Latest / Two Doting Dads with Matty J & Ash / #230 Coaching Kids With Tim French

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#230 Coaching Kids With Tim French · Two Doting Dads with Matty J & Ash

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Mat it's no surprise that parenting both girls and boys
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can be hugely different.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I need to apologize as well, because I have a
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: level of arrogance when I talk about what it's like
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: to parent little boys, and I'm like, oh, thank godness,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not in that category.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Look saved me from this nightmare.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Those little fuckers I love. I love young men.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Sorry, sleep that in there.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I think it is a huge privilege to parent both
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: boys and girls.
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: I do have one of each. Thank you for pointing
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: that out, And it is a privilege.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: We do joke about the fact that little boys are
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit trickier to parent, and when we make
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: that joke, it comes from a very happy place.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I did say painful one, but that's with love.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It's so painful how much.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: I love my son. But that sounded psarcastic. It's not.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: But I think, and as you would know this, but
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: sometimes you do have to parent young men differently compared
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: to girls. Can I ask you a question, Yes, do
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: you ever get nervous about Oscar? He's a great, great child,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: But do you ever get worried about Oscar growing up?
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: If he gets involved in the wrong groups, if he
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: does go down the route of having, say, unhealthy masculinity.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does worry me a lot, actually, especially because
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: it's at their fingertips, Like all that shit is at
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: their fingertips. And I would like to think that Oscar
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: could mirror his behaviors more around what I'm like and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: how I treat his mom and how I treat his
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: sister instead of how some of these knob.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: Heads on the internet actually treat women. And it does
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: get a shit out of me, to be honest.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Well, there are people out there, like coaching with Tim,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: who is today's guest, who works specifically in the area
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: of raising young boys in a way where they turn
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: out to be exceptional young men.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something in this chat about shared purpose that
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: just hit a nerve with me because it reminds me
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: so much of my childhood and the fact that school
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: is not a one size fit all for learning, and
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I feel like the learning wasn't tailored to me, so
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I just was not interested at all.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Tim is the father of two boys, a teacher. I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: think it was a deputy principal. I believe, Oh he
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: was the big dog. He was the big dog for
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: a bit there. He still is the big dog. So Tim,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: if you're listening, that's healthy. But he does so much
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: important work sharing the message of how to raise healthy
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: young men.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: And if you, like me.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I worried about your sweet little kelpie boy turning to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the manisphere, then feed o more. Because Tim has a
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: lot of lessons and he also has a lot of
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: experience of how he's helped a lot of young men
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: navigate life, which is always the hardest thing to do.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: And you know, as a father to three young girls,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I actually found a lot of the lessons still applied
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: to how I parent them. So it's a great chat.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy. Welcome back to three doting dads.
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: I am Maddie, j I'm Ash, and I'm Tim.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And this is a podcast that happens to be all
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: about parenting and.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Is it good?
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: It is a bad and they're relatable.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: If you come for advice, good news. We have Tim,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: We have Tim coach. We would not give you any advice,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: can I I wasn't sure if you were trying to
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: like withhold your last name online?
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: No, okay, no, definitely not just didn't really have it's
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: kind of boring. My name is Tim French. It's pretty simple,
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: not really a catch French h.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: I didn't know. I was like, I don't want to
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: do him like it's Tim from fourteen.
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: No, just I don't know. I probably should actually now
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: just change it back so that it makes I don't.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Worry about fun fact this is the first ever guest
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: episode that's going to be on YouTube.
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: Oh wicked exciting, and it's also my first ever podcast.
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: So many first seventy What can we celebrate?
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Should we?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: What else we got? Tim? I do want to say
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: thank you because before coming here last night, you had
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: a post on Instagram and I think you referenced us
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: as one of the country's top parenting podcasts.
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely are in my book. I think the way
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: that you guys have a such genuine, authentic approach to
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: life really comes across and I think in a world
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: where we kind of get judged for every decision, the
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: way that you guys put across some pretty good nuggets
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: of information is a real relief to parents out there.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you time for also information.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And I was like, Oh, who's.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Where's he going?
• 4:35
  Speaker 5: Who's coming here? Is he double booked?
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: It was like one person was like, I think it
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: might be too dads. It was me was like, what
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: about all these other podcasts? That a crap? Okay, this
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: is the best one.
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, we want to help the country.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Where where the plane is? Yeah?
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: Anyway, that's because we sabotaged all the other ones.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: But that's that's another story.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: That's another story.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: We usually start these episodes with asking do you rec
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: it's all the most trouble you got in as a child.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Big exhaled.
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: I'm the second child, so I personally think the second
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: child was sent to really test their parents because they
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: think you think you kind of got it nailed. After
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: you've done the first one, you've got a couple of
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: years under your belt, you still think, oh, this parenting
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: thing's pretty easy. And then I came along. So I'm
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: lucky enough to have a brother that forged the path
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: for me and who is a great human and was
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: a really good role model for me. And then I
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: probably did everything opposite to him. So my biggest trouble
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: happened to me. In year six, Mum and Dad uprooted
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: the family. We moved out of Wollongong up to the
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: Northern River, so we moved to Balana, so j just
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: New Byron, where you got.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Right, beautiful part of the world.
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: Top spot. So we moved into a new It was
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: about fifteen k's out of town, little acreage estate, so
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: great little public school. I think it was one hundred
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: and twenty kids whole school. Wow. So I've jumped into
• 5:49
  Speaker 5: a year five six composite class, trying to fit in,
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: and naturally we caught the bus to school and some
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: of the other boys in the bus throwing fruit out
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: of the windows into oncoming cars. So as you do
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: not true at all and not commending this to anybody,
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: she don't do it after this would be fine, we'll
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: Naturally I got caught up into it. Stole some fruit
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: from home, which ironically dad had grown in a vegie patch.
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: Pretty proud of it. Yes, that's not.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: The homegrown fruit.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: My apples gone.
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: Honestly, I'm the front windscreen of the van. So I've
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: thrown some fruit out of the bus window just now
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: in hindsight, like just trying to fit in. But one
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: of the girls that happened to catch the bus was
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: the SRC six captain snitch, absolute snitch, so student representative
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: council so kind of.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: Last year snitch, Yeah, stupid not.
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: So she threatened that she was going to dobb us
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: in and so I was petrified. So instead of actually
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: just waiting it out, knowing that she probably never would,
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: I just walked straight into the principal's office just threw
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: myself under the bus. Literally, I just went, I did it.
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: Were talking about it, and he's like what, he had
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: no information, So then I had to actually recreate the
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: story and tell him what i'd done. Now a bit
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: of pre context. When we moved from Wollongong, My primary
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: school journey was pretty loose. I was only there for
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: break times, didn't really engage with the content. Every parent, teacher,
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: the teachers like, yeah, Tim comes from play time. That's
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: about it. Like we can't really get him to do
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: much in the classroom until year five. You Fiver had
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: Ron Tunstall, great bloke got me into education. And we'll
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: talk more about rom later. But I remember specifically asking
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: mum and dad for a Fuboo track suit, So I'm
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: not sure if I'm taking your boys back down memory lane.
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: It was pretty similar to Yeah, it was pretty gangster,
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: and I think that was probably the last alarm bell.
