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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Cody Buriff
Hey guys, welcome to the Restorative Man podcast. My name is Cody Buriff and I get to co-host this podcast with none other than Chris Bruno. Hey.
Chris Bruno
Cody, good to be with you today.
Cody Buriff
Good to be with you. I'm excited for our conversation today, where we're going. We're kinda jumping into a little bit of a series on fatherhood over the next several podcasts. And so we're gonna dive into that today.
Chris Bruno
Yes. Well, before we jump into all that, Cody, I got targeted on social media last week. I think I saw it like three or four times. And it was a it was a t-shirt. Okay. It was an advertisement for a t-shirt. And it said on the t-shirt something about like, I was raised on hose water and neglect.
And then it had like and and then and then it had, you know, like I don't know, some date range of like nineteen seventy to nineteen ninety or something like that. Which, you know, I that fits my age range and all that. And I to this day, to this day, I love the water bottles that are like the metal water bottles that have the l smaller little
Kind of place where you drink because it reminds me of the hose when I was a little boy. I love drinking out of those because it just reminds me of drinking out of the garden hose all the time when you'd be outside running around and you're like, I'm so thirsty. And you you don't want to, it's too much effort and time to go inside, get a glass filled with water. You just go start the hose. in the Mercy Spray in France. So
Cody Buriff
Did you ever do that? yeah, all the time. I mean that was before like the plastic water bottle craze and then the like environmental we need to like have our own like individual water bottles forever kind of create like this is before all
Chris Bruno
Having a water bottle growing up.
Cody Buriff
Totally. Nobody had water bottles growing up. We had hoses. We had hoses.
That's hilarious. Hosewater and elect.
Chris Bruno
Well, and then there's that piece, the neglect piece, right? Because it's like, well, you know, go out in the morning when the sun comes up and come home when the street lights come on. And that is what I did most of the time. Totally.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. There's part of me that misses those days.
Chris Bruno
Totally,
totally. And if I'm honest, sometimes when I'm outside working in the garden or whatever, I'll still drink out of the hose. And I actually had some people that were helping me in the garden, they saw me do that, and they're like, Is that safe? I'm like
Cody Buriff
Kidding me? We live in the United States.
Chris Bruno
I am here still today at this adult age and I survived a lot of hose water. So it's just the same water. So anyway.
Cody Buriff
my gosh. Yeah.
Chris Bruno
Well, we're talking today about that fathering stuff that you mentioned before. And I it just made me think of, you know, the whole idea of the hose water and especially the neglect. Like what is it that we as dads actually need and want to bring our kids? What do our kids actually need from us? Do they need water bottles? I don't know that they do, especially when they oppose us. But what we want to have a more serious conversation about what our kids need from us. So
Cody Buriff
Yeah, totally. All right. So Chris, let's just jump into it. All right. So I feel like society, culture, families, churches, all the th like there's this pressures that come in from everywhere. They're basically telling dads all the things they need to provide for their kids. And some of those things are actually really good and other things are like, meh, maybe not necessary, but the pressure is there to provide or accomplish things on behalf of our families.
Regardless. And so I just wanted to ask you, like, if we strip all that back to its kind of basic form, like what do our kids actually need from us?
Chris Bruno
Mm-hmm. I I you said the word provided several times and even in the question. And I just want to start with something I'll say to dads all the time, and that is that provision is not parenting. Because it's this idea that if the dad of the house, the father house, provides for their needs and makes sure that they have clothes in their back and food on the table, right, and a bed to sleep in, then he has done his job. And
And a lot of times, especially when I'm talking with men, and they're saying, like, I grew up in a good family, my dad was hardworking or he provided for my needs, and I just want to go like, and you know, so provision is part of it, but it's not the fullness of what parenting actually actually is. And I think there's a the the challenge I think a lot of men have is that that kind of provision can be measured. And
Cody Buriff
No.
Chris Bruno
parenting cannot be measured. Right.
Cody Buriff
Yeah.
