Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Adam Fishman (author of a top business newsletter on Substack with 11K+ subscribers) interviews executives, entrepreneurs, and company leaders in technology companies who are also fathers. They discuss the tough aspects of work, parenting, family, the mistakes made and lessons learned along the way. All episodes at www.startupdadpod.com.
[00:00:00] Dirk Doebler: 'Cause we weren't sure because we saw so many people raising children in a way we didn't want.
[00:00:05] Dirk Doebler: Like, you're constantly hovering over kids at your playgrounds, kids throw tantrums all the time. Like, sleep is usually not very good, and I like my sleep. So we were like, "Is this what we really wanted?" So we read a lot of books to understand where does behavior come from, what's happening? And my family's full of teachers and people who know about neurological development of children, so we wanted to better understand, like, could we raise a child in a way where we're not giving up our entire life and revolving around their life and seeing tantrums and poor sleep constantly?
[00:00:34] Dirk Doebler: And so we spoke a lot about how we would want to raise that child and what we would want out of our lives for our own desires as well as for this child. And so from very early on, we realized we were in very close agreement on how we would raise our child, our philosophy, our system of ethics for them, and what we would actually want to do with our life afterward when this child's a part of it.
[00:00:54] Dirk Doebler: How, how would we want to change our life and, and would we want to give up things that we want? 'Cause we didn't want to be those people who gave up on their dreams and goals. So we did spend a ton of time really thinking things through and I think being very intentional about we wanted, and I think that that's not necessarily a way a lot of people approach it.
[00:01:11] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. If you wrote a parenting book, would you be bold enough to call it, "You're Raising Your Kids Wrong and You Should Feel Bad"? Today's guest might.
[00:01:30] Adam Fishman: I'm joined by Dirk Dobler, founder and CEO of ParentoLeave, a company dedicated to helping organizations build better parental leave programs. Dirk is married to his wife, Kate, and is a dad to one young son, and the two of them spent serious time before becoming parents asking a question most couples never do: Do we even want kids?
[00:01:50] Adam Fishman: And if so, exactly how would we raise them? What emerged from that process is one of the most intentional yet contrarian parenting philosophies I've encountered on this show. Today, we talked about the case for free-range parenting over helicopter parenting and why hovering at the playground is actively harming your child's development, how Dirk and Kate built their entire parenting philosophy from scratch before their son was even born, the very deliberate choice to have their child join their life rather than revolve their lives around him, navigating the world with a toddler in tow and why they refuse to put their travel dreams on hold, and the deeply challenging and surprisingly underdiagnosed world of pediatric feeding disorders and what their family has learned on that journey.
[00:02:33] Adam Fishman: If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You'll find it everywhere you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Dirk Dobler. Welcome Dirk Dobler to Startup Dad. Dirk, I could not be more excited for this conversation. Thanks for joining me today
[00:02:52] Dirk Doebler: Thanks for having me, Adam
[00:02:53] Adam Fishman: So you, uh, jokingly told me that if you wrote a parenting book, it would be called You're Raising Your Kids Wrong and You Should Feel Bad. Um, what is everybody getting wrong when it comes to raising their kids?
[00:03:06] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. People are getting a lot of things, I think, wrong he- here in America, and it varies by age. You know, when you see really young kids, parents are following them around all the time at playgrounds or telling them, "You should with this, play with that." They're intervening very quickly, and they're not giving their children the ability to go out and try things and explore and gain independence.
[00:03:26] Dirk Doebler: And when you're hovering over your kid, one thing I think people really don't realize is you're preventing the normal social interaction between children. Like, these kids should be talking to each other. They should be interacting with each other and preventing socialization at a very young age on top of preventing discovery and learning their limitations and gaining self-esteem and confidence by trying something new and figuring it out.
[00:03:48] Dirk Doebler: the hovering constantly on playgrounds is highly detrimental children's And then as they get older, everyone knows screen time's a problem, but your people are giving their kids iPads and phones. They're becoming obsessed with devices, and they're not able to cope with being bored.
[00:04:04] Dirk Doebler: The screen time at dinners is seriously bad because that's a perfect time for children to be learning socialization and interaction and how you interact with the waiters or your friends, your family, and they're being actively prevented from doing that throughout young age. We see kids as young as two getting these screens at dinners out or teenagers.
[00:04:24] Dirk Doebler: And so you're preventing children from learning basic skills, getting self-esteem, getting confidence, and learning how to socialize and solve problems for themselves. And you're actively harming this with this behavior, and it's preventing core neurological development for these kids. it's a, it's a real problem
[00:04:41] Adam Fishman: All right. Well, we're gonna get into some of the details of this and how you do things in your
[00:04:45] Adam Fishman: household, which I think, which I think is really interesting. I asked a question in the prep for this, which is like, do you have any contrarian takes on parenting? And you were like, "Literally our, our entire approach to parenting is contrarian."
[00:04:58] Adam Fishman: So, you know, when you and your wife, so your wife's name's Kate, when the two of you, decided that you were gonna kinda go against the grain or maybe the established, like, wisdom of the crowds, on this, like, was that something that the two of you talked about in preparation for starting a family? Was it something that you had to figure out, like, as you got started?
[00:05:19] Adam Fishman: Or did you, like, watch other parents operate and you're like, "I don't wanna do that. We don't wanna do that"? Like, how did that that philosophy come about for you?
[00:05:26] Dirk Doebler: We didn't even know if we wanted to have kids, to be honest. We had no clue if we wanted children, if we wanted to be childless. So we did a lot of reading, a lot of visioning exercises, a lot of talking about whether we wanted to have kids, and if we did, how would we want to raise them? 'Cause we weren't sure because we saw so many people raising children in a way we didn't want.
[00:05:45] Dirk Doebler: Like, you're constantly hovering over kids at your playgrounds, kids throw tantrums all the time. Like, sleep is usually not very good, and I like my sleep. So we were like, "Is this what we really wanted?" So we read a lot of books to understand where does behavior come from, what's happening? And my family's full of teachers and people who know about neurological development of children, so we wanted to better understand, like, could we raise a child in a way where we're not giving up our entire life and revolving around their life and seeing tantrums and poor sleep constantly?
[00:06:14] Dirk Doebler: And so we spoke a lot about how we would want to raise that child and what we would want out of our lives for our own desires as well as for this child. And so from very early on, we realized we were in very close agreement on how we would raise our child, our philosophy, our system of ethics for them, and what we would actually want to do with our life afterward when this child's a part of it.
[00:06:34] Dirk Doebler: How, how would we want to change our life and, and would we want to give up things that we want? 'Cause we didn't want to be those people who gave up on their dreams and goals. So we did spend a ton of time really thinking things through and I think being very intentional about we wanted, and I think that that's not necessarily a way a lot of people approach it.
[00:06:51] Dirk Doebler: They kind of know intrinsically if they want kids or not, and we just weren't there.
[00:06:54] Adam Fishman: Yeah, yeah. You have one kid and you're, pretty resolute that like one is the number for you,
[00:07:00] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, I'm very resolute. My, my wife sees our friends having babies, and she kind of wants another one, and I'm, I'm n- I'm just, no, we're not having another one. I like our life. He's a very good kid. I don't need to, to do this.
[00:07:10] Adam Fishman: Yeah, you still outnumber him, you know?
[00:07:12] Dirk Doebler: Exactly. Two on one, it's easy
[00:07:14] Adam Fishman: so I wanna talk a little bit later about, like, judgment and people sort of, like, judging you in, public, 'cause what you're describing to me about, like, how you live your life with your kid, like, doesn't sound particularly crazy. Uh, it sounds like teaching them independence.
