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Stories, experiences and advice about fatherhood.
This is an AI-generated transcript.
Because of how we recorded this episode, the speakers are not assigned properly. Consider this a loose approximation of the audio file:
Michael Williams (00:04.181)
Welcome to DadPod. I'm Mike. And I'm Luke. We're friends here in Madison, and we both have kids. And at least for us, becoming a dad has been transformational. We talk to all sorts of dads in all sorts of situations to learn from their unique challenges, lessons, and evolutions. The goal is simple. Learn from each other to become better dads. If you dig it, please find us on Apple or Spotify.
click follow. That single click helps put us in front of more dads, which Luke would really appreciate.
Michael Williams (00:40.75)
today's discussion, we're going to be diving into a theme around how our dads influence the way we father our own kids. And we're going to talk about this from our own experience. What we've kept with us, learned from our dads, what we've discarded and how we're dealing with problems that maybe our dads never had to deal with when they were figuring out how to be our parent. It's a big topic. We're going to cover a lot, a lot of ground today. As a reminder,
No one here is pretending to be an expert. We're here because we're curious, we're engaged, and most importantly, we want to be better dads. So today we're joined by Dave Grandinetti. I should start with the fact that Dave is in fact my cousin and we grew up together in good old upstate New York. He's a bit older than me and growing up, I used to idolize him like crazy. To make it even worse, he was a really good lacrosse player, ended up playing lacrosse in college.
And a very talented programmer, self -taught throughout most of his youth growing up. Today, Dave lives with his partner in New York city with their daughter and son. And he leads a team at Yahoo focused on some of Yahoo's most iconic applications, which we may or may not talk about. Dave loves getting feedback from me and my brother on all things Yahoo. But most importantly, and why.
we're super excited about this conversation is Dave is intensive, curious and thoughtful as a dad. Dave. Thank you for having me. That's a great introduction. I know you didn't miss anything. I'm glad that you referenced it with where we're, you know, not experts because one of the things that that's kind of been a theme for my fatherhood and parenting is this feeling of an imposter syndrome, you know, which I'm
I'm assuming everybody has, but maybe it's just me.
Michael Williams (02:46.19)
We think that there might be some grandfathers out there who could legitimately not be suffering from imposter syndrome. So we might get some of them on the podcast, but it's like, once you get good at something, you know, it's onto the next. As they say. Cool. So let's jump right in. So maybe start Dave, what was it like growing up with your dad? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's. It was such an interesting, I had a lot of freedom as a kid.
And I don't know if that's something that's just changed in general, but I remember even from third grade, I had, I had a key to get in the house. So I would come home from school and I was in charge of myself until dinner time. And that was kind of back in the era of you go do whatever you want. Just if you're not going to be home for dinner, call and tell us where you're eating. that was a big part of.
My childhood was just having that freedom to go out and play in the woods and catch crayfish and swimming and, you know, all kinds of things. Even going back younger, my father, he was, he was a pilot. Like an aviator, first and foremost, he was, he flies hot air balloons, fixed wing aircraft, multi -engine aircraft, jets. He flies. We had a helicopter.
in our backyard.
Michael Williams (04:20.781)
Like a surplus army helicopter. And I remember one of my first jobs was mowing the yard. This was when we were kind of a bit more rural and younger. I would mow the yard and he'd have to fly the helicopter so I could mow underneath it. He'd go around the neighborhood. So I have a lot of memories from when I was really young going with him. One of his first jobs, actually the place that he met my mother was he was a skydiving instructor.
So I have these memories of going in the plane with him. I swear I was in my pajamas. You know, my onesie, my zip up onesie with Winnie the Pooh on the on the front and a little bag of Cheerios. And they opened the door to the plane for people to jump out. And they actually they kind of tip it over to nudge people out. And he's like, yeah, you'd run over and grab me just so you didn't fall out. I was like, OK, so you let me just.
wander around an open cockpit while we're going skydiving and I mean Cheerios. So that was, that was kind of the, the foundation of it. My, my father, he did not graduate from college. So he was not academically inclined, but he was, I would say very successful. He, in terms of, he always had a number of companies, projects.
gigs going on and it was just he was good. He was clever at it. He was good. You know, he he had a number of things that he made for hot air balloons where it was something, you know, you get you get licensed to make this one specific part and he's the only person in the world that can make it. So out of our basement, he would ship things out to Switzerland and all around the world. So he was he was mechanically inclined. He would build things. Yeah, that guy on Shopify. So he really helped me kind of
get comfortable doing mechanical things. But I was also thinking this week in terms of. There's a there's this kind of there's a quadrant that I remember reading about, you know, quadrant chart and one of these parenting books that I read where it's like the top right is high expectation, high support. The bottom is low expectation, low support. I think that academically he was like a low support kind of guy. Low expectations, low support.
Michael Williams (06:48.718)
Cause I don't think he saw the value in a higher education. My mom was totally the opposite. She, she's like, I don't care what you do. You go play lacrosse, you know, I led the team in concussions when he says I'm a good lacrosse player. That's the stat I had that.
Received delivered or received. I was really good at landing on my head. It's hard to track the other one. But she's like, I don't care what you do. You're going to get a liberal arts education so you learn how to think for yourself and learn how to teach yourself. So I had two very conflicting parents. They they got divorced when I was three or four, somewhere in that range. And I guess it's odd, especially for the time.