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: Mom and dad went, this boy needs to change. So
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: we uprooted and moved up to.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: For anyone, he doesn't know what fubu is if you're
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: in like the rap street scenelan, Yeah it's a British version,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: but what's his name?
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Boo by us you alig Alig.
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, it wasn't great, and so we've moved
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: to this new place and then Mum and Dad get
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: the phone call from the school that I'm launching fruit
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: out of the bus window in Araxent. Yeah yeah, typicallear
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: no fooboo. Traxit was warned or humed, but I got
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: an in school suspension, had to work with the groundskeeper
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: for a bit and it actually, looking back, it was
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: probably a bit of a defining moment for my journey
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: then at that school, because I really had to kind
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: of turn it around because I'd mucked around most of
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: primary school. I remember Missus White had the year six
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: teacher at the new school was like, oh, Timm, you
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: would have learned at your old school and I was like, nap,
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: never touched it. She was like, really, I'm pretty sure
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: it's covered in like years two and four and we're
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: in year six.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: And I'm pretty sure it wasn't.
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: I remember just learning that so I've got a whole
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: bunch of trouble. And you knew you were in trouble
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: with dad when Dad went quiet, and it was like
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: I got the silent treatment for like a good week.
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: And we were doing the gold rush, which is commonly
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: studied in year six, and it was probably about day
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: seven or eight of me to spend in absolute hot water,
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: and I was trying to build a sieve because we
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: had to build an object to take in from the
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: gold rash. And Dad's pretty handy, so then he comes
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: into the shed and I've got his tools absolutely everywhere,
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: and he's starts helping me build this thing, and we
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: kind of patched the relationship and happened to be like
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: two weeks later, I got a positive fun call home
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: and it was like, seems, okay, it's going to be okay,
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: Like Mum's rang Nan, Like the phones are gone out
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: around the community that he's going to be.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: He's not a piece of shite.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: He's one good thing at school.
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: So that's like, honestly, that was probably it. And in
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: high school I was pretty well behaved. I think I
• 9:31
  Speaker 5: got most of it out of my system in primary school.
• 9:34
  Speaker 5: So primary school parent out there his son's absolutely off
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: the walls. I kind of made it through the back end.
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: High school was probably a bit of a dream for
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: mum and dad. I got it all out of my
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: system very good.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: One simple he's a fruit and another.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: You threw yourself under the bar, dubbed yourself in that.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: I mean that, I mean that shows character. Immediately, you
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: could have easily just been like, ah, you know, if
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it comes around, it comes around.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: So why did you want to become a teacher? Then?
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: Good question, and so I always want to play sport,
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: played footy growing up. Was never going to be good
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: enough to play an.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: If I asked AFL League League League.
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: So again, my brother two years older than me, great
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: role model. He was doing pee teaching at Unique, So
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: I was like, that's actually not a bad way I
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: get paid to kick a footing and hang out with kids.
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: So I always had like a bit of a coaching
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: background in terms of like coaching younger footy teams and
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: helping out around the place. So fell into teaching and
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: I had really good pee teachers going through high school.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: I went back to Ballina High School to do my
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: last prack placement with the pee teachers that I had
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: through school, which was kind of surreal because you go
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: to call them by their last name. I remember Ross
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: Buchanan saying, if you call me mister Bell, I'm going
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: to fail you.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: What are you doing?
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: It conditioned me for seven years to call you now.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: So fell into teaching that way, and that's how I
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: started as a pe teacher.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So how long were you teacher for?
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: I'm still a teacher teaching. I'm still a teacher. So
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: up until three weeks ago, I've been in educational leadership,
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: so leading well being, director of all being, assistant principle
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: of behavior management, if you will. In Canberra, I managed
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: twenty three schools and the most complex behavior needs cases
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: out of those schools were referred to the team and
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: I that we looked after. So having seen patterns of
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: behavior over time across multiple states kind of gave me
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: the ammunition I needed to really start this work.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And when you say this work helping young men.
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll jump back a little bit to how I
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: got right into this deep work. So in Canberra, I
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: was lucky enough to be head of student engagement at
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: the biggest state school in Canberra. What I did was
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: and I can't believe that I actually pitched this at
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: the time to the senior leadership. Was I asked for
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: every boy out of year nine and ten to be
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: in a boys' leadership program. And it wasn't for the
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: boys that were going to be your next school captain.
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: It was for boys that actually needed leadership. So I
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: remember ringing a good friend of mine, doctor Ann Thompson,
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: who's big in the education space, and running through my
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: pitch and he said, mane, what school leadership wouldn't take
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: you up on this? Like you're asking for all of
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: these knuckleheads to be in one class and to take
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: them out of the other classes where they're causing disruption.
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: And I was like, yeah, actually, when you put it
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: that way, why am I doing this? We created the boys' program.
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: We called it the Avengers. And the reason that we
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: got to the Avengers and we weren't copyrighted. Every one
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: of the lads brought a different skill set and so
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: when we collectively came together an if you boys can
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: cast your mind back to Mighty Ducks Coach Carter, remember
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: the Titans. It was pretty much pulling on all that
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: knowledge and putting it into this group of twenty four
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: young men across U nine and ten who had been
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: told they weren't graduating school because of their grades. The
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: second iteration of that program, we had one hundred percent
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: graduation and the three young men that were the school
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: leaders came out of that program. Wow, they also won
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: every act Education award that they possibly could that they
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: were eligible for after they came through that program. Now,
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: I'm not some superhuman teacher that just wrote this ridiculous curriculum.
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: What we did was we came up with a singular
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: purpose and we gave the boys another home inside the school.
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: And it wasn't a physical space. It was something to
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: belong to. Because something that boys need is a purpose
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: and a shared mission. And so once they collectively came together,
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: and what we used to do was if we were
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: all in the same class and Ash was being a
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: bonehead and we all got into trouble, figured I went
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: to you for the example. You noticed, I didn't go
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: to Maddie for that.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Judge.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Judge, that's fine.
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: So we would collectively do like consequence of work, and
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: naturally we looked that into fitness. So because we also
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: played a game, we played Gaelic footy, so it was
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: a sport that none of them had played before. But
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: we had soccer boys, we had AFL boys, we had
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: league boys. So let's play Gaelic footy because no one's
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: good at it. So we don't have an alpha top
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: dog out of the gate. And so then I would
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: be naturally you would have been yeah, actually that's but
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: we would do like consequences. So whether it was more
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: fitness activities and you know, we weren't making them run miles,
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: but essentially there was a shared purpose and if you
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: will be in a bonehead, it was up to Maddie
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: and I then in classes like oh, you don't do
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: that because you know we're going to have to do this,
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: or we're gonna have to share with the group why
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: we let you do that, And so that by standing behavior,
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: so we created a positive culture around actually pushing ourselves
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: to be better. And on the back of the boys,
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: Jerseys actually came up with the hashtag was hashtag be
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: better And so it takes us back. But that program
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: is still in effect today and I haven't been at
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: that school since twenty sixteen. Wow, And now we get
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: the phone calls from the boys at their weddings and
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: it's the late night facetimes and they're like, you guys
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: change their life and you're like, yeah, did we really?
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: And then in the moment you kind of think, what
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: the hell are we doing? Like we'd have locked door
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: conversations about what have we done? What have we created here?