[00:07:30] Adam Fishman: but, you know, some people, that makes some people probably pretty uncomfortable. And so I wanna come back to that, a little bit later. And also, the, the sort of the scene that you described about your kid at a birthday party that I think, like, perfectly encapsulates this. So let's, like, put a pin in those two things and, and we'll revisit.
[00:07:46] Adam Fishman: to stay on this point about, your son, like, joining your life and you not giving up yours for him. I've had a few folks on the, program who have talked about, like, there's a book called Bringing Up Bébé that's about, like, the French way of parenting, which is like your kid rides along for the journey that you're on and not the other way around.
[00:08:05] Adam Fishman: what does it mean for you all to have this perspective that, like, "He's joining our train that's already moving down the tracks," as opposed to, "We're derailing the train
[00:08:16] Adam Fishman: for him"?
[00:08:17] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, it means that we are still gonna pursue the things that we really wanna pursue. You know, we wanna ensure that his needs are met, he gets good education. He has some feeding disorders, so we wanna make sure we're addressing those and we can e-expose him to different things that he can try.
[00:08:32] Dirk Doebler: But we're ultimately gonna enjoy our hobbies. We're not gonna put our hobbies on hold until he's older, like to travel. He's gonna travel with us, that we're going to take him along with what we wanna do and make sure we make space for some of the things that he wants, but he's not gonna take over our weekends.
[00:08:47] Dirk Doebler: We're not gonna put him in three or four different activities a week. Like, we're gonna leave time for ourselves to decompress and give him independent play at home and relax and keep our schedules flexible for the things that, that we want to pursue. And it's very much about making sure that we're all very happy and fulfilled and getting things we want out of life, rather than just like focusing purely on making sure he's entertained and that he's got all these activities and he's, you know, the number one priority in everything versus kind of the family is the number one priority.
[00:09:16] Adam Fishman: Yeah. You mentioned there in that description this idea of him having a couple feeding disorders. I'd never heard it described that way. So what, like, if you're comfortable, like, what does that, how does that manifest? What does that mean?
[00:09:28] Adam Fishman: mean?
[00:09:29] Dirk Doebler: So our son, we basically tell people he doesn't like to eat. ifthere's something that he likes to eat, it would be four or five bites of something. Literally like your chicken nuggets, might not touch it. french fries, he may not touch it. And so the closest comparison that people might recognize is, is basically he's anorexic, but as a toddler, but without sort of the mental health associations that come with older age anorexia.
[00:09:49] Dirk Doebler: So every meal has been a struggle to get him to eat, where he just like is happy to starve, we say, because he will be happy, he will not throw tantrums, he will not be like a different little monster because he hasn't eaten. So we have these visions of giving him garden fresh food because my wife has a big garden, and that he wouldn't be a picky eater like so many kids are, and then we end up with a child who doesn't wanna eat anyways, whether regardless of what it is.
[00:10:15] Dirk Doebler: and so it's been a real struggle because like those times when your kids are sick and they don't want to eat for a few days, like that's our daily life. And it's like it's really tough to have a child that like doesn't eat. So he didn't develop the way of eating, so he would gag a lot until like he was two and a half, almost three.
[00:10:31] Dirk Doebler: and so we had to take to a lot of feeding therapies he's still on a very high calorie formula to make sure he's getting the calories that he needs. he eats solid food, we give it to him, but he's also on a feeding supplement to make him hungry enough to, eat a proper meal.
[00:10:45] Dirk Doebler: and so his teachers log everything he eats. So that's been a big struggle and so we've really been focused on making sure he gets that need met, because obviously your kid needs to eat and we want them to have a good diet. And we still work very hard to make sure he's not eating like chicken nuggets and french fries every night.
[00:11:00] Dirk Doebler: We force him to have other things along with healthier items, but it has been a very stressful journey.
[00:11:06] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And like how did you, uncover like a root cause of that? You must had to take him to doctors and, be just really curious about it or like how'd you get there?
[00:11:18] Dirk Doebler: we really kind of decided around 18 months when he really was not eating a lot of food to take him to feeding therapy to help him learn. And we took him to a number of different pediatricians because a lot just said he'd grow out of it, he'd overcome it, and he just, like, didn't. and so we've gone to multiple gastroenterologists, and hopefully we've really not gotten great answers.
[00:11:36] Dirk Doebler: The challenge is kids that age can't tell you what it is. And so we think, you know, he doesn't necessarily feel hunger or at least doesn't associate with needing food. So he can go a very long time without eating, even if we put food in front of him. And then he starts to, like, get to the point where his stomach hurts that he's so hungry.
[00:11:54] Dirk Doebler: So he gets, past, like, "Oh, I'm a little hungry," to, like, "Oh, I'm really hungry." And then we think because he gag on food for so long because he didn't like to eat, he never properly learned how to eat. So he didn't chew his food properly. He'd be very slow. He'd be very tired, and he maybe gag more often than he should.
[00:12:09] Dirk Doebler: But there's a psychological component where he's actually afraid of eating because if you choke all the time, like, this is a pleasant experience. I want to minimize the amount of time I'm spending on this. So our theory is that it's both psychological and physiological. but that's all we get out of a three-year-old because it's, you know, you can't ask them what's wrong, you know? 'Cause when you're anorexic, the solution is therapy, but you can't have that for a toddler, right? They're gonna kind of tell you random things that aren't that helpful. So you really just try to give him therapy to teach him the proper chewing techniques, expose him to different textures and foods, and try and keep that up and make sure he's getting exposed to different things versus just sitting him, like, "Oh, you're only gonna get french fries or something," 'cause it's nutritionally deficient.
[00:12:50] Adam Fishman: That's really interesting because like you mentioned, like the closest parallel is, anorexia, but like a three-year-old have anorexia. Like I think of anorexia, I think like weird thoughts about like your body image and like relationships, mental relationships with But like three-year-old isn't like flipping through magazines and developing image perspectives, and like actively, starving him- himself. Like it's, interesting that the, blend between the physiological and the, and the mental there. That, that's really fascinating. Well, good luck to you and your, and your wife on this journey.
[00:13:20] Adam Fishman: This sounds very challenging and probably under-researched in young kids, I would imagine, too.
[00:13:24] Dirk Doebler: It definitely is. We've actually gotten associated with a nonprofit recently that's of the foremost nonprofit on this, and they've sort of set the standards. And what we've really found is pediatricians don't really learn about feeding and nutrition, during medical school or in residency or anything else.
[00:13:40] Dirk Doebler: So they typically don't understand these issues and it goes underdiagnosed. And we hear about other kids and they're like the level of pickiness it's actually probably a feeding disorder. If they're extremely picky and only eat like four things, like that's probably a feeding disorder for a kid that you should, you know, address with, an expert.
[00:13:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Okay. I just learned something, so thank you for sharing that with me. I, I appreciate it. And hopefully this is helpful for somebody else, uh, who's listening to this. I'm sure that you are not the only one that is going through this,
[00:14:07] Dirk Doebler: Definitely not
[00:14:08] Adam Fishman: okay, so I wanted to, uh, talk a little bit about bringing a kid into your life.
[00:14:12] Adam Fishman: you mentioned to me that you and your wife did Eve Rodsky's, Fair Play method, which I've talked about on this show. the idea behind that is that you, like, have these cards and you sort of divide up around common household tasks and, and things, and whoever ho- holds the card owns, like, the entire thing end to end, like noticing it to be done, planning it, doing it, and, like, you're not just handed a thing by a spouse and say, like, "Do this."