My father got full custody of me. So I was a young kid living with my father. He, like I said, the freedom was partly, he was kind of a workaholic. He, to this day, I still talk to him and you know, what's going on? He's like, well, I get phone calls at 5 a to go fix an airplane somewhere. And he just, he's off to do it.
Michael Williams (08:00.654)
So I don't know. I don't know where I was going with that. But I had two very different parents is kind of the crux of it. Well, it sounds like, yeah, and two very different parents, but both pretty serious about what they believed in. Right. Like they're both pretty dedicated to their set of values. They are both very dedicated to it, to probably a point of stubbornness. I can see traits that I get, and I don't know if it's from my father or from my environment, but I...
I have a hard time. I either want to be working really hard or doing nothing at all. I have a real problem with anything in between. I have anxiety on the weekends because I don't know what to do. And I really embrace that. When I was younger, I had a lot of jobs that were just really physical jobs. I grew up working in restaurants in the kitchen and you know, those are exhausting jobs. The beauty is at the end of the day, you're just done and you can
turn off, there's no reports, there's no emails. I really liked that. I really kind of did pretty well with that. Just, all right, we might have, work like a 20 hour day sometimes. And that was, it felt good. Do you look back on the freedom that you had and bouncing around a open cockpit? Do you look back on that fondly? Do you, you know, what is your, with the
a little bit of benefit of, of distance. You're a parent now. What bubbles up for you when you take yourself back through the narrative of that time of life? That's a great question. There's good and there's bad. I recognize that my father didn't have, he had different tools. He had a set of tools that he was comfortable with. and he did a good job with that. One of the things I really love that he did.
So we used to go to balloon festivals, hot air balloon festivals that are, you know, on the weekends. And he'd take me, he'd actually pull me out of school for a lot of those. And he had to work. He was doing stuff, fixing balloons, flying. So he had like a little kid running around in Wellsville, New York or Glens Falls, New York, or wherever we were that weekend. And one of the things he did, because he's got that entrepreneurial mind, he set me up with a business when I was eight or nine years old.
Michael Williams (10:25.55)
So he set me up with a business. I sold balloon pins, like the little pins that you might see on a backpack out of our truck. And that was a fantastic thing that, you know, he saw that that was something he could set up. He just bought the materials for it and said, here, go ahead. This is your business. Run it. And basically that was his way to, he knew where I was. I was in the truck and
For me, it was in sixth grade and I could make two or $300 on a weekend. That was a fantastic thing. So that part of it, I remember fondly. I remember being very bored a lot, sometimes go into, you know, he'd go fix airplanes. I have one really specific memory of he was working on a Learjet and it was all taken apart. There was no seats or anything. And I was in the cockpit pretending I was.
you know, flying into space and just started flipping switches. At some point, it actually turned the plane on. So the engine that he was working on started spinning up and like four guys came rushing up to the cockpit saying, no, no, no. All right here, go play with this wrench.
Michael Williams (11:43.918)
But that part of it, I mean, I had - In a brutal quadruple homicide. I think, I mean, I really enjoyed the traveling and just kind of literally negotiating with people about like, here, I'll give you a deal. Four for $20 and I'll throw this one in for free. That ended up kind of leading into, I worked as a bartender for quite some time after that. I had all these sort of service
service oriented jobs where I would interact with people. I got a lot of experience of that really young. And I think that I feel grateful for that. For that. I do. I mean, the flip side of this was because he was work oriented and didn't have a great relationship or understanding of school. He, he was not incredibly supportive around.
He wasn't the guy that was gonna show up at my lacrosse games. Which I still kind of... I sort of flip -flop on that because I'm like, well, I didn't play a lot. So maybe that's not a terrible thing, but that's not a... You know, I can't say that to my kids. I can't be like, well, unless you're starting, I'm not gonna come. I think that'd be a deal breaker with my wife. So there's good and bad. I'm trying to think about how it shaped me as who I am.
I think all the freedom really, especially little things like I love to cook. I really enjoy cooking and I've one of my, I guess, superpowers. My, my family has told me is they're like, you can take any leftovers we have and make a new dish with it. And a lot of that came from, I, when I was a kid and I'd come home from school, I'd, I'd start just making stuff. You know, I found a, I found a stack of wonton wrappers one time and I'm like, we're just, this one's got peanut butter and jelly. We're going to deep fry it. This one's got.
You know, we're putting this one in the toaster with tomato sauce and cheese. I had to either try it on my own or fail. And this was, we didn't have the internet back then. So there was no, let's Google what are a hundred things we can do with wonton wrappers. Maybe to, to shift a little bit into your own, you know, you're yourself as a dad. How do you describe the major parts of how you're trying to be a father to build on? Yeah. And your experience with your own dad.
Michael Williams (14:08.782)
I, my dad was much more authoritarian than my approach. I mean, I practice an approach where I, I don't lie to my kids. I will tell them the truth that they might not want to hear, but I want to treat them with respect and basically treat them like a small adult.
Honesty and transparency is a big part of our approach.
And recognizing that we're still learning about this. So I think one of the other big areas that I kind of diverged from my dad is I'm constantly looking for new tools. My partner and I, we have a parenting coach, which is, you know, we have, we, we see therapists, we see coaches for so many other parts of our lives. And we, it wasn't a concept I even thought about until someone mentioned and we're like, of course.