Chris Bruno
Really
it's really easy to go like I have this much money that I'm bringing in and I and you have a square meal every day, like you know, like that kind of a thing. But we can't measure the impact of what else we bring in our fathering as much as we can in the provision space. So it is a little bit easier to kind of just check the box and go like I did that check. And so then, you know, I have discharged the duties of my ministry to my children, right? Like this is this is the end of this is the end of what is required of
Cody Buriff
Yeah. Okay, so that just that just makes me wonder. Here's my sense, right? And maybe I'm wrong about this, but my sense is that this generation of dads intuitively kind of know that to a degree, but they only also only know what they received for the most part. And there's a gap there between just the provision, which they kinda know isn't actually the answer because it wasn't good enough for them. It wasn't what they actually needed. But then
The not really sure and and couple with that unable to measure the success of whether or not they're doing that that is needed, you know. And I wonder if that's some of the like cloudy lostness that a lot of dads are feeling today.
Chris Bruno
Mm. I totally think you're right. And that cloudly lostness is the difference between, you know, the hose water as we were talking about before. You need more you actually needed more than that, because involved in that there was some there was some absence of your dad probably and this idea of lack of measurement. So so I would I would say this, Cody, and that is that what our children but more than our provision. Now don't hear me say that I think provision is a bad thing. I think we do need to have that as part of what we are
What we are doing, but more than our provision for our children, it is our presence to our children. And that is not like presence with a T, like a gift, right? It is the presence in me being there, them having access to me. And that involves a whole bunch of things. But at the end of the day, does the child know that they actually have the face of their father?
And then when they need his face, they can find his face for them. And I mean, I can think about just, you know, a whole there's lots of movies about this, but there are children that are highly connected to their fathers and they don't have enough of the things. They don't have enough of the provision. and that is actually the most important thing is to do the provision for the soul more than the provision for the body.
And the provision for the soul comes in offering your face to your child, offering your presence to your child.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. I it's funny. A couple of years ago I spoke at our our local elementary school. My daughter was still attending there and they had an all pro dads thing, like chapter. And so dads would come, there would be donuts or whatever, and then you come with your kid and anyway there's a speaker. So anyway, I spoke on the topic at Christmas time, your kids need your presence with a C, not with a T. Your kids need your presence with a C. Yeah.
Totally good stuff. And we don't realize that. We don't think about it. And and there's so many things that pull our our C presence away. And then so many of us try to supplement that or make up for it with the presence with the T.
Chris Bruno
Yeah. Buying their affection in many ways, buying our right to access to them.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, and it doesn't work.
Chris Bruno
Doesn't
work. Yeah. Well, it does for a little bit until until that until that thing wears out and then they want them. Next thing next thing absolutely.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Bruno
And and yet we as dads, we spend so much time and effort to just try to make ends meet a lot of times. And there's a lot of strain on a man just to do the physical provision.
that most of the time there is a like an energy suck on the possibility for him to actually be present with them at the end of the day. Yeah. You know, just the level of exhaustion. And this goes for moms too, I would say, but
Cody Buriff
Absolutely.
Chris Bruno
it's it's both sides of things. We have to make sure that we are aware of that and try as best we can to keep a balance. Cause at the end of the day, the kids are going to want, you know, when they're adults and they're sitting around talking about us dads.
Right. When they're thirty and they're talking about us on the podcast, right, that they're gonna look back. They're not gonna say, Hey, I wish I had, you know, one more thing or I wish I had one more set of clothes that, you know, really rounded out my wardrobe. No, they're gonna wish that they had more of you.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, totally. I firmly believe that our kids would trade all of the gifts, all of the extravagant, whatever, and probably even some of the like necessary provision if it meant they got our faces and our in our presence with a sea. Yeah.
Chris Bruno
Yes, yes, yes. Cause that's what forms them. That's what changes them. That's what we all want. And I would say that each one of us is born into the world with a father hunger that will just as much as a body hunger needs to be fed each day, the father hunger needs to be fed each day. And having just as much attention to their father hunger and their, you know, soul hunger as you do to their physical hunger.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. Could you give like a couple words as to why that's important? Like why that is?