[00:14:40] Adam Fishman: Like, you agree on it ahead of time. And I've had some folks, like I had Gaurav Vora on this episode who talked about this as full vertical ownership of a parenting task. So I'm curious for you, like which cards, which ones do you, did you take full ownership of and, like, which ones... You know, obviously there's a million cards, but, like, which ones are you doing and which ones are, is your wife doing?
[00:15:02] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. lot of the cards I took were like a general financial management of the house kinds of things that are relatively easy but happen maybe once month or regular budgeting. I took all the cooking, so I do almost all of our cooking, grocery shopping, cooking for the including our son and my wife every night and most on the weekends and things like that.
[00:15:22] Dirk Doebler: and what we discovered with the fair plays, like there are a lot of things that are sort of revolve around child rearing that we're like, we're not gonna like give fully over to someone else. Like taking the kid to daycare every day, except in emergencies, like it's sort of silly. So things like that, still wanted to make sure were split, and we never really vertically integrated any of that.
[00:15:40] Dirk Doebler: It was really just like the household things that may get harder on us that like leave something undone that needs to be fully taken over by someone.
[00:15:47] Adam Fishman: were you surprised by any of the things that your wife reached for or the things that she was, like, happy to give up?
[00:15:53] Dirk Doebler: actually there was one thing where my wife... I do a lot of our socialization and we throw parties every so often, and my wife doesn't plan a lot of that. So ended up taking that on because we discovered she really wasn't doing that. Like we're human, we need to socialize, we need to bring people over, especially when we both work for all remote companies.
[00:16:10] Dirk Doebler: So I, you know, had her be responsible for planning get-togethers and hanging out with friends on the weekends or getting dinner during the week because she was not doing any of that otherwise.
[00:16:20] Adam Fishman: interesting. You sort of like forced the issue. It's Yeah. Yeah. is a thing that you want to get better at and do more of, so like you can own this, Oh, that's really interesting. So the other thing is, I, I like how you said that not everything can be fully divided up. Like I think that makes a ton of sense.
[00:16:35] Adam Fishman: There's a lot of practical things in life that are just like one day you do it, one day I do it, the next day I do it again. Like it's just flexibility, right? But you have this other rule on top of this system, which is the idea of no quid pro quos. so tell me about what that means and is that something that you went into your like raising a kid like determining or is it something that based on conversations and observations?
[00:16:59] Dirk Doebler: It's really this premise for us where that if I take our son out to do something for the day or the morning, that I can't hand him off and say, "Okay, well I get the night off," or anything like that, where it's like I took this burden and now you owe me three hours of the same burden on your end so I can be freed up.
[00:17:17] Dirk Doebler: And I think it really came out sort of naturally where we didn't want our child to be a burden. We never wanted to get to the point where it's like, "Ugh, get him away from me. I need some time away." Like, it's important to have breaks. Like, I think naturally, even if you don't feel like you need a break, you need a break.
[00:17:31] Dirk Doebler: We didn't want to get to that point where like this kid's a burden, that we don't want to spend time with him, and that he is a responsibility that's evenly shared, that's divided up between the two of us. and we therefore need to share that responsibility at times. And at the same we should enjoy spending time with him, which is why it shouldn't be burdensome, where if I take him out all of a Saturday morning, I'm not gonna come back and say, "You need to take him," because I should find a way to enjoy that, and, and I do.
[00:17:56] Dirk Doebler: I genuinely like taking my son out and going and exploring with him. and so it's very important that we enjoy the time together that's not like a burden, and that's why we don't want to have this quid pro quo system.
[00:18:07] Adam Fishman: Yeah, it's interesting to have that philosophy because a lot of parents do the opposite, where they're like, "Well, I did him this morning, so you get him now and I need to rest and go play golf or whatever." And, I like what you're reframing it to there where you're like, "Well, if I'm taking him out, it's 'cause I want to do that.
[00:18:23] Adam Fishman: I should enjoy it." it's not the most enjoyable thing to spend e- you know, tons of waking time with a three-year-old, but you can have a lot of fun with it. that's cool. the last part of The Fair Play Method is, Rodsky has this concept called the unicorn space, which is like how you, protect your own identity outside of work and parenting.
[00:18:43] Adam Fishman: Which to me sounds like this whole concept that you've identified of like, well, he's joining our life and not the other way around. and And you kind of turn that into your operating system. were you familiar with that unicorn space concept or is that something that you learned,
[00:18:56] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, that was something I, I learned. I hadn't been familiar with, but it was definitely something that was very much a part of our life
[00:19:00] Adam Fishman: Cool, cool. Uh, I love that. So folks should check out, Fairplay. It's been mentioned on this pod bunch of, a bunch of times. A very, very helpful system. I have to ask because it sounds like you and Kate have this, like, very dialed in, like, system of responsibility and handoffs. Like, is there anything that the two of you genuinely don't see eye to eye on, or where is there still conflict?
[00:19:23] Dirk Doebler: I don't think there's anything we don't see eye to eye on. We're very much in agreement with what we want to do. I think the more frequent point of conflict is just the level of independence and lack of intervention I try to give our child. She doesn't follow him around either like I want, but she's more likely to intervene more quickly than I am, and that's more like the point of contention where I might tell her, you know, "Give him more, a little more time.
[00:19:45] Dirk Doebler: Don't
[00:19:45] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's actually a perfect segue into, the next that I wanna talk to you about, which I, which I call free, free range parenting in a helicopter world. So you have this core rule, that you just mentioned again, which is like, don't intervene unless he's about to get, like, seriously hurt.
[00:20:01] Adam Fishman: Even if he asks for help with something basic like, don't offer it, you know? So I, I guess like one, thing that that could be kinda shocking people. So how it work when like a three-year-old looks up at you and is like, "Hey Dad, can you me with blah?" Like, do you just look at him and you're like, "Sorry kid, good luck."
[00:20:17] Adam Fishman: Or like how, how do, how does that
[00:20:19] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, no. So I'll, I will go over to him. So usually the best example is at a playground. He's trying to do something, and he'll say, "Dada, help. I need help." And, and I'll go over to him, and I'll be next to him, but I'm not gonna, you know, immediately pick him up and move him. There's no physical intervention immediately.
[00:20:33] Dirk Doebler: I'll say, "Hey, you need to think about it. You need to try. I'm not going to help you. Try it." And so he has to, like, find a way to do it. And sometimes there are things he's not gonna be able to do because he's on a playground for six or seven-year-olds, and maybe he's physically too small. But I want him to at least try and think through it.
[00:20:49] Dirk Doebler: And if he's really struggling after a couple minutes, I give him a good couple minutes, I will then sort of help him think through him, Like, "Oh, put your foot here, kind lean this way." But I don't want to physically intervene unless it is physically impossible because of his size, the playground. I want him to try and problem solve and figure out and gain that confidence, because he will figure it out, but get that confidence.
[00:21:09] Dirk Doebler: He goes, "Oh, oh, I can do it. I knew I could do it."
[00:21:12] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Uh,
[00:21:12] Dirk Doebler: ultimately what we want.
[00:21:13] Adam Fishman: Yeah, and I'm sure sometimes you end up with a few more skinned knees or something like that than maybe like a parent who swoops in every moment, but your kid... We'll get to that story again about the birthday party, but, he sounds fairly well-adjusted for a
[00:21:27] Dirk Doebler: That, that-- We actually used that term this weekend because we were talking about how often our kid has tantrums versus others. And one of the parents we were talking to of kids around his age said their longest tantrum was an hour long. And we realized our longest tantrum was like 45 minutes, and he hadn't been sleepy, he hadn't been napping in school, and he hadn't been eating.