Of course we would. Yes. That's the most complicated thing we do. Of course we would talk to a coach. So we found someone that aligns with our beliefs and we check in with them. Right. It's not a, it's not like therapy. It's not every other Tuesday. It's whenever we have a list of things that are, we need to address, we check in with, with our coach and get some outside perspective. What does that look like? Are they, you go in and you have your list of things and then are they
giving advice? Are they kind of how is the coach helping you? Yeah, we go in with a list of things. It might be, okay, the 12 year old got a phone. How do we manage that? Or, you know, specific concerns we have the three year old. man, it took her forever to get potty trained. We go talk to her. We set up a time we, and she'll point us to literature, literature. She'll point us to things that she knows might resonate with, with kind of our approach.
Michael Williams (16:13.934)
She'll have just from her experience of talking to other people and from her experience in reading and kind of just experience, she'll be able to point us to most of it is just like, you're on the right track. Just, just relax. So are they kind of like a curator or a guide of here's where you might find the solution? Yeah. Rather than saying this is how to solve the problem. She's not prescriptive. She's, yeah, she's a, she's a partner.
And this, so she mostly, I mean, I think of it in terms of like dog training. So I remember training our dogs years ago and going to the trainer and it's like, can you train my dog? And he's like, I don't train the dog. I train you. You train the dog. You're the one that has the relationship with the dog. It's the same kind of thing. It's, it's, she's not here to fix our kids. It's she's here to ask questions that help us that maybe we're not thinking about. She's here to help guide the framework for.
how we approach solving a specific problem. That's really what I would say is we, we have a similar framework for thinking. And so she ends up being really useful in any conversation we have. I've heard you describe, sorry, go ahead. I had never thought of a coach for parenting before. And it just, once you said it's like, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. That's a really interesting and cool.
concept. So what I've heard you say in terms of the core parts of your being a dad or being a father, I think what you started with is honesty, transparency, you know, perhaps telling your kids the truth, even they don't want to hear it. I think it sounds like you're very intentional with being a dad and how you want to like it is something you think about versus something you don't think about. And I think the third thing is
And maybe this is nested under the second item here is you're constantly seeking support input guidance via a coach. And I imagine that's probably one of multiple avenues that you're looking to improve. What else? What else are the major parts of your, of kind of your, your framework? I mean, another big part of it is, Natasha and I talking about our childhood and, you know, having this exact conversation.
Michael Williams (18:42.382)
You know, she's like, I remember my parents did this and I really hated it. I'm like, me too. Let's never do that. And it can be little things like. We.
purposely been trying to invite more people over. You know, I, we both remember how exciting it was as kids to have guests, to have friends come over and visit. And it was like, let's just, we can do that. That's a really easy thing. We can set up our house to be good hosts and make it not stressful. And a lot of this stuff is just, you find a thing that's stressful that you realize is going to be good for the kids. And it's only stressful because you don't do it. So we, we have all the, you know, it's like,
exercising that muscle that makes you comfortable doing something and really having a lot of communication between my partner and I about what are the parts of this that you find that give you anxiety and let's practice that. Like going to the playground. Going to the playground was a hugely stressful thing for me for so long. It's very competitive, especially like a busy playground. There's
and there's nannies and some people are just on their phone and it's like your kid bit my kid. It's like the dog park, you know, the same conversation. Your kid bit my kid. It's like, no they didn't.
Michael Williams (20:05.742)
so yeah, communication with, with my partner about making sure that we're aligned and kind of what we're, what we're doing to the kids, what we're inflicting upon the kids and our beliefs. We really try to slow down any decisions that we think might have repercussion. And this is weird. We're, we're both, or have been both managers at one time or another in our careers and kind of slowing down like
You know, we're okay. We're creating a new policy or rule. What's the repercussions of this? How will people abuse it? It's all the same stuff. It's really everything I have learned about. There's three areas of learning that have kind of all come together. Parenting, managing people and training dogs. I have a set of books about those that there's so much overlap that I find it just like, yeah, it's, you know, training dogs is a lot of that stuff transfers to managing people.
managing people, transfers to having kids. One of the things you mentioned that as a newer parent, I had not realized before is how important the partner communication is. You know, parenting is not just you to the child. It's perhaps more so
how your relationship with your partner evolves to be a parenting unit. How did, how was your relationship impacted? And, you know, it sounds like you put in a lot of work together. What has that evolution been like for you? Honestly, it was, it was really hard for me. I was for the greater part of my life, a bachelor, more or less. I'd lived alone for
long time and I would I would I think at one point I just got up and left and moved to England for several years. So when I met my partner, she also has a son from a previous marriage. So I my first experience parenting was being a stepfather, which has its own incredible challenges. We actually work. We're good friends with
Michael Williams (22:26.702)
My son's father. So he, you know, he was over for dinner the other night. He's over for dinner maybe once every week or so. So we actually work pretty well as a group. But for me, it was this transition from. I have no restrictions. You know, if I need to leave the country, I ask someone to water the plant once a month to now I'm responsible for co -parenting with one person or maybe two people. Sometimes it was really tough and just getting comfortable like.
I under communicate constantly is the feedback that I get and the
just saying like, over communicate. You should be over communicating. It should feel like you're over communicating was the constant feedback I got from both my partner and our parenting coach and my therapist and other parents that I talked to. That was, it was really tough for me. And it kind of, it becomes more important as the kids get older. It's, there's different stages of it. When it's, when they're very young, it's just like about the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy.
It's like, make sure that they're fed and clothed and warm and, you know, sleeping properly. We have a super sleep regiment that we've stuck to for years that ended up being really helpful. But as they get older, we've got a nanny, sometimes two nannies. And what we find is we actually have to communicate amongst all of us because at some point this little kid starts figuring out that like, I could drive a wedge in between you and mommy or you.