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: And so to get that feedback because as a teacher,
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: you rarely see the fruits of your labor. Right if
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: you're a carpenter, you knock up a house, you stand back,
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: have a look at it. You built that, Yeah, great
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: job right around, tell you down right. But as a teacher,
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: you don't get that until it's twenty years later or
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: ten years later and you bump into them somewhere else
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: and like, hey, you know when you told me this
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: sentence And you're like, not a chance, But they do.
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: And so we are now getting that back, and there
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: was brothers starting to go through the iteration of the program.
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: So that work is what made the biggest difference in boys.
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: And so that obviously set me up for my journey
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: for the last ten years.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: When you look at those boys as a collective, and
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that you would go into some detail about
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: their environments outside of home, was there any common denominator
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: of saying, well, this is missing from their life, which
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: is why they went on a projectory to be not
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: so good.
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, it was a real mix. We had gents
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: in the program that they didn't have a dad at
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: home or mum might have been in prison. Like it
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: was a real mix. And so when I worked across
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: the ACT directorate across twenty three schools, we had about
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: two hundred students on our caseload. One of the important
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: factors out of that caseload that I noticed with every
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: young man, not one of them played a team sport,
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: which was pretty wild. And so out of all the
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: kids that got referred for complex behave to our unit,
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: not one of those kids actually played a team sport,
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: which is pretty It was pretty eye opening to me.
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: And obviously I've got a sports background and find a
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: bit of a home in different sports places.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Did that surprise you.
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: It really did, because I've always trusted sport and understood
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: sport and you know, known the impact that a coach
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: can have or gifted another community. And there's other parents around,
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: and you start to get like a bit of a culture, the.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Sense of belonging to like you're the same, like we
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: both during our school years would have played team sport.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Every single every chance I could. My dream was to
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: be a professional athlete, and I just wasn't good enough.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: So I played everything hoping that I would find the
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: one that.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Even though kids that had like maybe the kids that
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: played tennis, okay, they would have a tennis team.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: Still it's a crew, right, yeah, But.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Even though would still be like, oh, you guys playing
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: soccer at lunch, I want to play tem sport. You
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: don't like it's you saying that. I'm like, oh yeah,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: unless they just weren't, you know, they had something else
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: that they were doing.
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: But yeah, wow, okay, but a shared purpose and a
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: sense of belonging, we'll get you a heck of a
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: long way with a teenage boy, yeah, because otherwise we
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: were pretty egocentric. If we don't have a vision and
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: a bit of a purpose, we kind of just float
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: and then we drift. And when we drift, we tend
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: to drift into things we shouldn't and then that starts
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: the snowball. So that collective purpose and actually I remember
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: the first time they all gelled together, and they were
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: so excited that they'd all came together and we were
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: petrified because it's like we created a gang. We were
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: like far out. They've all come together, which is what
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: we wanted and we'd work so hard for and we're like, oh, oh,
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: if they turn on us, we're gone. So then we
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: created a leadership group withinside the program, and so then
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: there was four young men in that program that were
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: essentially elders, if you will, and they were in the
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: year ten, and they had different roles inside the group,
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: and if there was disagreements, you went to them, and
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: then they came through us. And so then we created
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: a hierarchy because we're really good at understanding that as
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: well as men. We kind of understand there's a chain
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: of command and sometimes we don't like it, but there
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: often is right and so fore young men to understand
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: that and know that they serve a place and their
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: background is irrelevant, it's just who they are in the moment.
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: With those group of young men, the first time we
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: took them away and this was kind of like we
• 18:10
  Speaker 5: kind of coined it like a preseason camp. We went
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: down to Kangaroo Valley, which down the south coast. We
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: put them in canoes, we made them pack food for
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: three days, we took a massive bunch of them and
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: it was just in case. It's part of the theory
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: work was design your meat, will plan. And you know
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: they're talking like Philip steaks and stuff. I'm like, you
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: do you don't care, And so jammed in a canoe
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: paddled fourteen ks into an island and it was the
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: Lord of the Fliers for three days and that was
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: the coming together. And so the first night were there
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: was Philip stakes, it was all stuff going on. And
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: then by day three that they're sort of dipping pennae
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: into past the right, there's nothing left and so I
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: often talk about letting them struggle and understanding that that's
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: what builds resilience. Right. One of the boys forgot sleeping
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: bag and it wasn't until night three that he actually
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: came and said, I forgot my sleeping bag.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Dude.
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: We've had spare ones here the whole time. It's like
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: simple things about if you would have asked for help,
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: like you would have been cozy, right, yeah, and so
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: ways in which we try and encourage young men to
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: seek help. It's not always the big conversations. Starts with
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: the small stuff first, because if you can ask for
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: it in the small times. It makes it that a
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: little bit easier when you're like really struggling, right, and
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: then you're seeking out. But that was some of the
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: forming understandings of the way in which I understand now
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: what really works for young men, and that challenged by choice,
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: but also being a part of something bigger than myself
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: gives me that sort of second spur.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's two things there. The first one you said
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: about them having a purpose.
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: I've got a boy and a girl. My boys are oldest.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: He's six turny seven, names Oscar, and he is non
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: stop and I complained about it a lot, but you
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: mentioned there that like a purpose. His purpose is to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: continue moving because I notice when he's not moving he's
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: doing the wrong thing. And then also as well there
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: asking for help. He's so determined to do things on
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: his own. Yeah, And I never thought about it like
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: you just put it just something small to ask for help.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: But you know, instead of just like maybe saying, don't
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: ask me the big things, ask me help for the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: small things. Do you think that that's something that me,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: as a parent of a boy, can do to try
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: and lead them in the right direction. For asking for
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: help when it comes to those bigger things.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: I think definitely role modeling it as well. I think
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: sometimes that we forget as parents, like I often talk
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: out aloud and I'm partly crazy as well, but I
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: try and talk through my thought process sometimes when I'm
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: around my boys, after how did I get to this point?
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: And so some of the work that we did with
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: those young men was sat them down. We had honest
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: and raw conversations, and I was like, there's going to
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: be times when you absolutely hate me. You are not
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: going to like the decisions I make. You're going to
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: think I'm an absolute ass. But I need you, and
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: we're having this conversation when everything's going well to understand
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: where I'm coming from and what that place is for you.
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: Because when we sit down like this and we've got
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: your folks on the other side of the table and
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: we're talking about your enrollment in this program and what
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: your decisions have gotten to this point, I need you
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: to understand that still love you, I still care for you,
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: but I'm holding you accountable to your choices, and We've
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: put these things in place to get you there. So
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: looping back, getting them to seek help sooner and it's
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: small stuff. But I've got a nine year old as well,
• 21:12
  Speaker 5: and he just tries to do everything by himself. Yeah right,
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: And it's like I'll come into the kitchen and he's
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: got a stool, he's on the bench, he's got both
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: cover doors up over the stove to get the batteries out.
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: And whilst I love it because it's like perfect problem
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: solve with the world needs more problem solver, but if
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: you fell into the stove, we've got a different conversation.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: There's so many things that oschool will do, and I
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: do love it when he tries to do something like that,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: especially when he's doing.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: To help his sister too.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: That's cool and something most of the time always happens
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: he hurts himself or something because he's like I can
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: do this, and then I'm like, just ask for help
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: because he wants to show that he can do it,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: but also as well, like, you're right, maybe I need
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: to show him a little bit more that I asked
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: for help a lot, which I don't think he would
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: think that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: He would just think that I would know everything.