Chris Bruno
so much of our understanding of ourselves comes through our primary caregivers. And it's more like, and this gets a little bit into like the neurology of things, but our neurology is formed by our relationships. It's not formed by information, it's formed by our relationships. And so we learn how to navigate the world and how to be in the situations, how to be in relationships.
How to know who I am and who you are and who we are through the relational development of our neurobiology. And so as a parent, a caregiver of a child, the children are looking to you to know who they are and how safe they are and what is right, what is wrong, not in in always like the moral black and white, but like, do I have the freedom to be this kind of person that I feel inside?
Or do I need to change who I am on the inside to be who you need me to be? You know, that kind of thing. So there's so much formation that happens when a child has their parents' face. And I think particularly with dads, that there is this deep, deep hunger inside of a child's heart for his words that speak into who he believes them to be. That there is, you know.
Back to some of the things just that pulled from scripture where Jesus actually hears from God, like, you are my beloved son, right? Whom I love and whom I am pleased that you as a father are regularly filling up the soul of your child by saying, You belong to me. You have a place here. In this place, you have a home. Secondly, you have my affection, right? Whom I love.
My affection is on you. I see who you are and I love you. I adore you. And then the third is not only do I love you, but I delight in you. I love seeing you do XYZ. And yes, I want to watch you do another flip on the trampoline. And yes, I want to see your, your coloring, you know, book page. And yes, I want to see your straight A's on your report card. And yes, I want to see what you can do on your bike. Like all the things I delight in your delight of the
That all of that stuff needs to come from us. And that can only come from us when we are present and when we are actually there with our eyes to see who they are. and if if we're only thinking about the provision of the body, then we're missing the biggest part of the formation of our child, and that is the provision of their soul, like I just mentioned.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. It's good. We're gonna do another podcast here in a few weeks on the power of words and what our kids need to hear from us. So that was a good teaser.
Chris Bruno
There we go.
Cody Buriff
let me ask you, Chris, about these three words in particular. So there are three words that I feel like we throw around a lot. I hear get thrown around a lot in this kind of space.
And they can get conflated and kinda confused a little bit. So if you can provide a little bit of clarity around these, it'd be really helpful, I think, for a lot of guys. So there is the word attention. Mm-hmm. There's the word intention. And there's the word attunement.
Chris Bruno
Hm. Okay. Yes.
Cody Buriff
I know what order you want to go in.
But those three words get thrown around a lot and sometimes we think they mean the same thing, but they actually don't.
Chris Bruno
Okay, right. And I think all I think, yeah, we do need all three. And I think I would start with a third one, attunement. Okay. Cause I I really think that attunement is the foundation of attention and intention. You can't have attention and intention without first having attunement. So let me describe attunement. So attunement really is where even just taking the word, you are tuning in to the inner life of your child.
That there is something about seeing them, being aware of them, having a sense of them, knowing what their happy face is, knowing what their sad face is, knowing what their hurt face is, knowing what their hiding face is, like knowing them, tuning into all of who they are and kind of noting that for yourself, being aware of that. And there's so much, Cody, that gets in our way of attunement with our kids.
it's almost like there's, you know, the world is wanting to jam the radio frequencies and just getting our attention, right? Getting it pulling us away, pulling us out into other things to where, it's j you know, he just had a hard day, or I've got something big at work happening. And so I or I'm not getting along with my wife right now, or something that gets me away from tuning into the heart of our child. And that is sad and that's a real thing.
It's a real thing.
Cody Buriff
Our course is like opposed to them. That are next
Chris Bruno
Yeah. There I love how you just said that there are forces that oppose that is that are opposed to them. And it's it's not only, you know, just kind of general things. There are general things, but there are forces, and I would even say evil forces that want us to not be tuned in in order to keep us and our children in a relational desert in isolation and in distance. And doesn't want us to have that connection. So attunement is vital.
for us to be that kind of present father that we just talked about a minute ago. So that is the first place I'd start was is with attunement.