And the nanny and kind of, they will push so hard. She had, she doesn't have a job. Three year old. This is literally what she can think about 24 seven is how do I get more candy? How do I get more screen time? You know, and you hear, you start to hear like, she'll ask me a question. I'm like, well, what I'm, I'm working. Why are you asking me if you can watch TV? What did, what did the nanny say? And, and, you know, so we actually.
Michael Williams (24:33.006)
comes more important to communicate about even these little trivial things. Yeah, I think that that's super. Sounds like you there's an opportunity for a button business for your three year old, maybe out of the back of a van or something like that. The nearest. Yeah, we've sent her to the park now. Keep her busy. So I don't know what kids want stickers. Kids want stickers. Band -aids. Band -aids. Pogs. We still do Pogs and Magic cards.
So this this starts to parlay, I think, into another interesting area, which which I think, you know, for myself, I think a lot about. But what do you think are some of the big problems that you
big problems that you're dealing with today that your dad didn't have to deal with. And then what are some of the strategies you're using to work on those problems? And one of the ways I think about this is problems where we have intuition and can therefore probably move pretty quickly versus problems we really have to solve from the ground up, which can feel slow. Yeah. Yeah. How are you, what are some of those problems and how are you tackling them? That's interesting. You say problems that we didn't have back then. I had very few limits.
So there's basic things that I think, you know, like I don't think I had a bedtime and I, you know, maybe I should have, but the big ones right now are screen time. Our older son just got a cell phone. That was a huge thing. And we actually, it was, he at one point said that he was the only one in his class that didn't have a phone. And my wife was like, no, that can't be.
So see message their WhatsApp group and sure enough, he's the only kid that doesn't have a phone. And the thing that put us over the tipping point was that he said they did a secret Santa at school and he was the only kid that didn't do it because they organized it over the WhatsApp group for the other kids in the class. So that was an interesting thing. I don't think we would have gotten him a phone if there wasn't social repercussions to it.
Michael Williams (26:42.83)
Like that. That is. That's something my father didn't have to deal with. I think while I lived there, it was more or less pre -internet. And maybe we had CompuServe or AOL or one of these things that nobody will recognize these days. That social media, social influence. I think that's, I'm more worried about what that looks like for my daughter than my.
than our son. And I think that's what we've that's the feedback we've gotten from other people we've talked to is like, social media is boys are still boys. They they push each other. They like, you know, make fun of each other to their face. But from everything I've read is like social media is kind of designed to feed upon like girls attacking each other while they're, you know, figuring out what it means to be a person. So I'm really worried about that.
Most of the stuff, it just hasn't been around long enough for what there's no long -term research. So everything you read a book and then it's like, well, this is from, this is all anecdotal. This is like, and it's going to change in a couple of years. Totally. So most of this stuff, we're kind of, I don't want to stress myself out unnecessarily. So let's put some amount of thinking, we time box a lot of this stuff.
It's like, let's think about this for an hour and then figure out what are the things, what it's like any rules or process we come up with the kids will, they'll destroy it, you know, a week later with something we didn't think about. So we try not to just tailspin and see what happens before we really go any deeper. What is it? Just in time parenting? So I'm hearing a couple of things. One is you, you, you take action when you feel like there's real social repercussions.
heard you say that. I think the other thing I heard you say is you have intentional conversations about this and they're usually time boxed so you don't get deep down the rabbit hole. Are there any other kind of core principles you think you guys are putting to play as you're kind of dealing with and thinking about these newer or more novel problems? There's nothing I can think of now. I mean, the ones you have are pretty good.
Michael Williams (29:07.342)
It generally feels like people, people spend a lot of calories on it. Right. Because I think people are, are, are generally there's, there's a lot of imagined downside because it can't be real. And I think the other thing that we've, you know, that, that we've seen and we've heard is I feel like the comp, one of the big complicating factors is the whole social or community aspect, which is your decision is not an isolation, your decision.
is as part of your child's broader community and their experience there, which is, I think something that as a society, we're not very well set up to deal with. Thinking more about what are the other principles we have. The honesty and transparency kind of extends to having more uncomfortable conversations with, especially with our older kid. So it's not the responsibility of
the health class at school to talk about sex or drugs or bullying or swearing. You know, we teach our kids how to swear. The three year old, she picked it up. The kid. This is like little kids. They just they're sponges. They pick up everything. She swears all the time in a totally appropriate manner. I'm like, you used it correctly. So bravo for that. So things like.
screen time and we don't limit any websites. We like to be able to have open conversations. And I think we want to just make sure that we're there and the kids are comfortable talking to us about every anything so that whenever they have questions, they know they can come to us. So from that perspective, I guess it's just being not just their parent, but being a friend. So open and honestly transparency, I think that totally makes sense to me.
Have you figured out what are the expectations on whether that's reciprocated? As an example, this is a tricky one. I'm completely unresolved, which is like, I know of parents who have access to their kids' accounts, they can see what they're posting, can see what they're texting. Who knows how frequently they're actually looking at it, but how do you think about that? I think that's, we have conversations about this kind of stuff. Our older, he's...