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, very wrong, you're superman, thank you. Right, we'll
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: cut it there. But in their eyes at those young
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: formative ages, so from like zero to five, and mums
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: usually take the cake in this space and not pushing
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: agenda or anything like that. But if you listen to Steve,
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: but if he's kind of the og in the boy's
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: space zero to five, mum or the primary parent care
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: in that arrangement is the main voice of reason. Yeah, dads,
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: we kind of get this window from five to twelve
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: with boys where we get a bit of a say
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: in how they're going to form. Now, in real reality,
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: what we say literally doesn't really break the skin on
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: who they're going to be. It's the community we build
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: around them. And so after twelve, they kind of shut
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: down listening to their parents and they start to listen
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: to outside voices. So that's when you be really selective
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: as a parent on who you're building in that community
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: around your young person. So now the bigger player we've
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: got to come into that space is the online space
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: where when I was going through school, I didn't have
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: to worry about that. I'm so grateful to get through
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: school with the dumb phone. Yeah, I didn't have to
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: navigate teenage years with we.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Had like all we had was like rotten dot com
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: it was like that was like that was it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: We didn't have like t.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: With dial up internet where the computer was in the
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: living room.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Like that sort of shit like that.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And it was like, now I'm not like, I know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: it's early doors for Oscar and maybe like his online
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: you know presence. But if it's like this now, like
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: well in ten years time, it's going to scare the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: shit out of me.
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah. And so the work that you do now you'll
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: get ROI and out at the back end.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I see the way Oscar talks to Macy, how
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: I've spoken to him when potentially he's done something wrong.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Is there anything I can do to maybe shift that
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: so that he starts to maybe talk to her a
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: little bit differently.
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: I think you've done the heaviest lifting part that you'll
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: ever need to do as a parent mate in the
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: way that you have worked on yourself. And I genuinely
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: mean this, thank you. The way that you've changed the
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: way you go about things, yeah, will actually change the
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: way they parent went down the tray. Yeah, And that's
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: when I was getting emotional on the plane, because sometimes
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: we forget that work. But if you think about the
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: way you might have parented in younger years as a dad,
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: you neither do it the exact same way your parents
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: did it, or you'd be like, I'm not doing anything
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: they did because they sucked at it. I'm doing it
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: this way. And I guess the first question that I
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: often ask my clients that want to work with me,
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: because I do do this with families, They say, a team,
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: we need your help. We've got a teenage sign wh's
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: runing off the rails. I need you to fix him. Starters,
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: it's not a renovator's delight. We didn't pick him up,
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: but we're not going to flip in. The bones are great,
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: the foundations there, but we're just going to rough around.
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: There's got a bit of mold, Yeah, we can clean
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: that off. It's what are you prepared to change?
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: Because if you're not prepared to change, I can work
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: with you a young person. I can see them forty
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: five minutes twice a week, once a week, whatever you want.
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: But if we're not going to change how we all
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: approach things, we're not going to move the needle.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: What's your process? Then? If you've got a case, how
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: do you start to go through your checklist to see
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: where the problem is and when how you can start
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: fixing it?
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: Cool, good point. I've got an amazing client and an
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: amazing young person that I work with. And the first started.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: Both of parents reached out to me. So separated house,
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: but mom and dad. They tick every box of co
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: parenting that could ever exist, to the point where after
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: the first call, I said, guys, I'm not going to
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: take your money. You guys are doing absolutely everything I
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: would recommend for you to do as someone who's co
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: parenting a twelve year old boy. Because you're doing a
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: phenomenal job. Take a deep breath, pour a glass of wine.
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: You don't need me in your life. You're doing everything.
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: And then it was about a week later they were like, hey,
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: would you mind talking to our son? And I was
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: like absolutely, So I meet with their son once a week.
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: We unpack challenges, talking about shared purpose and understanding and
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: having a bigger goal. We just had some term one
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: goals for him at school. We had three big ones.
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: He achieved all three. So one was one hundred percent attendance,
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: hadn't been attending super well, one hundred percent attendance for
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: the term, absolutely rushed it. The other one was to
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: pick up an award at school in some aspect, which
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: is a massive goal. Smash that one. And the third
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: one was he was doing a creative project outside of school.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: And why is that important? Why is it important as
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a foundation to have those simple goals as a first step.
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: I feel like I want to do all through that
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: absolute legend and it's the heart of my way. Well,
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: I'm lucky I get to do this multiple times a week, right,
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: And seeing a young person fine purpose in stuff that
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: they're interested in, and it's often really cute, but they'll
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: attribute it to me, And it's like numb mat. You're
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: sitting in the mud doing the heavy lifting, working on
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: emotional regulation at eight nine seventeen. And I've got people
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: in my life that are forty forty five that are
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: too scared to sit there. And so to see you
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: do it at such a young age and see the
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: impact it's having on your life, I'm the one that's inspired.
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: I leave the call on an absolute height. But to
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: go back to your point, Maddie, is actually have a
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: conversation with them, and I take the pressure off. I'm
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: not here to tell you how to live your life.
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: You've got enough people in your life. Probably trying to
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: tell you how to do it, and I kind of
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: sit there almost like a big brother, if you will.
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: And a lot of the young people I work with
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: don't have people close in age in that that fill
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: that spot. And I was super lucky because my brother
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: was the ultimate. So I've kind of had that nurturing
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: experience all the way through. And kids will share a
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: heck of a lot if you give them a platform
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: where they feel safe. I feel like they're not going
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: to be judged. And some of the things they're thinking
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: about makes me look silly, and I'll be like, I
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: haven't even com branded that, and you guys have got
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: it on lock. And so then I just work through
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: a framework. We get to a certain point where we
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: establish and I keep them really simple because I kind
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: of want them to achieve them right, because then it's
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: like the snowball effect. Yeah, all right, but it's more
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: about it's not who I want them to sort of
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: like what outcome do you want to get? Like who
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: do you want to be? Because I work a lot
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: with kids in eleven and twelve and boys, and what's
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: the first question that a person in your twelve gets
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: asked by any relative or anyone in their family job. Yeah,
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: what are you to do when you finish school?
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: And they finished?
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly right, and so they're ready to just like
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: rage out because they don't know a fair cop.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I still a load of question, such a loaded question,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: and look not to shit on the previous generation. It
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: is a loaded question for them to have their say
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: of what they think that you should fucking do.
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, because they did it for forty five years, right,
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: exactly right, they wouldn't change it. And so I start with, actually,
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: what sort of person you want to be, and let's
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: backwards map it, and then we'll go from that aspect, right,
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: So we'll see what sort of person you want to be,
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: and we'll work on those skill sets. And then what
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: you find is, over a period of like two or
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: three weeks or even a month, they start to then
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: find out more about themselves and then who they want
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: to be, and then that leads to a job, and
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: then all that sort of stuff comes undone. But parents
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: seemingly have this pressure that their kid needs to have
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: it or locked in. By the end of year twelve,
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: it's it's not the game anymore. It's changed. Oh, like
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: this generation will have between like the ones coming through
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: finishing year twelve. Now I'll have seven to nine different
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: career paths. Yeah, so the days are gone. Hey look
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: at you guys.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: Ten different jobs.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that I can think that I can remember, and
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: probably another five more.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just changed. You don't become a boiler maker
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: and stay a boiler maker now for forty five years
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: and get a gold watch and hang your boots up
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: and live your life. So the decision isn't as not
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: that I'm saying it's not as important, but it's not
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: as weighted because you can pivot, you can grab some skills,
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: you can then go to a different industry. There's a
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: lot more flexibility. But that's breaking some generational thinking around
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: where do we need to go?
