Conscious Fatherhood - When Our Kids Are in Pain

All right, here we are. Gosh darn it. Whole nother week has gone by. This is crazy. And I'm actually back where I was last week because it's another volleyball tournament for my daughter. Yay. So I'm at my mom's home community in Southern California, so. So today is week two, right? And every week two is about conscious fatherhood. You could say conscious parenthood, but really, I'm talking to fathers. And today's title is, you know, what do we do when they're in pain? What do we do for our kids?

Pain. And, you know, I grew up, I watched my father. Now, I don't know if he could fix everything, but he sure felt like he had to fix everything. Now, I'll also say there was not a lot of touchy feely stuff with my dad. That's just not kind of what dads did back then, right? So there wasn't like, Dan, how are you doing emotionally and what's going on in your life and how are things for you? And tell me, do you feel insecure and blah, blah, blah. No, there was none of that. Right. Okay, fast forward.

In this day and age, I got a 15 year old, as many of you know, and we do have conversations like that. And I have the emotional capacity to have conversations like that, which is even better. Right? And I've worked really hard to be able to be empathetic and emotionally present with my daughter. I make mistakes, but gets better and better, right. Do I have an urge to fix things? No, not really. I probably could fix more things around the house at least, but. But the big question is, like, when my daughter was born, like, it started this relationship that I never knew possible.

This, this connection, this, this. This. This significance, this love that I was just like, oh, my God. And people talk about it all the time. Like, I never knew I could love until I had my kids, right or not. I didn't know I could love, but I couldn't love like that because it's different than our partners, and there's something about it. Right? So what do we do when our kids are in pain? I mean, there's. There's a whole thing, like when kids fall and we want to, you know, help them get better.

And with boys, you know, very often it's like, oh, you're fine, you're fine. Just brush it off. You know, there's subtle messages that deny young boys their pain and their emotions. And then there's the explicit messages. Stop crying. Stop being a little b****, a little girl. Stop acting like a little girl, all that stuff. It's alive and well. People don't think it is, but it is. It's just not the norm anymore. Thank God. But then the question is, like driving home the other night with my daughter.

Hey, how was practice?