[00:21:47] Dirk Doebler: Literally hadn't eaten in entire week. So it's like he's hangry and tired, and the worst we've gotten is a 45-minute tantrum from a two-and-a-half year old. It's like our, our kid's really well-adjusted and can deal
[00:21:57] Adam Fishman: I think there's two parts to this sort of hands-off, parenting or, or, or free-range parenting, or I would just say giving him more independence. One is, like, it's good for him developmentally. The other is that it's good for you.
[00:22:08] Adam Fishman: It's a chance for you to, observe, you know, pay attention from afar, do something for yourself for, like, a minute or two while he's in a s- you know, relatively safe space. So, like, how much, of your philosophy is sort of rooted in this free-range principle, and how much of it is also that hovering over your kid is just, like, exhausting?
[00:22:28] Adam Fishman: is
[00:22:28] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. It's really actually just about the free range principle. It's really like this is the kind of parent we want to be. We want to raise our kid in this way. And, and it almost sounds we're kind of hippy-dippy, but the reality, like we have these specific guidelines. here's the boundary. You can do anything you want in those boundaries.
[00:22:44] Dirk Doebler: And we're very strict about these boundaries. So, you know, like he can't just cross the road on his own. Like he knows he has to stop and we're extremely strict about that. So we know if he goes running down the sidewalk, he's gonna stop because we've been so strict about it. But if you want to run along the sidewalk, go ahead.
[00:22:58] Dirk Doebler: You wanna try and like play with this tree we're going and you're not slowing us down? Go ahead. Um, we want him to be sort of well-adjusted. We want him to be confident. We want him to be, you know, well-behaved and also able to solve problems and have that critical thinking skill set for a three-year-old.
[00:23:16] Dirk Doebler: And it's just sort of a nice happenstance that it gives us the ability to relax and like literally read a book. I can read a book at a playground at a park while my three-year-old is out running around because we have these strict boundaries. so He knows what he can do and what he can't do. He knows his limitations because we've let him test them.
[00:23:32] Dirk Doebler: We've let him try these things without our intervention
[00:23:36] Adam Fishman: Does he have a knowledge, if he's at a playground that he's supposed to say come and check in with you every so often? Or is he just like, "It's good. If you don't need me, then I don't need to, check in with you"?
[00:23:48] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. He doesn't have to check in with us. He does. Typically he'll, you know, run around, maybe he'll go on a slide like a couple times, then he'll come over and say, "Did you see that?" And then he'll go run off and, do it. And sometimes he'll just right past us. So there's no need for, for us to check in.
[00:24:01] Dirk Doebler: He knows that we're gonna be there. I think a lot of it comes down to the trust that he knows we will be there, he knows we will take care of him, and that he is safe. And he has the confidence to go off and explore. And if he wants to check in, he can, but he doesn't have to
[00:24:16] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that's interesting because it feels like, I'm developing this perspective now as we're talking that like hovering over your kids almost teaches them that like the world's not safe and they need to be worried about something. And in most, you know, most playgrounds like you're fine.
[00:24:31] Adam Fishman: Like there's wood chips on the ground for a reason. You can fall from pretty high up and be just fine, you know? There's a topic I wanna talk about now which is, which is flying, which, uh, you've mentioned to me that you've taken him on like 30 flights, you've been to 10 different countries and he's three years old.
[00:24:45] Adam Fishman: he's been on all these things. I feel like a lot of parents don't even wanna take their toddler to like grandma's house, you know? Like a, like a flight like down somewhere. So like what did you and your wife figure out that helped you master flying with a toddler? Like is it related to this philosophy that you have do you think?
[00:25:03] Dirk Doebler: I it is related to philosophy because one, it comes down to both philosophy, independence and the sort of free range as you put it, as well as he's joined our life. We knew we wanted to travel, so we knew we had to find a way to make it work. And basically our, our philosophy around flying is like, be over-prepared with extras of everything and accept sort of survival mode.
[00:25:24] Dirk Doebler: Like you wanna eat chips? Like go ahead and eat chips. I don't care what you eat as long as like it's not going to be bad for you, you can have it. You know, we always have actually pacifiers on the plane because we wanna make sure he can adjust his ears. Like the level of preparedness is really important.
[00:25:39] Dirk Doebler: but I think the independence is also important and the patience that that independence drives and the ability to be bored because he will entertain himself on the plane and that makes a world of difference on long flights. So we've been to Europe a couple times, We've been to the Caribbean a bunch of times.
[00:25:52] Dirk Doebler: Our longest trip with him was about 14 hours, and he's able to entertain himself and he'll literally look at the safety card for 20 minutes. We've literally timed it. He will sit there and look at safety card for 20 minutes. Every single flight he to look at that safety card. And so it's the ability for him to like entertain himself, be independent, accept boredom and use his imagination that makes it it a lot easier.
[00:26:12] Dirk Doebler: And then I also think the other trick we've really discovered is like expect to spend more money. Like on a longer trip we always gave him his own seat under two because it just makes nap time and everything a lot easier. And for us, we're very determined people. Like we're gonna find a way to make this work 'cause we wanna travel, we wanna go places.
[00:26:29] Dirk Doebler: We're gonna make sure that he's able to do this. And he loves travel. He plays pretend. Like this weekend he wanted to fly. He's like, "Dada, this is a plane. Come over." And then he's like, "We line up to get on the plane. People are putting their bags up." Like he really likes
[00:26:41] Adam Fishman: That's fun. You're gonna have a total world traveler when, uh, he's gonna be like, "Bye mom and dad, I'm going by myself."
[00:26:47] Adam Fishman: Does he, like get up and like wander around the plane during flights or is he
[00:26:51] Adam Fishman: mostly like in
[00:26:52] Dirk Doebler: no. He sits in his seat.
[00:26:53] Dirk Doebler: we force him to sit in his seat. On occasion, we've done it where he can go up and down. We're going to the bathroom, but we don't let him wander up and down the, plane. And people have multiple times told us they didn't even know there was a, baby or a kid
[00:27:04] Dirk Doebler: in their cabin.
[00:27:05] Adam Fishman: that's amazing. tell me about the recent trip that you and him took to the Air and Space Museum
[00:27:10] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, yeah. Sohe'd been asking to go on the big plane I was like, "Okay, that's fine." and I had a bunch of airline miles. I'd been doing a lot of travel down to DC. So I was like, "All right, he wants to go on the big plane.
[00:27:21] Dirk Doebler: I'm happy to do this." So one Sunday, when he was about two and a half, I took him on a day trip down to DC by myself on the plane. So I used miles by Delta, 7:00 AM flight. My wife dropped us off at the airport, and everyone was like, "Oh, he's giving you a day off." Like, this is not for her day off. This is 'cause I wanna spend time with my son and do this.
[00:27:39] Dirk Doebler: So we flew down
[00:27:40] Adam Fishman: him.
[00:27:40] Dirk Doebler: to DC, rented a car. I took him to the Air and Space Museum in DC, and then got food with him, took him to the car to do a car nap, and then we went over to the Air and Space Museum near Dulles, and then went back to D- uh, Reagan for our flight home that night. It was supposed to be at 6:00 PM, but it was delayed for two hours, which we very annoyed about, but he was fine.
[00:28:00] Dirk Doebler: He was well-behaved the whole time. And what I discovered was, like, we had traveled so much with him, we were over-prepared. There were two families with young kids also traveling. each of them had two children. One was around his age or younger, and actually one of the parents came over and asked me for diapers for their kid.
