Quality Time With Your Children: Making Every Moment Count

00:02 Welcome, dads, to the Team Super Dad 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 I pressed the wrong button. Live with power. Let's roll. Welcome to Team Super Dad. Real dads creating their best lives ever. More time, more money, more fun. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad. Welcome, dads. How are you doing today? Yes, it's the Team Super Dad podcast.

00:46 It's 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 good old hashtag replay always works. And 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, 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, in the Team Superdad group on Facebook as well. If you're part of the community, especially you guys, give us a good morning and a hello.

01:28 And of course, as you share this, why are you sharing it? Well, 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 we're 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.

02:11 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 Super Dad, 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 and mostly their 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

02:50 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. 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.

03:38 You know, clearly, if we're working with single dads, if we're talking about that subject, then we're always looking to achieve a 50-50 contact. If you're in a family unit, you know, 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 for your family that you feel is worth it. Okay, I can go along with that. All of these subjects, though, when you do have that time with your children, making the most of it is vital.

04:19 Making that quality time so that your kids feel that they're getting your 100% attention, so that they feel your love and energy, and so that you're really building up that, 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 bus situation. But clearly, the longer we can be putting our vision, our values, our core parents.

04:59 parenting skills and desires into our children. When we put it in at a young age, then we just interrupting myself there for a second. Good morning to our commentary, comment, commenters. 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 on the show posts for this event, then that link will be in the bottom actually.

05:42 And then Facebook will pick up on that and tell me who you are. So, morning, old pal, long time no see 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. The amount of time you have available, it's about giving your kids all of that. You know, you'll see other classic videos on Facebook of the soldier, you know, the coming back from some kind of battle, war, insurgents, wherever we are around the world. And those children and that father will run into each other's arms.

06:25 There's that moment of realization where the dad is actually the person serving the ice cream. Or I saw one the other day where the kid was doing a karate thing with a mask on, and it was spoofing an exercise where he was fighting when he couldn't see. And then when he took the mask off, he was, he was, it was his dad. And it was an awesome moment. 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 is grammatically incorrect and spelt wrong. But my boy made me that when it's Aero. Good morning, Arrow. My boy made me that when he was about seven years old.

07:08 And it was always my desire through bringing my kids up that we would have this hero relationship, not like as an expectation or as something, oh, he's bigger than he truly is, or he thinks he's special and he really isn't. No, this is about that relationship where your kids look to you like, that's my dad. He's got my back. He's my everything. Now, when they're a little kid, you know, human nature is that they're looking for that. They actually need it. You know, there's a gruesome story.

07:55 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 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 the children were not given any love or attention, they weren't spoken to, they weren't touched, 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?

08:41 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 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.

09:22 And then, you know, do I have that with my dad? The bloke's 80. He's 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 his love through laughter, through adventure, through experiences. And in his own way, through dialogue, through random stories, through. stupid jokes and days out and big groups of people and holding court and

10:05 I tell you what as well, on a practical level, reading as a story every night when we were kids. And so in this 50-year-old son, or 49, 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,

10:44 which we'll go through in a moment. But I want to start with something I like to call family brand. This is again, particularly important 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, really important. It's part of the reconnection conversation of the relationship side of Engage. But it's 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.

11:26 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, 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? You know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to go on that trip of a lifetime, that Disney experience or the safari adventure.

12:02 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. Okay. 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 to be known for? Right. And so getting our children excited about this, if you put it too much on them, right, without this as a basis, as a foundation, then it can feel like, oh, I don't really know. I don't really understand that. Another version of that is that kids are really good at this, better than parents.

12:47 You ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up. They want to be an astronaut, a footballer, a doctor, a nurse, you know, like it's easy for a kid to paint a picture of their future. It's 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're headed and what we want and what we're doing in the world. And then come down to some more practical stuff. What do we like doing? Like, what do we do? What do we like doing? What are the kind of routines that we can count on as a family?

13:26 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, a painting, a drawing, a bunch of pictures you download off Facebook and turn into a collage and print of, it's a good baseline to come back to. In the same opposite vein, of course, what do we not like doing? This is an important part of the conversation because 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 to, 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.

14:09 One of our values was success or pride, you know. So you can't like, so you're like, okay, well, you don't like doing homework. Well, not everyone does. But if we want those things, then we might have to just push through that. Okay, I've 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 dying in my room or I don't like, I don't like being told off. That's an important part of the conversation, which we'll come on to in a moment around how we communicate with our kids.

14:47 But opening these up, opening these conversations up. up in a casual way very very powerful and the final part of 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 you know 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

15:29 you can see part of this conversation how we have to work 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 program if you're a dad who wants to kickstart take control be the man that you know your family needs you to be the man that you want to be then uh come on over to in fact grab a discovery call teamsuperdad.com forward slash 15 call and i will tell you all about the power code uh you can chat with me about what you want to be achieving and uh and you understand how the power code can help you create that so

16:11 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 of 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 would 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

16:57 want to be then it was actually very powerful if 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 get free of that okay that's part of ownership in the power code you need to let that go because it'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

17:43 you're going to look at your childhood okay and take the best memories and the worst memories right you could draw it down as draw a line down the middle of the page put your best and worst memories on either side really allow yourself to dig into this 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 on to having done this exercise looking at the best memories and the worst memories what do you want to say to your dad if he's alive maybe you go and have that conversation with him if he's dead maybe you write him a letter like

18:23 there's a moment here of completion by getting clear on what was good what was bad what you want to say to your dad something very powerful can happen in those conversations um i've talked about this a lot before so without going into too much detail i 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 38 years old some sometime around that um maybe a bit younger 36 i had a conversation with my dad about what what that like 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

19:16 to die and right or wrong when i came home from clubs that night and had a bit of a tantrum about my lego being broken he took it out on me now it it just transforms the whole subject and creates a new new okay and that's what that's what a large part of this is about and we're talking about how you can interact with your kids today in order to bring them up up with a sense that their dad's there from them, that you are their hero, that they can count on you, that you've got their back. But it might also be that there's an opportunity here for a conversation with your dad to create a relationship with him in a way that you've never had it before.