Michael Williams (31:29.646)
This is kind of crazy. He's in seventh grade and they have an open campus so he can, he can go out to lunch if we want. And he's got a watch with Apple cash on it. I get notified every time he buys something. And I'm like, Hey, how was your McDonald's today at 10 22 AM. You have lunch at 10 22 AM. And I know that he shares his location with us. I think we all share our location with each other. And I.
I have no interest in checking in, but we, we kind of are just, we talk about it and it's like, I'm not going to track you. I don't want to know. I know for, for Natasha, that was kind of, she was really concerned about him going out in the city and starting to kind of navigate it himself. So she's like, yeah, we're going to send them for pizza. And I totally want to track him. But, we, yeah, we talk about it.
Michael Williams (32:28.398)
That's cool. What has the reception been with your kids in those discussions and in those principles? It always depends. They can, it depends on what specific topic and everybody's current emotional state. You know, it's like, really, did everybody get enough sleep? Is anybody hungry? If we go beyond a certain point, it's like, all right, we need to take a timeout and talk about this in an hour. Cause people, we get, we really
quickly can get to a point where we're irrational. That's one of, this is one of these meta tools that I don't think my father had in his toolbox. It's not uncommon for us to just say like, you look, I think you two are stuck. I think the two of you should go, you go have a tea, you go play some Nintendo, you know, and let's reconvene in an hour because we're, we're just going in circles. Right.
Michael Williams (33:26.35)
What about with you? Cause I, you know, I was, as you were talking, I was thinking about some of these tricky conversations and you're trying to give, you know, a good amount of freedom to the, to the child. but you can still, I would imagine get pushback about whatever. How do you not get really mad really fast trying to
have that discussion and you really I repeat over and over in my head that their kids, they like the three year old. It's not the director of our kids preschool. She has a saying about they're not giving you a hard time. They're having a hard time. So it's it's like, it's not a
Bitch, she just doesn't have a prefrontal cortex. My daughter's she's going through this phase right now where she like she is just as likely to take something and throw it up in the air as she is to leave it alone. And she's unable to like she sees a record player that the microphone is on here. She's sitting, you know, and we say you can't touch the record player when it's on. And I can see her little brain going.
I need to know what happens if I do the opposite of what they said and she just like scratches it. So we really have to think about, all right, from their perspective, like she doesn't she just doesn't have control. She doesn't she can't handle that. We'll slow it down. I'm actually I'm going to go out to a record store this weekend, get a record that we don't care about. And I'm like, scratch this one. Let's see what happens. Let's see how it sounds. What about with the old? It's harder. It gets harder.
Because he's so stubborn. Yeah. I mean, you're dealing with a way more advanced brain. He can be so stubborn, but we the tools we have with him are that when we cool down, we can talk about it at a meta level. And his ability to recognize, I guess this is what they call social emotional learning now, SEL. It's become a pretty hot topic in schooling. His ability to recognize complex emotions that he's having
Michael Williams (35:50.35)
Maybe not while he's having it, but he can almost always come back at some point and say like, yeah, I was just, I was in a real bad mood. I didn't know what it was, but yeah, my argument was just cause I was mad. So it's slowing down. The argument is one of the best tools that we have and kind of talking about it after the fact. What does that mean, slowing it down? Either just saying we need to take a pause or
One of the tools that I found to be really useful, and this was from our coach. We'd get to a point where, you know, we'd like have an argument and we go, someone says, I can't talk about this now. I got to make dinner. I got to put your sister to sleep. Let's talk about this later. That in itself was a triggering response because later, you know, if you've ever had a dog, later could be infinity. You go out the door for five minutes. I don't know if you're coming back. So what we actually.
did for that was we said, instead of saying, let's talk about this later, we'll say, let's talk about this at nine o 'clock. Let's talk about this tomorrow morning when we walk to school, put a specific time on it. And that has been a simple change that actually made it really easy for us to like, okay, this isn't just going into the ether and we'll never talk about it. It's like, this is scheduled. This is on the calendar. That's the different. Yeah. That's so interesting to hear you say that I have exactly the same trigger. And I think that's the difference of.
feeling like my partner is trying to avoid another question or really honestly saying, I'm not ready to have it right now, but I still want to have it. Yeah. One, a very quick, I love how you talk about tools in the toolbox. I heard this saying and I've been applying it, which is state story, then strategy and
state is like the state of like your internal state. Story is what's the story you're telling yourself and then work on the strategy. But if you don't solve those first two, whatever strategy develops, probably going to be a piece of shit. And that sounds exactly in line with, with what you're, what you're talking about. That's super fascinating. To keep moving. How has your relationship with your dad shifted?
Michael Williams (38:15.694)
And I imagine there's probably a couple big points, you know, with your with your stepson. Yeah. And then again, with your daughter. But how has those how have those two events changed the relationship you've had with your dad? This is tougher for me. I don't have a great relationship with my dad these days. We. When my daughter was born, she was born about a month and a half before the pandemic.
She was born in the December, three months, December. And then in March we went in lockdown. So as soon as she was born, my mother and my aunt were scheming on how to come down and visit and like, you know, like we're going to stay here and we'll take this is how we'll get there. And they were, they were on it. My dad has not visited. I've asked him to come visit and he, he has, he mumbles something about he came to New York and
in 1978 and got his car got broken into. I'm like, well. You can take the train. And it's too hard for me to go visit there. His house is set up for being like an old person, so there's whether he's like a mechanic and a hunter. So it's like there might be a rifle on the table and a blowtorch over in the corner is not a kid friendly environment. So we haven't gone there.