[00:28:16] Dirk Doebler: I was like, "Yeah, I can give you a diaper." And I'm like, "I'm good. I got everything." And it was just so much fun to just, like, take him on this one-day trip down to DC by myself. And I think my wife and I were talking about, like, most parents would not do a single day trip on an airplane to another city by themselves with a two-year-old.
[00:28:32] Dirk Doebler: And I was like, I think for our philosophy and the fact that he's very chill, he's well-behaved, he's well-adjusted, like, works. He throw a single tantrum. Even when our flight was delayed, he was super chill, happy, amenable, and It was all, an opportunity for us to spend a lot of together.
[00:28:46] Dirk Doebler: So it's like, "We need to this an annual thing. We need to go somewhere together for a day and
[00:28:50] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. that's like a full day. That's like a 14 hours of fly, multiple museums, car trips, delayed flight on the way back. Like, I would've been melting down as a dad. it's amazing. very cool. And I bet he loved that experience
[00:29:03] Dirk Doebler: Oh, he loved it. Yeah, yeah. He, he talked about DC, like when he plays pretend on the, plane, he'll oftentimes go to DC
[00:29:10] Adam Fishman: Okay. Okay, I love that. All right, so I want to come back to the playground that, um, that I alluded to. So this is a birthday party. recently had a birthday party with him. Like, tell me that story, start to finish
[00:29:22] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. we had a friend who invited us to a birthday party that was at a public park, and I took my son without my wife. And there's a pavilion where they're serving food, and they have all the drinks and everything, where all the kids can come and get the entertainment. And there's a playground, a whole, like, field away.
[00:29:39] Dirk Doebler: it's easily 100 yards away. And so we get there, we say hi, we go over to the playground 'cause that's where a lot of the kids were. It's a public space, so there are people who are not associated with the party playing. And I do what I normally do, is I get to the playground, I let him go in, and he goes and plays by himself, and I'm on the edge talking to some other parents.
[00:29:58] Dirk Doebler: And then he goes to the far end of the playground on the other side of, of, like, the main play structure where the swings are. And he's over there playing on one of the swings, lying on his stomach, swinging and forth, and he cannot see me. I can barely see the tops of his head. eventually I'm like, "I'm kind of bored of this," and I decide I want to get some food for lunch.
[00:30:15] Dirk Doebler: So I go and I walk over to him and I tell him, "Hey, look, I'm going to get food. I'm going to be at that pavilion." I point to it. I make sure he knows where it is. And I said, "I will be right back. If you need me, I'm there, or you can talk to another parent." 'Cause there are a lot of parents he knows there too.
[00:30:30] Dirk Doebler: And so I go and I leave. And I go and they have a food truck and there's some french fries hot dogs being served, so I order fries for him 'cause nice easy thing he'll probably eat. And I talk to some other parents, and while I'm waiting for food, he's back there playing. And I get our drinks, I have a little snack, I get his fries, and I go back over.
[00:30:50] Dirk Doebler: And it's a good 10 to 15 minutes by the time I'm back over there, and he's still on the swing playing. I'd been gone this entire time. I, I think most parents probably would not leave their kid, you know, 100 yards away at this age, but he was fine. No tears, no tantrum. He was happy as a clam doing what he was doing.
[00:31:09] Dirk Doebler: And of course, 'cause he doesn't like to eat, didn't eat any of the fries anyways. And so, so I left them and let him play on the swing and went and talked to the other parents back on the far side of the playground. And one of them mentioned to me how she would not even be able to be more than, like, 10 yards from her son and out of eyesight and, like, without a tantrum happening.
[00:31:26] Dirk Doebler: I was like, "Yeah, that's because we focus so much on him being confident and knowing he's gonna be okay, even if he can't see us, that we're gonna be there. We'll always be there to take care of him, and that he can be confident that he's not gonna be left alone and that he's gonna be okay."
[00:31:42] Adam Fishman: When you like go back to him and he's just totally chill as you left him, just like playing, no issues. Like what do you feel in that moment? Are you... Is it like vindication? Like, ah, it's working? Do you feel like a sense of pride? Like what, like how do you feel?
[00:31:55] Dirk Doebler: I feel very proud that my son is like this sort of well-adjusted and able to handle that, that like he doesn't need to see me, that he can explore, and that we can actually trust him to not do something stupid and go and get hurt or run away or do anything like that. and so I think it is vindication of our parenting philosophy and our style that he's able to do this, 'cause, you know, your kid has to be well-behaved enough to be able to be trusted as well.
[00:32:20] Dirk Doebler: But he's well-behaved, and then he's emotionally s- tough enough to, you know, not see us for so long and be okay.
[00:32:27] Adam Fishman: Yeah. It's interesting too, like, because he's able to be independent, he does sort of learn his own physical boundaries and, like, what he's capable and not capable of. So, like, maybe even over time less likely to get injured because he's like, "Well, I know can't jump down from this, like, big platform because I'll myself, but I could do it from this platform instead," you know?
[00:32:47] Adam Fishman: 'cause you're not there, picking him up and setting him down and, like, all that sort of stuff, so. are there certain things think or you've observed him do at age three that you don't think other three-year-olds can do, maybe because of different philosophies or styles?
[00:33:03] Dirk Doebler: I've definitely seen some things. I think one is like just playing on the playground, like a playground for older kids. I think he's just able to do some of these things without any interventions, whether it's on some of those big, I don't know if you've seen them where they have like big independent steps where they're not like stairs or getting on and like the bigger things.
[00:33:22] Dirk Doebler: he's able to figure it out. He's able to get down from things that are designed for like the six-year-olds who are a little bit taller, where he's able to find a way to get down or there's a swing set he was on, one of those big circle swings, let's see, three and a half feet off of the ground, pretty high up that he's comfortable like kind of leaning over and eventually just kind of settling down.
[00:33:41] Dirk Doebler: and we've definitely seen parents intervene with kids that are his age to put them on things or help them on those same things where the kids just aren't able to do it
[00:33:50] Adam Fishman: Yeah. All right. you sort of made a joke, uh, when were prepping for this show passing that, when it comes to technology, you have some particular, some particular philosophies around technology, which I love talking about on this show, and that Archer's first phone is gonna be a Jitterbug.
[00:34:06] Adam Fishman: And I had to look that up, because I was like, "What is a Jitterbug?" And I know you said you're half joking about that, but, like, tell me about what a Jitterbug is and, and why, like, that will be his, you know, first phone.
[00:34:16] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. It was back in like 20 years ago, they had these ads that used that doo-wop song, maybe not doo-wop, but jitterbug song from the '80s, not doo-wop. and it was a flip phone for senior citizens with large buttons and very limited capability just for like your senior parents to have some ability to be connected without, you know, complex newfangled devices.
[00:34:37] Dirk Doebler: It literally just makes phone calls. I think it would maybe text, but it was the, the nine-digit texting, right? So, we've joked like that's what's going to be his phone. He's not gonna get unfettered access to the internet. He's not gonna get social media. These things are not for kids. They prevent socialization.
[00:34:55] Dirk Doebler: Like the school's banning them now and showing the results. Like kids are happier. They're less depressed in these environments. Like that's really important for us. We're going to prevent him from being able to access these things for as long as we can.
[00:35:07] Adam Fishman: Yeah. And you've some, interesting screen rules, which I, I would say are, are pretty brilliant. You have this philosophy that, the only videos he sees are things he can see looking out a window. So what does that mean?
[00:35:20] Dirk Doebler: So he doesn't get any cartoons, no "Bluey," no "Cocomelon." He doesn't know those characters aside from what his classmates know. So he'll misidentify things, which makes us very proud. but so he'll get YouTube videos usually of compilations of like fire trucks or garbage trucks, things that are super low-key.