Cody Buriff
Yeah, so you actually do need to move the radio dial a little bit to tune into like you're tuning into a radio station like you know, the old school kinda
With the dials and you do actually need to h intentionally attune to your kids and pay attention in that way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Chris Bruno
Okay.
And I want to say too that the fact that you might be on one radio station and your child is on another radio station doesn't mean that someone's right or wrong. It means that you are looking for them. You're searching. You're kind of, I am trying to find where you are. And it is the responsibility of the parent to find the child, not the responsibility of the child to find the parent.
Yes. And so that tuning in is my task as the dad to find my child.
Cody Buriff
Those big words. Very important.
Chris Bruno
Yeah.
Cody Buriff
I don't know how to state that hard more intentionally, but that's that's a significant thing you just said. Yeah. our job.
Chris Bruno
I say that, Cody, because I hear a lot of dads that are like, I don't never know where they are and I never know what's happening. I never and I'm like, That's on you, buddy. Like you do the work and and not to not to shame him, 'cause I've been in that place too, but it is incumbent on us to find our kids. huh.
Cody Buriff
And it's not always easy.
Chris Bruno
It's mostly not easy.
Cody Buriff
Right, yes. That's that's a better way to put it.
Chris Bruno
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So then after attunement, I would jump into attention. Okay. That has to do with your eyes to give them. I'm not only gonna be tuning into you, but I'm gonna actually look at you and let you know that I am looking at you. I I remember being on the football field with my son and he was in middle school and he was on the football team.
And they had done some several different plays. They were losing the game. And he was kind of he was in the middle of the play. And he reached out his hand. The quarterback threw threw the ball to him. He reached out his hand. He plucked it out of the air. He, you know, grabbed it snugly to his chest and ran like the whatever it was, six feet or or whatever into the end zone. And then he got piled on and all that kind of stuff. And it, you know,
And it didn't win the game necessarily, but it was like the play of the game. He comes out from the pile and instantly, instantly, he wasn't looking at his teammates who were wanting to high five him. He wasn't looking at the coach to see if there was approval there. He was looking for my eyes. He wanted to know did I see that moment there? And for a split second only.
We locked eyes, he saw that I saw him, and then he went on and high fived and you know all the things with his team and whatever. But it is so important, and I know this in my own life, like it is so important for us, for our children to know that they have our eyes. I am not sitting in the stands on my phone or in a conversation with the other parents around me where I miss the play. I am locked in to you.
And I see you because you are worth me seeing and being noticed. So that is a question, right? That is giving our children our eyes.
Cody Buriff
That feels very important. And frankly, as a dad of a middle schooler and two high schoolers, in this day and age with cell phones, like it's actually really hard. Like I go to concerts. They're my kids aren't into sports, but they're into music. So I'm going to concerts all the time. And what I'll see, what I'll notice, and and what I frankly participate in half the time is like I'm taking video with my phone. Uh-huh.
So I'm not actually watching them, I'm watching the screen that's watching them to make sure that I get good video that nobody's ever gonna see or care about, right?
Chris Bruno
we didn't have time.
Cody Buriff
Right. you know, and so if they ever glance at me and in some way and I'm doing that, they're not actually ever getting my eyes in that way. and there's no replacement for that. Yeah. You know, and and and that's that's like, you know, not a necessarily like excusable, but that's like a nice way to do the other time, sometimes I'm like on my phone answering an email or something.
And I need to be watching, but I'm not because it's right there and I'm a little bit bored, 'cause let's be honest, like our kids things aren't always like incredibly entertaining for us.
Chris Bruno
Track meets especially are the death were the death of it. Five hours of sitting there waiting for the thirty seconds that
Cody Buriff
Right.
this this is kind of the first generation of dads who have like and and maybe not quite the first generation, but like we're in the space of fathers with phones that they like to steal our eyes. And it is real hard to figure out how to mitigate that effectively. Yeah. So just naming the struggle, I'm part of it.