But he, and every time we talk, there's, he's in one of those households where there's always a TV on. There's a TV in the kitchen, there's a TV in the living room. So we talk for a couple of minutes, but I sense very quickly that the eyes go back up and he's watching, I don't know, a rerun of Miami Vice or whatever it is. So my daughter has not met my father and that's tough. She...
Because she talks to grandma, she talks to babushka, which is my wife's mother. But she, she knows of my father, but I don't think she could point them out. And that's kind of a, it's on, we got a lot going on. It's on my list of things to do, honestly, is like, what do I do with my relationship with my father? It is complicated. That's hard, man. I'm comfortable talking about it. So, so don't avoid it as a topic.
Michael Williams (40:38.958)
If you want, but, but yeah, it's, it's tough because I, I mean, partly, I see people that, we are at this phase of our life where we, I'm taking care of like our kids and we're both taking care of our parents to some degree. It's, it's a lot more complicated with my wife because her mother doesn't speak much English. So she's always on the phone, like negotiating Ubers and stuff. And I.
I've seen you have like dropped off your kids and you like, we're dropping off the kids with, with my parents and we're going to Ireland or Iceland or something. And I, I am so jealous about that. Natasha and I talk about that kind of stuff a lot. Like, what if our parents were just like, Able to pick up the kids here for a week. How cool would that be? You can drop them in Madison, Wisconsin. We'll take them. Yeah. We'll put them on a bus tomorrow. I don't know how long it takes to get there. I think it's, it's, you know, it's.
It's going to be, it's, she's going to miss out. I worry about that. As you've reflected on, on kind of the current state has that, what, what have you taken from that? Like, what's the lesson for you looking, looking forward, right? Looking for your, your relationship to your kids and. Yeah. Actually their kids. I try to find ways to stay connected with the kids. A good small example of that is so.
Lara Lars my three year old
She likes to avoid going to sleep at night and she's getting really good at it. So we usually, we have a whole routine. We do a bath, we brush teeth, we read a book and then she gets into bed and she's, all right, daddy, tell me about your day. And if my day doesn't start with, I woke up and I went potty. She's like, no, no, no, you missed something. Start over. So she wants like.
Michael Williams (42:36.078)
She wants like a 10 minute. She wants the tick tock. Like minute by minute. What did I do today? And for a while, I was like. man, we got to we got to put a timer on this, so I would set a like a timer. We're we are meticulous with timers, by the way. So any time it's like we I give the kids a choice for anything. Do you want to take a bath now or in two minutes? And it's like.
It doesn't matter what the time is, two minutes, okay. And I asked the voice assistant to set a timer for two minutes. So we do that in her room. I'm like, all right, I'll tell you about my day for four minutes. But at some point I was like, you know what? I don't want to, if she wants to hear about my day and then she tells me about her day, I don't want to stop that. I don't want to avoid it. So I'm like, no timer. I'll tell you about my day. Tell me about your day. So we tried it just like any chance we get to connect.
lean into it. I am notoriously bad at responding to emails and text messages from almost everybody.
And that's fine. I don't have the time to do it, but I can't treat my family the same way. So we really lean into that. I love it. Natasha, whenever our son is at his father's house or here. Both ways. The last thing our son does every night is he will call the other parent. Just to check in for like a three minute, and even if it's just like, hey, it's super late and I'm really tired, I just wanted to say good night.
That's what they do. But if there's more time, they talk through stuff and you hear like he, he tells about his day. He talks about stuff in his life and Natasha, did that develop organically or was that, that's a, did you, it was there an intervention that allowed that facilitated that happening? I don't remember a time when that didn't happen. So I think that was a purposeful decision.
Michael Williams (44:38.414)
by my wife and her ex -husband to say like, we want to stay, we want to keep connected and make it a tradition.
That's what it is. It's like a social tradition in our family, you know, and the kids call each other sometimes. That's cool. Lara texts me. She'll get, she'll take my wife's phone and texting me is just, she bangs on emojis and I know that it's from her and I'll just.
I was thinking of your three year old spell. No, it's like unicorn, cheese, soccer ball, heart, heart, heart. And I just, okay, yeah, I know who I'm talking to. Let me send some back. That's cool. That's cool. So now looking back a little bit, what do you appreciate about your father today that perhaps you didn't before you had kids? I think he was doing the best he could with the tools that he had. I don't think he was.
a bad father. I don't think he was neglectful. I think he, he, I mean, I, I've heard about his childhood and, you know, I think that the childhoods that our parents had really, you know, the same, they influenced them quite a bit. So I think that I'm still trying to kind of map out. I see like a trait or a behavior that I have and I'm like, what, where did this come from? And I, I think.
My father really kind of led to a good part of my success in my career because he was work focused. I think I learned a lot more from him around perseverance for projects and work than I did around relationships and emotional upbringing. So I, I have, I am constantly, I like, I, I refuse to be blocked by myself career wise. And one of the constant things I've found myself having to tell people is I propose something and they start telling me why it.
Michael Williams (46:31.662)
It's like, here's why it won't work. I'm like, don't tell me why it won't work. Tell me how we can make it work. And I think that concept is something he taught me. It's like, you just, you find a way. Just go at it from a different angle. So I am thankful for that. And it's a, I'm trying to figure out how to teach my kids that now because it's being present here. I can't just say go cook. Do it. If it fails, just douse it in ketchup or we'll, we'll order some takeout.