[00:35:38] Dirk Doebler: there's no music. If they put music on it, we'll put it on mute, and it's literally just like compilation videos of things that you would see out in the real world. Sometimes we give him rockets and, and spaceships, which you certainly can't see outside your window. But the point is it's, there's no fast cuts, there's no bright colors, there's no music and activity and, and we don't give him anything with that.
[00:35:58] Dirk Doebler: So even the things that are designed for kids are there to be highly colorful and get their attention. It's like crack for these children. Like, so we can turn this off. We'll say, "Hey, after this next truck or two more trucks, we're gonna turn it off." And then that one will end and he'll say, "Bye, trucks.
[00:36:12] Dirk Doebler: Turn it off." And we can turn it off. Like no fuss, no tantrums, and we've had babysitters come over and be like, "This is brilliant." Because they've seen so many children just lose their minds 'cause "Bluey's" over. and we want to prevent that. And so we also want him to not see the TV as really a source of entertainment.
[00:36:30] Dirk Doebler: So we only give it to him at certain meals because again, he doesn't eat very well. So we kind of started use this as a way to kind of help him eat. But if he's not gonna eat, he's not gonna do the TV. That's basically the rule. If you're not gonna eat at these designated times, we're turning the TV off and you're not gonna be able to watch your fire trucks, your trains, or anything
[00:36:49] Adam Fishman: It's interesting when you mention that. So my son is quite a bit older than yours. I have an 11-year-old. But when he was your, your son's age, he used to watch this Canadian broadcasting program called Mighty Machines, which is, uh, you can get the DVDs on Amazon, but it's basically like live action recording of like, uh, street sweepers and people like digging up a stump and like stuff like that.
[00:37:11] Adam Fishman: So it's all these very cool, like heavy equipment and things. Again, things you could see by looking out your window.
[00:37:16] Adam Fishman: yeah, it's pretty fun. The other thing you said that you do, which I thought was, brilliant actually, is, instead of giving him your phone to watch something, you actually cast from your phone to the TV, and that's helping him, like, not associate a phone as an entertainment device.
[00:37:35] Adam Fishman: like how did you come up with that approach? 'Cause I think it's, I think it's really interesting.
[00:37:39] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, we see, you know, these kids get very obsessed with devices very easily, and parents can very easily kind of just give their kid the phone. And we don't want him to be entertained with a screen. We don't want to know that there's something in our pocket anytime he goes somewhere that can entertain him.
[00:37:56] Dirk Doebler: And so we want to prevent there being any association with a phone being something he can use to entertain himself. And like the TV is really one screen that will do that. So I recently came back from a trip and I had photos to show, and I cast them to the TV and flipped through the photos and the videos that way rather than him seeing it on the phone, 'cause we don't want him to get obsessed with a mobile device or an iPad or anything.
[00:38:21] Dirk Doebler: And he's never even used an iPad of any kind.
[00:38:24] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that's interesting. And then, you know, he's not sitting there like tactile, like next, next, next, you know, getting that like dopamine hit.
[00:38:31] Dirk Doebler: in control of it. Yeah, I mean, phones are like slot machines in many regards. That's how they've been engineered, so.
[00:38:36] Adam Fishman: Art, I wanna talk to you about AI for a second.
[00:38:38] Adam Fishman: So I ask every parent, who comes on this show, well, I mean, maybe over the last year since AI's become a big thing, like what their clever AI parenting hacks are. And I asked you this and you said, "I don't use AI for any parenting. It's lazy. It's a lazy way to parent." So that's like a fairly spicy take, but again, you said that everything about how you parent is contrarian.
[00:38:57] Adam Fishman: so tell me about that take, for a show that is full of like
[00:39:02] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, So much of our philosophy is about being very intentional because it's all about also the development of our son. And so we want to to know where he is developmentally and, you know, what's going on with his brain, what associations is he putting together. And so we want to have that deeper understanding of what's going on when we make certain decisions about what we want him to do or not do.
[00:39:23] Dirk Doebler: If we enroll him in an activity, why would we enroll him in that rather than just getting ideas from something else, right? We want to understand the deeper premise and also by not outsourcing to AI, it forces us to better understand what he actually wants and be able to read him and understand what he wants.
[00:39:41] Dirk Doebler: And I think it's really important that parents are deeply in touch with their children and their interests and limitations rather than having some third party do it But like, if you had a service where you could just call a nanny and be like, "Hey, my son, you know, what should I do with my son?"
[00:39:54] Dirk Doebler: that's basically the same thing. You're outsourcing to someone else telling you what to do with your child, and it's like preventing that deeper engagement and understanding of your child. And so we want things to be a little more authentic and more relationship-driven versus just like, give me some ideas of what I should do here.
[00:40:08] Adam Fishman: Yeah, that's interesting because, you know, I somebody recently writing about, like, how they don't use AI for writing because they don't want that muscle to atrophy. And so this is like, you want your parenting muscle of engaging with your kid and creatively developing ideas together of things to do, you don't want that to atrophy by just, like, asking, you know, Google or an AI or whatever for assistance.
[00:40:31] Adam Fishman: I, I, wanna preface this by saying, like, folks who've made it this far know that you work in, you work in technology. Like, you build, you build a company. so you're not, like, a Luddite or anything, uh, at, at all. And you spent, like, your whole career in tech, in and around tech.
[00:40:45] Adam Fishman: but you, you you're raising a kid who, like, watches things that are cast onto a TV, so no device. Might get a Jitterbug as his first phone.
[00:40:54] Adam Fishman: like, what, what's the relationship long-term that you want him to develop with technology by the time that he's, like, I don't know, like 12 or so?
[00:41:03] Dirk Doebler: Yeah, I want him to have a healthy relationship with technology where he sees it as a tool or a means to an end rather than a reason for existence in and of itself. You know, we don't want him entertaining himself with just screen times. You know, it's extremely unhealthy. Attention spans are already dropping for adults because of this.
[00:41:24] Dirk Doebler: It's Just like for children where the neurons have to be connected in certain ways to have access to the things that are killing adult attention spans is just highly detrimental. So we want him to be able to leverage it purely as a tool rather than, you know, or mostly as a tool rather than just a sense of entertainment.
[00:41:42] Dirk Doebler: And so we don't want him to have a smartphone for as long as possible. We don't want him to be concerned social media. We want him to have, you know, really the self-esteem and security in himself that a lot of social media is very good at undermining because it's just not healthy for you know, young kids and then adults to have that kind of relationship with technology
[00:42:02] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So a tool. a tool, not a toy, we've had people say on this before. all right, wanna talk about something that's very near and dear to you, which is paternity leave. So your company, Parento Leave, is actually helps companies, like, build their leave policies, as software. you have one kid, but you took two paternity leaves.
[00:42:20] Adam Fishman: You wrote a post about this. so tell me, like, the story of why... Like, first of all, like, what were you making up for that second paternity leave? Like, why, why did you take effectively two, two leave times?
[00:42:33] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. So when my son was born, we were raising a round of financing, and we closed it a couple weeks after he was born. And at that point, I needed to actually start to deploy the proceeds. We need to hire up. I need to train people. And so I wasn't in a position with the company to actually step away for any meaningful amount of time.
[00:42:52] Dirk Doebler: So when he was first born, I took some time part-time. I really worked part-time. I booked my Fridays off so I could be more flexible on Fridays, but I was still working at least 30 hours a week. But because I worked from home, I was able to sort of help out as needed, could still feed him, could still put him down for naps and all of that stuff.