Chris Bruno
And I think the other part of the struggle is on the other side of that is that a lot of our kids have phones. Their eyes are not there to be met. And so the their attention is somewhere else. And again, I will put it on us dads to create the environments where we are f without phones, without screens, without whatever, and we're just doing things, whether it's tinkering in the garage or doing something on the
you know, on the tr hike on the trail or skipping rocks you know, on the river or just sitting around, you know, playing a board game. There's something about creating the environments where we can give our attention that we want to give and have it be received on the kids' end. So I think both of those are really important. I think attention, you know, and even in the last several decades, like ADD and ADHD is attention deficit.
I think all of us have a significant engagement with that. We are all we all have a deficit of attention to some degree. So then moving from attunement to attention in that is then intention. Intention, if attention is with the eyes, intention is like I was saying earlier with the face. It is, I am here, I am fully engaged with you. And then it goes one step deeper.
to and I have a plan. I have a vision. I see who you are kind of down the corridor of time. I see the man or woman that you're becoming, and I have a plan to help move you in that direction. And it goes back to what we were saying earlier about provision. And it's not just to feed you enough food to make you grow up into an adult. You know, it's I have an intention for your internal formation so that your your soul if can continue to
mature at the rate that your body is. That intention is so, so important to be followed up with an actual plan. It's not enough to intend to buy your wife flowers. it is not
Cody Buriff
Ha ha ha.
Chris Bruno
intend to take out the trash or intend to, you know, put your clothes in the paper. It has to go from that
thought, that internal thought into action, which requires then having that vision and plan to go with it. But it is, it is something inside of you as a dad more than it is something that is between you as a father and a child. The attention is between you, but the intention is inside of you on what you're doing to grow them into the adult.
Cody Buriff
good. That's good. Okay, so I'm aware there are plenty of dads out there probably listening to this who feel to some degree or another they've missed the boat. Or they've messed it up. And first I would say like welcome.
Chris Bruno
I'm raising my hand, yes.
Cody Buriff
Like
none of us are Jesus. We've all messed it up a little bit, right? so let's just first of all make that real. And like we want to see something change in that reality. We don't want to be messing it up. We want to be actually moving towards getting it more right. You know, and so maybe there's some damage to repair, maybe there's just like a future to build. But what would you say, what are some things that a man today, a father today, you know, regardless of whether his kids are two years old or twenty-two years old.
can do to help his child feel seen, known, enjoyed. Yeah.
Chris Bruno
You know, I think you named it briefly there for a second. And it was just like, I need to own the reality that I have missed you. That piece is where all of repair starts. So if you are that dad, like if you're like Cody and me, you know, then ownership, and this is not to increase your level of guilt. It's not to cast any shame, but your ownership as the parent, as the adult, creates the bridge back.
Relationship with your child. So, you know, if they're two or 22, there's a big gap there, obviously. So with a two year old, you can start to say, like, you know, hey, daddy missed you, you know, or I'm sorry, daddy didn't see you. If you're talking to a 22 year old, your conversation's going to be a lot different, but it still starts with I can own the reality that multiple times throughout your life, I have not seen you. I have not given you my attention.
I have not tuned into your heart. And I can own that. I can see the impact of that. And I am so sorry.
Cody Buriff
Yeah.
Chris Bruno
Right. That is the beginning. That ownership is where we have to begin, whether however old our kids are. And then again, depending on how old they are and how deep the hurt is and how bad it has been, right? There may be some need for some space. There may be need be need for some opportunity for them to kind of come back.
To you after that. But by and large, I would say that kids in their resilience and in their father hunger love know your ownership is opening the door back to your heart. And that is all that they've ever wanted is access to you in their heart. And so there will be, I would imagine that most kids will have a sense of pretty quick responsiveness to a father whose heart is now open to them.