Michael Williams (47:04.622)
You know, that's that actually is something I was. Mowling over a little bit. Your childhood, you know. You had you mentioned having a lot of freedom. I think you were in more, I mean, obviously a less dense place than New York City going to other parts of upstate. Now. You're fathering in a very urban setting. Your the freedom that you experienced.
as a, you know, as a child, you know, a lot of communities would be very frowned upon today. How do you reconcile those two things where you're, you, you were raised in this one context and now you're parenting in a very different context. I mean, I look more to my partner and honestly, I, I found some good inspiration recently from, we have some neighbors who were European and they grew up in Paris and Amsterdam. And I realized.
I was like, I see their kids walking around on the weekend. They send their kids out to do grocery shopping. And I was like, what is that? Are they doing the shopping? And they said, no, if the kids want something that we're not gonna make, like you want mac and cheese, you go get it. You want chicken nuggets, you go to the store and get it. I'm not gonna get it. So it's kind of looking for new, it's just being aware and looking at like when I see a kid walking around and I'm like.
What is this? What kind of freedom do they have? What's their goal? Where are they headed? But it's, I think between the environments and something has changed since, you know, I'm 40 something. I think the norms in our society have changed entirely since then too. My mom used to send me to the, she'd send me out in the neighborhood when I was like a little, little kid and she'd, I had, maybe this was her trick too, so she could take a nap, but she'd like, I need, I need one screw and one bolt. And she'd send me to the hardware store with a note.
And they would send me back saying like, yeah, you're 12 cents short. And she'd give me a quarter. Go back. And my, and my wife grew up in Moscow. So she, I think by the time she was seven, she was riding the subway herself, but you know, it's very different in different parts of the world. There was a, like a documentary or a TV show on Netflix about raising kids around the world.
Michael Williams (49:27.95)
And one of the things that they had that I found just terrifying was in Japan, there's a thing called the first errand. Something like that. And it's three year olds. It's something like when your kid is three, you send them out to go to the store to get sushi or something. And they showed this this little kid like sitting at the crosswalk playing with quarters or something and
and going to buy something and they had some change so they bought a gumball. So it's... That was terrifying. But it really makes me kind of like, how do we... How do we do that in a way that I would be comfortable with it? Most of this stuff, the same way that I said, you know, like training the dog is not about... It's training you. Most of this stuff isn't about what's my kid capable of. They're capable of almost any situation you put them in. It's... It's how do I manage my anxiety and my fear about what's going to happen?
One of the things that really drives my fear is five, six years ago now, I, we had a son who died at birth and that was, it was unexpected. It was unlikely. And it was just one of these things that really changed me as a person. So I have a lot of fear about my biggest fear, I guess, is that my daughter will die before I do. So most of.
my parenting is around managing my anxiety around that. Cause she so far, and our son, they, they can pretty much handle anything that we throw at them. That's an amazing, sorry, go ahead, Mike. There's you mentioning that it's almost like I'm looking in the mirror in to the degree of having my child.
felt like it was this massive exposure to risk for me because of how that thought in the very back of your mind of what would happen if she was gone and I'm still here. And I feel this all, you know, all of the good, but in the back there is this like lingering thought of, I am so exposed to this level of possible pain that I never knew existed before. I had to consider this, you know,
Michael Williams (51:53.358)
So you're the first person I've heard kind of organically really articulate that feeling that I live with. I think we each have our own unique situations, but I would just completely agree. To make it very tangible, I sleep like a baby most nights. And I remember when our son was born and then again, when our daughter was born to this day, the moments when I wake up breathless, there's something terrible has happened in my mind. It was related to this exact.
idea and concept. The question for you, Dave, listening to you talk about is how did you, it seems so incredibly powerful for you to frame that as a problem for you to solve. Right? Like that's a, that's a, your psychology question. It's not about the controls or the oversight or whatever for our kids. You said it, like our kids are going to be able to handle almost anything we throw at them. How did you get your mind?
to that point. A lot of walking and thinking. And I remember one of the, one of the lessons, the things I figured out when I was a lot younger was this concept of like, we're the only things holding ourselves back. And I remember at some point telling me, I have a younger sister who's, she's quite younger. She's 15 years younger than me. So I remember telling her at some point,
Something all in the lines of like the only thing preventing you from being the king of Spain is like your own laziness like your own problems So it's it's an idea that's been around and I think I got it from
I wanna say like a book that I read, like a science fiction book where this was, it may have been Ender's Game. You know, this concept of like these kids that are kind of, cause that book, there's three kids that they each in their own right arc sort of like really preeminent people in their domain. And I remember that being such an impactful series of books, not just the one that I read the whole series.
Michael Williams (54:01.582)
And then just sounded that stuck in my mind and just applying that to like, yeah, these kids are fine. It's all us. They're, they're fine. That's my other kind of thing is like, they're fine until I screw them up until I, you know, they're in mint condition. I joke about that. I'm like, I haven't dropped her yet. She did roll off the bed when she was little and got her head stuck in between the bed and the wall. Yeah. Every child needs to have at least once.
Like you sleep like a baby and until you know, you're worried about things that happen. Natasha is, she has real trouble sleeping except for, and she's told me this repeatedly. The mornings when I wake up and take care of the kids and like, what, watch cartoons and play video games. That is the only time she is able to sleep deeply is when, when she knows that the kids are, you know, she's not on call. She's not on duty.
for
Yeah, she goes in now. She's like, whenever she just calls for daddy, we send in the mommy and then she gets there and there's like an awkward silence. And then Laura goes, can I have some water? Because, you know, whatever she was going to ask for, like, can I play frisbee or whatever it was that is totally inappropriate at 11 o 'clock at night?
