watching on different devices all around the world you know we're not this isn't this isn't a 1950's world it's a 2023 world so cut yourself some slack take onboard all this knowledge create a version for yourself and by the way going back to that family brand your flavor of this

33:58 The Jonnie Jensen Show, Jonnie Jensen, POWER CODE A shitload of fun, laughter memories and your children go to bed each and every night knowing that they are safe and secure with the best dad in the world. I hope this has been a value to you Share it, leave me a review. Send it to your mates and spread the word! The POWER CODE is our program and core training for dads, career-minded professional business focused dads who want to create success both at work and with their family you can have it all jump on a call with me comment on this and I look forward to seeing you soon in the Team Superdad community. Team Super Dad out

35:06 This has been Team Superdad. Find us at teamsuperdad.com Join the program and create the best life ever for you and your children! You are not alone, you're on Team Superdad