[00:43:13] Dirk Doebler: And, you know, realized I needed a proper paternity leave at some point because it was still sort just part-time working, and it was important for me to actually be able to spend that kind of time with my son and, and have real uninterrupted weeks on end, time to bond with him and build that relationship.
[00:43:31] Dirk Doebler: And so I decided, and my team decided that I should finally, now that we've built up the company, we've got people on hand, they're trained, and we've gotten through a busy season, I can take a step back, take a proper parental leave, and spend time with my son
[00:43:45] Adam Fishman: Cool. you know, I love that.
[00:43:46] Dirk Doebler: what was different the second time around? Like, what do you think you got back that maybe you'd lost in your first approach?
[00:43:53] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. So my wife was back at work at that point for part of it, and it was really just the ability to spend, you know, hours per day on end with him, kind of uninterrupted on my own, you know, at 10 months old, I think, I think was how old he was when I started it, able to like interact with him. I took him to museums and different places and playgrounds and things.
[00:44:17] Dirk Doebler: We were just one-on-one for hours on end. I was responsible for him more than my wife was responsible for him during the first leave because my mom was here to help and I was still, you know, helping part-time. And so it was really just the ability to really spend meaningful time with him and build that love and trust and relationship and sort of see the world through his eyes at 10 months old.
[00:44:38] Dirk Doebler: Because when they're really first born, they're kind of just lumps. But at 10 months they can see, they can see, they can interact, they can do things. and that was really entertaining for me and really brilliant to be able to just like see things from his perspective and take him to all these different places.
[00:44:53] Adam Fishman: I laughed when you said lumps there because like I had Siki Chan on and he described, a newborn as like a potato that eats, sleeps, and poops, and that's pretty much, what you get, a purple potato. there's another piece of this, around leave and parental involvement.
[00:45:08] Adam Fishman: So I've had, this wonderful woman and, academic and author Darby Saxbe on the show a
[00:45:12] Adam Fishman: few now, and she talks about research from Craig Garfield who asks new dads, "Are you babysitting or are you being a dad?" And you have a very kind of strong visceral reaction to that question. So
[00:45:29] Adam Fishman: tell me about it.
[00:45:30] Dirk Doebler: When you're really sitting there and you're being intentional and you're spending time with your and you're interacting with them, you're being a father. And I think it's very important that people do and they spend time, that you're not just watching. Like, we let our kid run around the playground and give him independence, but, like, we're being intentional about that.
[00:45:46] Dirk Doebler: And when we take him out and we go around, I'm asking, "What do see? What are you thinking? What is this? What is that?" Trying to have deeper interaction with him, and it's not just like, "You exist, I exist, and I'm making sure you're not getting hurt." And so I think it's really important that, like, people understand you're not just babysitting if you're actively trying to spend time with your child.
[00:46:06] Dirk Doebler: Like, dads are more involved than they were before. They're usually happier to be involved as long as they're actually interacting. and it's not just like a time for mom to take a break, which is why when people are like, "Oh, he took that trip to DC, you know, mom, he's you a day off." Like, it had nothing to do with her.
[00:46:21] Dirk Doebler: Like, she was offered the opportunity to come with and she didn't want I was like, "Okay, well I'm gonna do it without you." It's, it's about parenting. It's not about just watching them and making sure nothing happens.
[00:46:29] Adam Fishman: yeah. Okay, cool. I have like a visceral reaction to that form of question too, which is like, "Oh yeah, it's so nice that you're babysitting your kid." It's like, well, no. That's when you hire like a third-party person. Like, no, I'm, I'm doing things with my son or daughter or whatever, so.
[00:46:46] Adam Fishman: I have a couple more, things to, ask you about. and the last thing is, this idea that you can be an, an involved dad who just hangs out with your kid on the weekends and to optimize for like quality weekends. But I think you see that as a bit of a cop-out.
[00:47:00] Adam Fishman: in your opinion, you know, being a good dad means showing up like every day, and you're not just banking time by having quality weekends, even though the day-to-day work is like far, far more work. for you, your head's down, you're building a company. a dad might be doing that same thing and think, "Oh, one intense weekend with my kid is enough."
[00:47:23] Adam Fishman: Like I've, I've checked, I've checked the box. Do you think that dad's kidding himself?
[00:47:27] Adam Fishman: I think so. I think so. Because I think if you're saying, "Hey, well, I need to spend the entire week building this company or focusing on work," you're inherently admitting that in order to be good at something, you need to spend time doing it, it, that you need to make that your focus. And therefore, if that's the argument, whether you know it or not, by only being there on the weekends, you inherently cannot be good at it. You are inherently not as good as if you were putting in the effort every day. And to kind of flip that on the head, like what if you only worked at your company two days a week? Would you think you're very good at it? Would you think that you're getting the most out of your effort there? And the answer is obviously no.
[00:48:06] Dirk Doebler: and I think it's easy to make that argument for children because usually there's somebody else that can take care of them or watch them or spend time with them. And the counterfactual, the of time versus the real time spent with them, like it's so hard to see the difference in the impact.
[00:48:21] Dirk Doebler: Like you're never gonna be able to see it because you can't see the counterfactual, even though no, there is an impact. And I think, you know, I've read studies and surveys, like people at the end of their lives, they wish they spent more time with their family because they're building a company that like just made someone else more money or like the value of what they're building or doing isn't that high compared to the time they have spent with their kid.
[00:48:41] Dirk Doebler: And so I think it's like, no, like you can be good in time you're there, but you can never be good at something if you don't actually spend enough time doing it.
[00:48:50] Adam Fishman: Yeah. So is that, you know, if you were talking to a founder, and you probably do talk to founders and company leaders about parental leave, about starting families, about like work and life. So like what would your advice be to a founder who's about to start a family or a family person who's been curious about starting a company?
[00:49:11] Adam Fishman: I would tell them it's not easy, but that it's, it's gonna be a give and take at different times. There are times where you need to spend more time working, um, and that you need to have a partner that can help spend more time with the kid at those times. But you can't let that be all the time. You need to be able to find balance and offset it.
[00:49:28] Dirk Doebler: And when you're able to, spend more time with your child and don't just sort of think like, "Hey, I can do it on the weekends," and kind of forego it because especially for if you're starting a company, like 90 something percent of companies fail, and whether you work 40 or 50 or 60 hours really isn't gonna be the reason something succeeded or not.
[00:49:48] Dirk Doebler: And like at the end of the day, there's so many other factors, and as long as you're putting the effort to make your company successful, an extra 10 hours a week isn't gonna be the solution, especially as you start to build out a team, you know? And so I think people need to recognize and really put into perspective like, what they want out of life.
[00:50:04] Dirk Doebler: Like if your company's successful but took 10 years to get there and you ignore your kid, is that gonna make you satisfied? and I, I think people need to have real questions about what they want, out of life and how, what kind of parent they want to be.
[00:50:16] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Well, that is a great, place to wrap up, so thank you for that. how can people follow along or be helpful to you and/or your company?
[00:50:25] Dirk Doebler: Yeah. Well, they c- they can always find out more information on our website, parentalleave.com, and they can share the word on social media, let people know, tell their friends that are pregnant or expecting about us so that they tell their companies
[00:50:38] Adam Fishman: Cool, cool. Love that. We will, uh, link to all the places and do our best to, uh, to share ParentoLeave with people.
[00:50:45] Adam Fishman: All right, let's do lightning round.
[00:50:47] Adam Fishman: the rules are simple. I ask you a question, you say the first thing that comes to mind. It's a judgment-free zone, but hey, as we talked about, you're not so s- stressed about other people's judgments, so um, all right, what is the most indispensable parenting product you've ever purchased?