Michael Williams (55:47.182)
Yeah. Now I really appreciate you bringing this kind of conversation to the front because I think it exists in all of us. Some of us are conscious of it. Some of us are unconscious of it. Some of us choose to try and control it in terms of the rules and systems we put on our kids. But I think hearing you talk about it as a limitation we have for ourselves and therefore it's something for us to deal with. I think that's a...
That's really incredibly well said. And I think it's something that I'm going to be reflecting on a lot coming out of this conversation. So to wrap it up, if you had one piece of advice for first time dads or for folks who are on their way to fatherhood, what would it be? I would like to, I would like to request two pieces because one, I would like you to mention briefly.
This sleep regimen that you mentioned earlier. All right, let's get that one over there first. Sleep regimen. I think I swear we have a bookshelf that's just about kids sleeping that my wife has read. It was just a very precise. Set of events that we've done since she was. I don't know when you first get the kid, you just they're wrapped up like a burrito and they that's like part of their comfort is like they can't move and that's when they're comfortable.
Even back then we had a white noise machine, partly because you live in New York, so there might be construction or a parade or something at night. We've always had a white noise machine. And at some point we started playing music when we play one song. And it is a song that we use the same song. We'll play it. There's a playlist I made that plays the same song 10 times in a row. And she's got a sleep association with that song.
It's a lullaby version of a radiohead cover. I forget which song, but I could probably play it on the xylophone. I think is what is, you know, ding, ding, dong, dong, boom, boom, boom, boom. That and she, so this is one of these weird areas. Like she's four now. She still sleeps in a, in a crib, partly cause we're like, the specific conversation we have is.
Michael Williams (58:10.542)
Her prefrontal cortex is growing every day. The longer we defer this, the less weird stuff we're going to have to worry about with her like climbing out of bed and turning on the stove and climbing, getting locked out of the front door. Cause our door is like a hotel door. Once it's closed, it just locks. So just having that, having that specific set of things has been super. And we were meticulous about her sleep schedule. She
She still naps. And she took a nap. We had it just clocked for years. It's like you nap at 1 30 to 3 30. And then you're in bed at 8 30. And as much as we could do to stick to that schedule, that's really helped. So that's that side of it. One piece of advice. One piece of advice. It's terrifying at first. It's just everything about you. They send you home with.
They basically kick you out of the hospital without, and you feel like you're not ready. They show you that video. They make you watch that video. Like don't shake the baby. And you know, everybody I think is like, God, why are you making me watch this? And then about a month into it, you're like, I see why you made me watch that. Okay.
I haven't slept in days. Just slow down. Just, you know, they are, again, it's the kids will be okay. And we've got so many resources, any, just throw any problem you have into Google and there's going to be so many people talking about it. And just, it's, you know, we all evolve. We all just, it's a continuous process. I know that's not concrete advice, you know.
just continue to evolve. But it's, I think, I think that's great. It's great advice. It's, it's basically advice that you can do it and you'll figure it out. It's, I mean, the goal is not to not be scared. Like it's scary. So don't feel like you're doing it wrong. If you're scared, you're probably on the right track. Like, did you have one? You sounded like you had two questions. Was there another one you had? no, my rec my, my question was the extra request for the sleep advice.
Michael Williams (01:00:26.158)
Got it. And he delivers. As Mike, as Mike writes, it gets harder when they're older. We've got the 12 year olds. I don't know, getting him to bed by 11 o 'clock now is tough. Getting me to bed by 11 is tough.
Michael Williams (01:00:44.91)
Yeah. Nobody wants the data. That's worth it. That's like, nobody wants this to stop. You want to, why would it, why would I reset? Totally. So let's wrap it up. And I, I just want to say thank you, Dave. I think a very interesting, informative and honest conversation. Thank you for, for being willing and talk about some things. I think some of the core truths of what it's like to be a dad today, whether it's related to.
You know how we grew up, how you grew up or what it's like having kids and, you know, as a professional in New York city environment, that's very different from, from your context of, of an upbringing. So thank you so much. That's awesome. and yeah, absolutely. And just as a reminder, this is a podcast for anyone who is a dad has been a dad or is considering being a dad.
It's for anybody who's interested in learning what it's like to be a dad. And finally, it's for anybody who's interested in learning and supporting a dad in their life. So thank you, everybody. Thank you, Dave. I look forward to talk soon. Cool. Thank you, everyone who tuned in today for today's conversation with Dave and Dave. Thank you for such a thoughtful discussion. I walked away with a number of new ideas and actions I plan to take a few of the big things I took away.
Number one, that there's a high overlap when it comes to managing people, parenting children and training dogs. Two, when my child is having a meltdown, remembering the phrase, they're not giving you a hard time, they're having a hard time. Three, the idea of slowing down arguments and scheduling a date and a time to pick up the discussion later. And finally, the importance of ongoing and frequent communication with our partners. I hope you all enjoyed this conversation as much as we did.
to all the dads out there. Good luck. Before you bounce, I have a quick favor. Please subscribe to the pod. Not only does Luke love juicing those numbers, but it really does help put this thing in front of more dads. And Mike, on the other hand, just loves juicing. We also now run a listener community on WhatsApp. To join, visit dadpod .fm and you'll see the delicious link at the top of the homepage. Come on in, baby. We'd love to have you.