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: We always hear how important communication is with our children,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: and in your opinion, what is one of the most
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: important windows to communicate with your child.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: One of the best ones you can do is car
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: ride conversation, so shoulder to shoulder, you're not face to face,
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: so it's non threatening. After school can be tricky, so
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: no you're a young person, they'll either love it or
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: hate it. But generally driving is a great one. Go
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: for a walk, again, moving forward. There's something to do
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: with the brain and walking forward that boys tend to like.
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: So you'll get more honest, open conversation. Kicking a footy
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: low impact physical tasks, so shooting a three throw, mucking
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: around like that, you'll get way more conversation than if
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: you sit down face to face and try and have
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: a serious chat.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Why is that a bit of movement so important?
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: Do you think boys learn through doing rather than being
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: talked at, and they'll feel more comfortable forget that you're
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: having a serious conversation and then just overshare with you.
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: Don't tell him I said.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: That that's a secret. That's a secret, but oh so true.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Like whenever I'm like Oscar and I like play basketball
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: out the back sometimes and yeah, I feel like he's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: much more vocal about things, even if it's like in passing.
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it won't even be It doesn't even have to
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: be like serious. But if you want to communicate with
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: your young person, especially in the boys space, and I'm
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: sure it works for girls too, Matt, But it's that
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: disconnect from the serious part of a conversation and that open,
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: free flowing just happens when you're moving, which is ironic
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: because I do most of my work face to face,
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: but shoulder to shoulder is great because it's non threatening.
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: So if you actually go back to like the biology,
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: face to face is pretty awkward and threatening when you're
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: not there. It's a lot more free flowing and moving,
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: especially for a teenage boy, works a lot.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I used to like going on dates and going for
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: a walk. Success, that's why it seemed to works. Okay,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: little nugget in that. Yeah, Well, going back to the
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: case study where you have step one three goals, yep,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: how do you then build on that? What's step two
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: and step three?
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah? Cool, great point. We try to do a short term,
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: medium term, long term, so you've got one that's going
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: to carry over. So obviously our hundred percent attenance, we
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: want that for a year, right, So that's our long
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: yard stick. And for someone that's not attending school a lot,
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: that's a big number, right, And so that one's hanging
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: in the background. We've done our short term goal, which
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: was to pick up the award, and we're pretty much
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: nearly completed the creative project, and so then we just
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: keep refining it and we keep adopting it. Okay, we
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: built a book. All right, now, let's make it into
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: a mini movie or whatever the case may be. I
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: let them drive that part, and then I just hold
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: down the framework of keeping them in concrete steps so
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: that they don't get too big that they won't actually
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: be able to do it, because then what happens then
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: is we often extend young people too far and the
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: barrier to entry on the next time is too high,
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: and we won't re engage back with it because we're
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: not tried it, sucked at it, not doing it right,
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: and so then we get shut down. So general, mainstream
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: schooling isn't traditionally built for boys that like to move
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: a lot. So when you're sitting on the floor consistently
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: for long periods of time, it's not how our brains work,
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: because boys learn more through doing rather than being talked at.
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: And so we need to shift the thinking and education around. Okay,
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: if we've got so many young people falling out the
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: back end of it, maybe we need to start with
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: the question at the front of what's working and what
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: needs to change. Because for me, like I'm passionate about
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: changing the way in which we educate boys. So part
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: of my work is I also I'm super lucky that
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: I get to fly around and talk to teachers and
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: run workshops on how to re engage boys in the
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: classroom better because instead of talking about Shakespeare with seventeen
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: eighteen year old boys, why can't they write the difference
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: of putting thirty five inch tires on their high lucks
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: off thirty three?
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: If we're teaching language structure and sort of effects of writing,
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: you can write it about something that the bloody interested
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: in instead of some blog that lived And no, no
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: offense to any of your Shakespeare listeners. I I don't
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: even know, but it sounded good.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Speak of the truth is of okay, But.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just it needs to shift in a big
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: way for me personally anyway.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: When you take on kids that potentially have ADHD, especially
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I'm diagnosed. I didn't get diagnosedal was thirty five, much
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: like you, because I mean, back when we were at school,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: Wasn't it wasn't a thing. It was there.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to believe it
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: because it was a thing and it was sort of
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: like a bit of a stigma around. But now it's
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: which is great. It's so you know, up the front.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: It is what's a different approach when you come across
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the kid that you're like, Okay, well he's got adhd
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: our brains work differently, what's your approach with that?
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah? Good question. And one of the things in which
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: I can relate to this so well, right, because it's me,
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: the irony ears and I've got to find a different
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: way of doing it because my work's all online. I
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: hate doing face to face, right, But the reality is
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: that when you're talking to a kid in Austin, Texas
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: at four am our time and it's like one o'clock
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: their time in the afternoon, you've got to make it work.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: So when I'm working with those kids, I totally don't
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: care if I don't see them. They've got airports and
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: they're gone for a walk, right, And I'll go for
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: a walk too. But in terms of the way we
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: structure it, it's just we keep it as simple as possible,
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: because I don't know if you anything like me. I
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: like really simple, effective solutions that I can kind of
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: put on autopilot and that doesn't require me to think
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: about it too much, And there's a way bigger chance
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: of me being consistent with it. So it's not that
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: we lower the standard and increase the consistency. We still
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: have the things that we're trying to achieve, which chunk
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: it down differently.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you mentioned before if the if the goal
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: is to oh to be and you're in, my brain
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: will be the same.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know like that.
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah I'm doing it.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: But as soon as someone breaks it down into those
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: smaller manageable chunks, our brain goes are we tick?
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: And then because then we get the Dogmaine here right,
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: because we do chunk one. Oh cool, now we did it. Hey,
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: we did what we should have done, and then we
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: can exactly and then we keep moving through it. So
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: whilst you know, people like Maddie might be able to
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: just go yeah, bang, there's a full thing. I've got
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: to do all of those things, and off her runs,
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah too much there, Oh we'll be bored
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: for the next bit. Let the quarters. I will build
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: right up until like I booked my flights to come
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: here last night. Actually sorry, my wife booked them for me,
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: so thank you. Because the pressure wasn't enough. I was like,
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: I've got plenty of time, and it's like, oh deadline, bang,
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: let's go. And I was motivated to get it done,
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: but small bite sized chunks. And it's again, I want
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: people to hear me, it's not about lowering the standard.
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: It really isn't. It's about scaffolding in it a way
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: that it suits the person you're working with. Because if
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: we're not teaching to the students that we've got, or
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: the young people in our lives, and you're a granddad
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: and you're working with your grandson, or you're an uncle
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: and you're working with your nephew or whatever it is,
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: we all play a role. And I'm so sided and
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: I get so annoyed every time I turn the news
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: on and there's a massive outcry of what blokes are
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: doing wrong and men are doing wrong. Because the young
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: people and the people that I get to meet and
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: interact with on the daily feels me with so much
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: hope around the good young men that are coming through,
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: and there are role models in our community, and I
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: encourage anyone that plays that role, even how little they
• 36:21
  Speaker 5: think it is, take it seriously like you've got a
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: really good opportunity with that, and don't overcook it, like
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: you don't want it to be not organic and buzzword,
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: but you want it to be genuine, right for sure,
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: And so don't underestimate the power of your small words. Yeah, like,
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: because they really do land sometimes to a young person.