20:00 So, next part: how do you want your children to talk to you? So, this connects back into the family brand, it goes back into the vision board you would have created in purpose of the P of the power code. Knowing what you want to create with your kids is absolutely vital, right? If you don't have a clear direction of where you're headed, how on earth do you expect to get there? It's just not going to happen, right? So, how do you want your children to talk about you is giving you a blueprint of the work that you're going to do with them, the kind of conversations you're going to have with them, the routines, the fun, the experiences, all of it, such that they end up speaking about you

20:46 like that. What if they were asked to give a talk about their dad? What if they were asked, I don't know, to give a eulogy about you? How do you want your kids to talk about you? If you're not clear on this, then you don't really have a rudder or a 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 the middle of dad qualities. On one side, you're going to put repeat, and on the other side, you're going to 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.

21:30 And one of the ones for me was, yeah, of course, generationally, was the discipline was hitting your kids, right? There's like 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 the crazy ups and downs, was full of. And that is testimony to my dad. Hokie-dokey, uh, right, a couple of areas where,

22:15 um, you know, in terms of bringing, in terms of the regular routines and activities with your kids, okay, it is about a blueprint, like, and I've written myself notes here in case you're wondering what the hell I'm looking at. Um, giving yourself the blueprint that you can follow to a regular basis, okay? So, these may be in no particular order. Um, children want our time, right? Quality time with our kids is about consistency, it's about sticking to the promise that you made.

22:52 And when you're with them, as much as you can, having that be time that your phone is away, you know, and that's it doesn't mean that you can't work or you can't. And 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-fence 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.

23:34 That's 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. Talking to my children. Now, 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 baby, 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.

24:14 And I'm absolutely convinced, particularly my daughter, blindly, 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 their childhood. You know, when I pick my kids up from school, always looking to have that conversation and don't just go, how was your day? Particularly when they're little and they need the direction in how to have a conversation. So, give. them prompts like what was the best bit of your day? Oh, well, these were the best bits. All right, okay, awesome. Did you have any bad bits? Oh, yeah. Well, this happened and that happened. Oh, wow, that was tough. So, you're steering the conversation. Um, being something a practice called active listening.

24:58 We've spoken about this in the relationship side of the team super dad training, but active listening, being actually 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, where they're saying something, or where they start fiddling with something, noticing the emotion in their words. 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.

25:43 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, and being able to stick to that routine is really important. A good friend of mine, uh, Hamid, he told me, we were chatting about, I was asking, he used to work at Nickelodeon, and I was asking him why do kids like watching repeats? And he said it's a comfort to them. The routine, the familiarity is a comfort to them.

26:24 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 the 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, a trip to a coffee shop. Like, what can you create with them that becomes a routine where you have that quality time together?

27:04 Play. Play fits into all those previous subjects. But I find myself with my boy in particular at 13, you know, end of term, end of year 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. And so 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?

27:43 I guess the flip side of that is discipline and boundaries. You know, if your kids haven't got a clear box in which to operate, then, you know, they're naturally inclined to want to step outside of it anyway. So if you don't set the boundaries for them, then they're going to step way beyond them. Also, if you start reacting and chastising or getting into arguments, punishing them, and if you haven't made the boundaries clear, then how the hell do you have the right to get annoyed with them for how long they've been playing on their Xbox?

28:19 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? I'm not saying it's easy, 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. You know, the Super Nanny program, which I know she took it to the States, so that will transcend across the Atlantic.

29:03 But Super Nanny, she had the naughty step. And if you've ever tried this with your toddler, what they say is a minute on the step for each age they are. You know, you put a toddler on a step for three minutes. Oh my gosh. You will know how hard that is for those three minutes. 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 going to 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.

29:44 And it's like a trigger word, basically. And if an argument is starting, a situation is descending into an unhealthy row, then any of us, Jaygo, 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. 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

30:30 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 had 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 quite often on reflection, it's a clear explanation. It's a clear, are you okay? Did I come? You know, how did I leave you feeling after that?

31:10 You know, 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, you know, whatever it is that it needs to be said. Okay. And a powerful apology is where the other person really gets that you understand what it was like for them. So I apologize that 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. So all in all,

31:57 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 in a 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.

32:40 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 what 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.

33:24 I'm trying to like repackage that and deliver it, but I'm doing it in 2023. Like, have a look. I'm streaming live on the internet to multiple channels, to people are watching on the different devices all around the world. You know, we're not, this isn't, this isn't a 1950s world. It's a 2023 world. So cut yourself some slack. Take on board all this knowledge. Create a version for yourself. And by the way, going back to that family brand, your flavor of this will be decided by your family brand and your kids have a say in that.

34:03 This is how you create powerful relationships with your children. This is how you create generational legacies so they become the parent to their children that you want them to be. And so that most importantly, this is how you create 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, spread the word. The Power Code is our program and core training for dads, for career-minded, professional, business-focused dads who want to create success both at work and with their family.

34:53 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 Super Dad community. Team Super Dad out. This has been Team Super Dad. 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 Super Dad.