To be welcomed back in. So there's that piece. And then after that, or alongside of that, there is the learning on the Father's part how to be more aware, how to have his eyes open. It will require some level of repentance. And I say that word, yes, there may be sin involved, but I mean there might be some transformation. There might be some change. There might need to be some willingness to go like, I have missed.
This part of my life. I want to grow in this. I want to have some brothers that I practice with, or I want to, you know, ask my wife to gently let me know when she feels my distance so that I can come back and learn. Or you might want to do some counseling. I don't mean I don't know what you need to do in that area, but it is some step of I am going to learn how to change and grow in this area. So
Those things, you know, you said some great words there to feel seen, to feel known, to feel enjoyed. In the world of in some psychological terms, there's you know, to feel seen, safe, soothed, and secure. And that is those four things are what every single child longs for. And attunement and attention and the things we've talked about here set up the stage for those things to happen. So
Cody Buriff
That's good.
Chris Bruno
Yeah.
Cody Buriff
I know we want to wrap up soon. So I don't want to like take us down a whole nother rabbit trail, but
Chris Bruno
No, we might.
Cody Buriff
I'm wondering if there is a degree to which dads who are starting to realize some of the myth. And then starting to learn how to actually attune and have you know offer attention and intentionality.
I wonder if there's a degree to which there is a an exploration needed of the why that has been unavailable. And I'm I'm wondering if some of that exploration is okay, what are the things outside of me that are keeping me from being able to be present with a C? Well, you know what I mean, presence with a C in the way that I would want to. But then I wonder if there's also an inner excavation of
What are some of the things that are that I never received, maybe that set up some patterns of interaction and healing in those types of ways that also then once you're aware of some of that, I feel like you're far more well tooled to actually then turn your face to your children.
Chris Bruno
yes. Yes. I mean, that is a big rabbit hole that we could go down. I think totally I think you said it really well, Cody. And that is, I'll just put it this way, that what the father story that was written for us doesn't have to be this father story that we write for our children. And we can only write a different story for our children when we read our own father's story first and do the internal work that is there of those whys, right?
What is happening inside of me? How did I get the narrative inside of me that I am only as good as my paycheck or that I am only as good as how much I provide? What about my emotional vulnerability do I need to be aware of? What about my own fear, anxiety, relational disconnect? You know, whatever it is, what are the stories that are underneath all of that? And so for us to hope to write a different father story for our kids, we have to do, I think your word was great, the excavation.
Of what has gone on inside of me, and that is part and parcel of being a father.
Cody Buriff
Yeah. That's good. I love the way you put that. The to write a new father story for our kids, we first have to understand the father's story that we've lived.
Chris Bruno
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Cody Buriff
Good. Good.
Well, Chris, this has been awesome. I think I'd summarize it by saying what our kids most need from us is our presence with a C. They need our attunement, our attention and intention, which we laid out pretty well. And for those things to happen, we probably need to understand ourselves and understand what's going on and own the reality of it. And then it's on us to give it to them.
Chris Bruno
It is on us. And not to make light of this, but I also think they need to play with us also. Like they need the need the space to just be kids and let us be kids with them and to have all that not in these deep serious conversations, but to go outside and get the hose and spray them down or, you know, whatever and just go play.
Cody Buriff
Sometimes yeah, sometimes that that attuning to their radio station, we realize, they're putting out fun vibes.
Chris Bruno
Fun bye.
Cody Buriff
And we need a little dance party right now. Or you know, sometimes that intentionality is going out like you said and and soaking them or whatever, right? That's good. That's good. They do need us to play with them for sure. That's cool. All right. Well, let's wrap it up, Chris.
Chris Bruno
Good to move with you, Cody.
Cody Buriff
Good to be with you. Guys, thanks for listening. Thanks for jumping on here and and being with us. Leave us a rating wherever you're listening would be super helpful. And we'll see you around next time. Okay. All right,
Chris Bruno
Take care.
Cody Buriff
see ya.