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: Or I've worked at a school recently and it's a
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: different type of education, so it's not mainstream education. It's
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: only from years ten, eleven, and twelve, and we get
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: boys in year eleven getting their first ever school award.
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: Wow right, And because they're finally at a place that
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: suits their learning style. They might have had rubbish attendants
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: at a traditional high school, moved into a different learning environment.
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: They come every day, their parents like what the heck
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: is doing to them? They come every day, they're engaged
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: in what they're doing. They can see relevance because what
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: we're not learning Shakespeare. They can see relevance of what
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: they're doing where they're going to apply it in the
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: real world. But that award still goes on the fridge,
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: and you can't tell me there's a little eight year
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: old or little nine year old and they're going, yeah,
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: damn right, I did I got that. Yeah, And so
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: it still has an impact. And sometimes we think when
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: they're a bit older, a bit smellier, a bit more
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: rambunctious that oh, I don't really care. You can still
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: help them out with single sentence, and so don't always
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: put that through to an attribute though. Yeah, Okay, they've
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: got to have actually earned the compliment that you're giving them,
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: because if you just give them some surface level stuff,
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: they know you're just doing it to be nice, and
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: they also know that it's just bare. Yeah, so they've
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: got to have earned it. If they haven't earned it,
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: don't give it. Talk about something different.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: We know language is so important. What are some of
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: the types of language that we shouldn't be using with
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: young men?
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: Good one, I get it. Bit of flack in my
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: comments for sort of I don't want to say middle aged,
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: because I'm probably pretty close there myself, I guess, but
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: from an older male generation about some of the ways
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: in which I convey some ideas around how you can
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: potentially and in all my channel, I'm not telling you
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: how to do it. I'm just showing you examples of
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: what I've seen anecdotally over fifteen years in the space
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: of what works. And I've seen it from prep through
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: to the end of year twelve. So I've got a
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: pretty good lens of understanding of what works and what
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: doesn't work, and the parents that I've sat across from
• 38:30
  Speaker 5: in parent meetings and understanding what styles they use at
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: home as well. So I've kind of had that inside
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: information one that I hates men up.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Why do you hate that?
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: I hate it so much because for me, a real man,
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: and in terms of we talk about healthy masculinity and all
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: those buzzwords that are going around, for me, it's about
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: if you can share what's going on for you but
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: you're still working through it, or you might actually need
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: to go and see a mental health provider and admitting
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: that you're going to do it and actually following through
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: on that. That's way tougher to me than other stuff
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: that goes on in society. And for me, it's like,
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: if you're not in a position where you can admit that,
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: maybe then that's a reflection piece. And I know when
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: I first went to therapy, thirty five went in. I
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: parked next door at the KDM dealership and the first
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: four sessions I spent with the lady that helped me
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: and I originally went for anxiety and left with ADHD
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: and I was like two for one. Yeah, the first
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: four sessions, I was convincing her why I didn't need
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: to be there, and I still was like, no, I'm
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: parking next door because I don't want anyone to see
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: my truck at the front right, And It's like, what
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: the hell why am I doing that? I'm like, I'm
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: work in the space.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: What was your fear? Like, why were you so afraid
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: of acknowledging that you needed help.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: I think it was probably because you kind of get
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: conditioned that you just got to figure it all out
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: and white knuckle it right. And so as a young
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: person you just try and sort stuff out, and as
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: a young bloke, you just take care of stuff. And
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: then I got to the point where I was like,
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: I'm thirty five years old. If I was going to
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: fix this thing on my own, I would have been
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: able to do it by now. I'm not the sharpest
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: still in the shed, but I'm pretty handy in this
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: sort of space. And I was like, I would have
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: fixed it. And I was projecting anxiety onto my young people,
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: and that was really confronting. So you talked about an
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: example before where oschool was talking amazing and you could
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: see yourself right, I could see in my kids them
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: like assessing a situation the same way my brain would.
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: And mine's a little bit different because my whole world's
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: been around risk assessments and keeping kids alive while you've
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: got them in really wild situations. But my brain does
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: that twenty four to seven the whole time, and that
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: was going on to my young people, and the first
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: time I really noticed that, it was like a kick
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: in the guts and I was like, I'm okay for
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: me to deal with it, but I don't want them
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: dealing with like I'm bleeding on people that didn't cut me, right,
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: So I had to then go and assess that for myself.
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: But yeah, the first four sessions, I remember ringing up
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: the clinic and I was like, hey, aned help, got
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: super bad anxiety. And they've got all their lovely profiles
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: on their website, right, and you get to pick on
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: and like who do you want? And I was like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: I don't care. I want your guru on anxiety. I
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: just want to go on, like yeah, sweet, I'm expecting
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: to open the door and like gand Off be there
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: with his big wizards. Was not there.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: He was not there.
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: I was pretty not. What was on the other side
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: was a relatively young female that was just an absolute
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: weapon at what she did, and I was just the
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: first thought was like, oh my god, I'm about to
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: go and tell my life problems to this amazing human.
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: And that was one of the bigger hurdles for me.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: I'm sitting there playing with it like a sparkly cushion
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: and You're like, if any of the boys saw me
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: like this, And then in retrospect, I've got to a
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: point now where my circle, instead of that being an issue,
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: he is like, yeah, good mate, that's perfect. Yeah you
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: should be doing that, like you've got and you've got
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: a responsibility to your family to take care of yourself
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: and so you can't parent from a disregulated pattern, and
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: so if you're not prepared to do the work, then
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: that's probably where you need to start, right.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: It's such like a feels like kicking a goal when
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: when a good mate rings you and says, hey, I
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: want to see someone.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: What's my first step?
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, like, Miles rang me up. Who's the
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: most toxic man alive? I love him to death.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's an enormous human, Like he's the type of
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: person who looks like he could kill a bed with
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: his band.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, and he rang me and he was like, hey,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I'm battling with what was going on with an X
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: of his He.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: Was like, should I see a therapist?
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: And what do I do?
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I said, you should absolutely see a therapist regardless, and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: this is what you need to do, and like two
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: days later he was like, fuck, I can't.
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: So glad I did.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: That and it was and it made me feel like, Okay, well,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: if I can influence my friends, then maybe yeah, I
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: can influence my kid a little bit more and hopefully
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: he can be emotionally intelligent growing up, because at the
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: end of the day, like all of this sort of
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: stuff where you're like, man, are man aren't like they're
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: not you, Like you're getting those comments that person's just
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: essentially emotionally immature, absolutely and all of you know, the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: swing can be so massive. If we just teach our
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: boys that you're allowed to, it will help. You're allowed
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to you know, you're allowed, you're allowed to feel something,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: because that's I have so many mates that were told
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: that just a man up, you can't feel a thing.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: He would be ashamed to cry in front of me,
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: and it's like that's fucked.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: Up one hundred percent. Like I'd rather have someone ring
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: me at three am in the morning and need me
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: to sit there for an hour, and I'd sit in
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: the mud with them so that they're not one of
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: the seven men that take their lives in Australia every
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: single day. Yeah, it's a crazy statistic and it's one
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: that I think that we can and it is starting
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: to change a little bit, but we've still got a
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: heck of a lot of work to do in terms
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: of what we can do. And I think these little
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: steps now, I'm not I don't hold all the secrets.