[00:51:02] Dirk Doebler: I don't actually think we've got a product that's indispensable. Maybe early on it was the Duna for travel and ease ,but other than that, now that he's outgrown it, it would be nice to have that back.
[00:51:15] Adam Fishman: useless parenting product you've ever purchased?
[00:51:19] Dirk Doebler: Oh my God, God, 90% of things. Like 90% of these items. But the one that we have is the, um,pacifier with the medicine syringe at the end didn't
[00:51:27] Adam Fishman: yeah.
[00:51:28] Adam Fishman: it.
[00:51:30] Adam Fishman: I didn't... I mean, they make something for everything, right? So, um, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever found in Archer's pockets or in the washing machine?
[00:51:38] Dirk Doebler: I'm gonna have to say actually nothing, 'cause we found he doesn't collect things in his pockets, which is great. He brings them over to us and tells us to hold onto them, but they don't end up in his pockets.
[00:51:49] Adam Fishman: That's amazing. pretty rare, I think. Um, okay, true or false, there's only one correct way to load a dishwasher
[00:51:56] Dirk Doebler: I'll say false. I think you can load it in many different ways, uh, as long as things actually get washed and
[00:52:01] Adam Fishman: Okay, Got it. Got it. So a little trial and error is okay. Um, what is your signature dad superpower?
[00:52:08] Dirk Doebler: I say actually just knowing how to read son really well. I have a better ability to intuit what he's doing or needs in that moment than my wife by a long shot and, and what he's asking for. When you really understand what he was asking for in his words, I, I was able to figure it out really easily
[00:52:23] Adam Fishman: Okay. Well, also another, plus one to spending daily time with him as opposed to concentrating on the weekends. So, the ideal day with Archer involves what one activity?
[00:52:36] Dirk Doebler: Flying in our plane, I think. Yeah. He likes-- Yeah, as somewhat pilot, and he loves to be in our plane and taking him up and letting him see and tell us what he sees on the headset is great
[00:52:46] Adam Fishman: Wow, that's amazing. So how many people can fit in your plane?
[00:52:50] Dirk Doebler: Only four, which is one reason I say we're one and done. There won't be space for another kid and luggage
[00:52:56] Adam Fishman: Wow. So do you take this plane on, on like trips and stuff, like city hopping and things?
[00:53:00] Adam Fishman: Very
[00:53:01] Dirk Doebler: yeah. We'll take it city hopping. I've taken it down to North Carolina a few times. taken it over to like Long Island, Montauk or Boston area. Yeah. And he comes with
[00:53:10] Adam Fishman: Very cool. if Archer had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:53:14] Dirk Doebler: He this recently, I think it was Pilot. I think like he was all of-- He did one of those things for Father's Day where you fill in the survey of what you want, and his was like, "I love it when Daddy and I go on vacation," 'cause we're taking the, the plane. Or, you know, I think he mentioned Pilot in there.
[00:53:29] Dirk Doebler: And when he makes cookies is when he's really happy for me. Like it's funny.
[00:53:33] Adam Fishman: Okay. What's the funniest thing that he's ever said in public?
[00:53:39] Dirk Doebler:
[00:53:39] Adam Fishman: Funniest can also be most embarrassing, you know?
[00:53:41] Dirk Doebler: There are a lot of these things. My wife mentioned something medical about women, and then all of a sudden in the backseat we hear him out the gynecological names of, of, of this. this. And then I just look at her and I'm
[00:53:56] Dirk Doebler: like, "Good job. That's what we need our two-year-old to be yelling in class."
[00:54:01] Adam Fishman: Well, it's, you know, it's scientifically and anatomically correct. There's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. Um, all right. What is your go-to dad wardrobe?
[00:54:11] Dirk Doebler: Go-to dad wardrobe. I like my hiking with extra pockets, uh, like the cargo hiking pants.
[00:54:17] Dirk Doebler: Water-resistant,
[00:54:18] Dirk Doebler: a lot of space
[00:54:19] Adam Fishman: okay. You mentioned, you read a lot of parenting books, in preparation for having a kid and thinking about how you were gonna develop your philosophy. Do you have a single, like, favorite one that you would recommend, to people?
[00:54:32] Dirk Doebler: I think the one that had the biggest impact on me was "The Confident Parent."
[00:54:37] Dirk Doebler: That's the one I really enjoyed and kind of like, "Oh, we actually can do this. We can have a kid and not give up our life."
[00:54:42] Adam Fishman: Cool. I will, uh, link to that in the show notes. Thank you. how many dad jokes do you tell on average each day?
[00:54:48] Dirk Doebler: Probably not that many. I've been telling bad puns for a long time anyways. but maybe like once every other day
[00:54:55] Adam Fishman: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I guess this question doesn't really apply because you don't let him watch mindless TV, but is there a, looking out the window style program that is like the worst on your
[00:55:09] Dirk Doebler: There was
[00:55:10] Dirk Doebler: one.
[00:55:10] Adam Fishman: that one," and you're like, "No"?
[00:55:12] Dirk Doebler: There was one that had an airplane that was being like-- It wasn't quite what we like, but it was like an airplane being salvaged and repaired, and it was all AI-generated, and it was-- had horrible continuity. Like, the airplane kept what it looked like. People were doing random things.
[00:55:29] Dirk Doebler: Like, they would put tape on something, and tape was endlessly coming out. They would paint it, but it wouldn't paint in in the right spot. Like, it was awful. It was mind-numbingly stupid. And so it sort of fulfills a requirement because it wasn't sad, it wasn't exciting, but it it was just like so bad. It was like someone put an AI prompt, like make a 25-minute video of this and paid no attention to it.
[00:55:49] Dirk Doebler: And it's just like, they'll say, "Put on the gold plane." It's like, it's like yellow and rusty looking, and it's like, ugh, this is the worst.
[00:55:55] Adam Fishman: Oh, very few evals were run against that video, unfortunately, so. is there a nostalgic movie that you just can't wait to force Archer to watch with you when he's old enough?
[00:56:05] Dirk Doebler: One thing I really like, is Lilo & Stitch. That's one of my favorite movies. But I probably have to say actually The Emperor's New Groove. That might be the one I really like and I want him to
[00:56:14] Dirk Doebler: watch.
[00:56:14] Adam Fishman: David Spade, great film. Um, big fan. final question here, what is your take on minivans?
[00:56:21] Dirk Doebler: I think they're great. I think this whole trend of Americans hating them for SUVs and and crossovers that have less space and worse gas mileage is one of the things that happened to America in a long time. Like, we need more minivans, especially like the ones with captain chairs in the back.
[00:56:34] Dirk Doebler: Those are amazing. Like, why people don't drive those, It's got to be a point of pride or something, because those are way better than, you your boring Honda Pilot
[00:56:41] Adam Fishman: And some of them get incredible gas
[00:56:42] Adam Fishman: mileage too, which is pretty awesome. So you, you may be surprised to learn that Startup Dad is relatively mixed in terms of its love and hatred for minivans. So it's about a 50/50 split.
[00:56:53] Adam Fishman: Uh, so yeah. Awesome. All right, Dirk, with that, thank you so much for joining me on Startup Dad today.
[00:56:59] Adam Fishman: it was really, really fun having you. I loved your takes. I learned definitely a few things, and I wish you and your wife Kate, and Archer all the best, for the rest of this year. And best of luck to Parento Leave.
[00:57:12] Dirk Doebler: Of course. Thanks for having me
[00:57:13] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Dirk Dobler. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:57:21] Adam Fishman: Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.