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: I don't know if this is one hundred percent, but
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: I don't think there's anything wrong in teaching your young
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: man to understand his emotions and how to work through them, right,
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: And if we can do that when they're younger, you've
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: got to heap more traction because you can only imagine.
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: You see how it was when you went. I know
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: what it was like when I first went. Trying to
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: get older people to go and do it. That's super
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: hard work. Yeah, and understanding. I kind of got to
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: the point where I was like, I kind of care
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: more what I think about myself than what other people do,
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: and that's I'm not coming from a place of arrogance
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: at all. But it was like, I live with myself
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: twenty four seven, right, I'm washing my hands six hundred
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: times a day after COVID because of what, And so
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: I had to put the steps in place to be
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: able to get to a different, different horizon.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I like with Oscar try and allow
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: him to have a space for those emotions because for me,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't really start talking. I knew I was an
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: emotional kid. I knew I was an emotional person. I
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: knew I was good at picking up on emotional cues,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: but I didn't start talking about it until I had
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: a kid, yep. And it was like, imagine if I
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: started earlier, how different I'd be and how potentially how
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: different people around me could have been all my life
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: could have been. Because now that I am way more
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: open about it and way more forthcoming and encouraging around it,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I feel like.
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: I'm a completely different person.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I'm a completely new, refreshed person that I feel like
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: I've got a chance to start again and make an impact,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: which is crazy, and that's why I respect so much
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: what you do that, you get the opportunity to see
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: that day in day out.
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: It's pretty cool. I'm pretty blessed to be able to
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: do it. And I don't take it for granted at all.
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: And I mean, when I kicked it off in I
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: think it was April last year, I didn't expect anyone
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: to listen, right, And it's somehow resonated with people. And
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: I don't have all the big buzzwords. I probably should
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: know a lot more than I do. But the stuff
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: that I talk about I genuinely believe in. And if
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: I'm going to put this face to it, then I'm
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: really going to stand behind what I talk about. And
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: I get asked to do things around the place, and
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: I'm more than happy to say no to it doesn't
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: suit me, and I don't get to be myself, then
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: I'm happy standing back.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: I love your simple approach about the steps and just
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: what you're set with, especially young boys, because when you're
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: talking about those small steps, my brain's sick and going.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I want the small steps because it's right.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: You're right.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: I feel like the whole time, when maybe we went
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to school, like our generation went through primary school in
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: high school, it was just like.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: Either achieve the big thing or don't bother.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's like, well, I'm not going to bother
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: because my brain just doesn't work like that. But it's
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: not a one size fits.
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: All, no, it definitely isn't. And I think there's more
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: work that we can do in the space around education
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: and like, don't get me wrong, mainstream schooling works for
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: a lot of people, yeah, but when we're starting to
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: see how many it's not working for, I think we
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: need to start having the conversation around easiest to right fear,
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: for sure, and there's definitely things we can do.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: When you look at the current generation coming through. It
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: has become a bit of a buzzword the man is sphere,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: which is a good thing to be aware of. But
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: I think there are so many parents out there who
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: have young men who are really anxious of the fact
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: that their biggest fear would be their child growing up
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: and falling into that slipstream. There's definitely times where I
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: think I'm so grateful that I have girls. It's not
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: something that I have to worry about. I have other
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: fears as well, but that is a big one that
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I have the luxury of not worrying about when you
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: want to give advice to other parents with young men. Yep,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: maybe it's ash, maybe a hard one to answer and
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: in a short, concise conversation like we're having now, but
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: what do you think some of the signs that your
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: child may be slipping in to toxic masculinity?
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, it's it's a very interesting landscape at the moment,
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: and obviously exacerbated by social media because half of this
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: wouldn't get any time of day in when we grew up, right,
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: because you think, how would we have even accessed that information?
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: So the phones play one of theb's roles, and my
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: advice to any parent is to delay access to a
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: phone as long as humanly possible. I don't have the
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: correct age that you should give access. I don't know
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: what it is. I'm super lucky that the friendship group
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: that my wife and I have we openly discuss it
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: and it's like, Okay, we're going to do this as
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: a collective when the time comes and we've got a
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: few more years away. But choose your friends around that
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: sort of stuff, like the values piece, around how you
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: want your kids and you want to parent your kids.
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: Pick the village around you to have similar ones because
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: it makes it easier, right, because if ashes coming home
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: and his folks are saying one thing, and you're going
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: home and your folks are backing that up as like okay, cool,
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: that's status quo, right, and you've got pockets of friendship.
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: But for me, it's not an instant switch when they
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: just go yep, sweet young boy to arrogant dickhead. Right.
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: It's just not a switch. It's a drift, okay, and naturally,
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: and it's a hard one to play. So I don't
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: have an exact point in time that a parent go,
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: uh got him, that's where he's gone. I don't have
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: that because as they get older, they want more independence.
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: Don't mistake independence is them slipping off into the red
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: pill stuff. And I'm not going to get into that
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: because I don't really want to give it any airtime.
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: But keep your family traditions and keep them engaging with
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: you in your day to day living ways of life.
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: And what I mean by that to break it down
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: really really simple. You don't want your young person looking
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: at that that's put out on social media thinking either
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: that's attractive or be that it's normal. They should be
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: able to look at that staff and hopefully share the
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: same opinions of you guys and go, that's pretty wild
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: and not reality. Yeah right. You want them to be
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: able to identify that that's batshit crazy and that's not
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: the way the rest of the world works. And you
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: can still work hard, make good money, and be a
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: bloody good human without doing all that other stuff that
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: goes with it. And so mine is I'm not a
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: fan of screens in rooms at all, but you do you.
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do their parenting,
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: but I'll be keeping them out of there as long
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: as I possibly can, right, And so online gaming and stuff,
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: and we haven't really had to bridge that crap yet
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: and deal with it as a parent. I've dealt with
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: that from other perspectives, from schooling lenses and whatnot. But
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: just try and keep them engaged in the family life.
• 49:51
  Speaker 5: Try and keep some cool routines like you know, Friday nights,
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: pizza night and movie night or whatever it is, those
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: anchor points where they'll want to come out of their
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: hovel to spend time with you kids. It's what we do.
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: And then when they see that alternate reality they really
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: understand it as an alternate reality. It's not all normal. Yeah,
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: I want to aspire to be like that. They're like,
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: what is that dude doing? That's lucy unit. I don't
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: want to be a part of that.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: You made a really good point about your friends, and
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: we always focus on the kid and who he's hanging
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: out with, but they're also watching who you're hanging out with.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: That hit me then, because it's like, yeah, you're right.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: The parents that I hang out with, Matt being one
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: of them, we have similar ideas of how things work.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: And yeah, like you'd think that.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: My son would be talking to my friend's son and
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: everything would line up so that, yeah, you're right, they
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: would see that and go, that's not normal. That's how
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: I see That's how I see it anyway, Like I
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: would see that because my parents would be like, have
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: people around me that would think that that's just outlandish,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: it's fucking crazy, it's.
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: Wild, and so like for you, Oscar's got an amazing
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: role model in Matt, Right, so he sees how.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Well did try and kidnap him one cruise ship.
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: Look, I'm sure there was a reason be.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Thought he thought that was there in the friendship and.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: He hasn't slept.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: We'll Crucian. But in all seriousness, the way that that
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: Oscar will see you treat Laura and the girls plays
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: a massive impact, right, because he's subconsciously seeing ash parent
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: Maisy and dealing with April and living with her. Well said,
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: I'm going to talk about the importance of how you
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: treat her in a little while. You're not off the hook,
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: but that plays a big role. And because sometimes it's
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: the subconscious stuff that's just the way of life. And
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: they just learned that that's the way we do things.
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: We treat women this way, we look after them. You know,
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: we do these things. We understand that. And when it's
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: not coming out of your mouth, because after Towell, we's
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: probably not listen to you that much anyway, but he's
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: watching the way that Matt does it perfect right, It's
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: a take a breath. You've got good people around you.
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: You've built a community. And I'm not saying two parents
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: go out and chop your friendships up, but I'm saying
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: if if you've got friends in your circle, that you
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: wouldn't be stoked if you're a young person. Was an
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: instant replica. Maybe question how much airtime that person gets.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: All right, sorry guy to getting cut.
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just an interesting one.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: I just have another question about ADHD. But from the
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: parents perspective, I have ADHD. My kids aren't diagnosed OSCAR.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: He's showing signs, which fine, but I'm also like, he's
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: also a kid.
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: He's just being a kid as well.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Are there any tools that I can use to help
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: in my parenting journey?
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: Number one, take a breath. It's going to be all right. Yeah,
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: I mean I genuinely, not facetiously like it is going
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: to be okay. You're not going to get it perfect.
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: If you've seen me trying to navigate Woolly's lolliol with
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: my that's not him. It can't be him, right, I'm
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: conscious if someone starts filming, I'm gone, it's done. And
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: so like, I don't get it perfect. Yeah, I know
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: best practice. That doesn't mean I do it best every day.
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah right, So give yourself a breather on that one. Like,
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: listen to your last episode. You're pretty hard on yourself
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: about you know, your journey, So cut yourself some slack
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: on that. You've done more heavy lifting in the past
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: one hundred and whatever. It is days then some people
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: might do in their whole journey. Yeah, okay, so start there.
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: Number two, you understand how your brain works. Can you
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: imagine if your parents understood how your brain worked when
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: you were that age? Yeah, how could you make your
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: life different at that age? And what I mean by
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: that is for me, I see signs in some of
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: my kids too, about like oh yeah, we're pretty sure, right,
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: look at his dad. But I'm often like, okay, I
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: know what I'm like. I've got five jobs on the go.
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: I'm I'm getting stuck into them each time. Mate, you've
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: left this there, you haven't done that, you haven't done that.
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: You form hearing? Is that negative input all the time?
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: It doesn't work. So for trauma affected young people and
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: ADHD isn't necessarily a trauma, Okay, it's seven to one
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: positive affirmations or positive reinforcements before you give a negative.
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: So Jen does the empathy sandwich. Yeah, right now. Pumping
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: tires is one thing, but don't pump tires unless there's
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: a reason for it. So the trick there is find
• 54:27
  Speaker 5: the reason. There will always be something he's doing that
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: is correct. Yeah, it doesn't have to be the big
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: ticket item. Okay, it's a simple thing, right, So if
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: you can find them in your day, and there will
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: be it might have been he might feel Maze's water
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: bottle up, and he does.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: That's the thing.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: He does, do these kind sweet things.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: But do you think when he doesn't, do you think
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: you spot.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: Them not as well as I should.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: And I think I'm only just realizing that now because
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: you do, I think you naturally go to the hey,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: put that away.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: Put that away.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: And it might not be the overly negative thing because
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: it's like you're trying to.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Teach them as well. It's like you finish with something,
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: you get it away.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: But I think I would focus on that, and I'm
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: not sure about you or two the girls whether you
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: focus on that way more than maybe that little thing.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: That Marley might have just done.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: For all of it, it's kind of insignificant, you might think.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: But it isn't.
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: You going to be a strength spotterer?
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: Right, that's an activity I'll do with teachers. Yeah, because
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: if you've got some teachers that have been in the
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: game for a while and you come in as someone
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: trying to get them to re engage boys in education,
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: and like mate, if you've had my year nine math
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: class on a Friday, you wouldn't be doing it. I'm like, well,
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: I have, I've been there. There will be something that
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: Ash is doing right in the fifty minutes that you've
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: got him where you can say, Matte, you nailed it.
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: It might be just sitting there. It might be still.
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: I'm like, what, it's not the exactly right, it's not
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: the crazy thing. But if you can shift your focus
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: to what they're doing right, it's a bit of a
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: game changer. Now, that doesn't mean that we course correct
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: and we guide them that you know they're out of
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: control by all means you've got to do that stuff.
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: That's been a healthy parent. But if you can switch
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: the lens over, because for an ADHD kid, and I
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: don't know the exact number off the top of my head,
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: but it's in the thousands per year more negative feedback
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: than a person that doesn't have it. Yeah, and that
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: stacks right. That compounds over time, and then what you've
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: got then is you've got a self esteem issue. And
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: when self esteem is low, it's to hold my beer
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: and watch this so I get accepted by the peer
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: group again. So if we can catch that early, and
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: we can, you know, find little things that we're doing right,
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: like ash, she came with your drink bottle, nailed it,
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: thank you.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: He's actually got his name on it, right.
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: But it's the small stuff and small shifts big wins
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: is a phrase that I use all the time. I'm
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: not here to rewrite the journey and tell everyone they're
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: doing it wrong. There's just small, little shifts that I've
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: seen over time that that sort of make a big
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: compounding effort over the long haul.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I love when we do an episode about this and
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I leave thinking about something different and how I can
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: so I appreciate that and like, you're right, the small
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: shift and yeah, I just sorry, my brain is going
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: a million miles an hour, but also thinking about ten
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: other things.
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: Relative you don't know how lucky you've got it. I
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: want to.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: When I get Targo, I know.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: That's done. Tim, I'm gonna I'm gonna pass your ego.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Oh please for a second, if I may. And we've
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: only met each other, you know, out the front of
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: the building. But when I look at you and the
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: work that you're doing, I do think you are a
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: perfect example of healthy masculinity and even more so because
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: maybe it's just me looking at what I wanted to
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: be when I was growing up. You know, you're playing rugby.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: You know, you're a big guy, you got a great beer,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: you know, you tick all the boxes of someone who
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: is like, in my eyes, stereotypically masculine.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: You got it together.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: But then at the same time, I think the way
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: that you understand emotions, the work that you're doing with
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: young men, I'm like, I want.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: To be you.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: I'm just wondering, you know, when you look at your
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: upbringing and maybe it's a real combination of things, or
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: maybe there's one thing that you can say, oh, this
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: is a real standout moment for me in how you
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: got to be who you are. You know, maybe it's
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: just you're always going to be this person. Maybe it's
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: in fact you had a great brother. Maybe it's the
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: fact that you had, you know, a great group of
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: mates growing up playing sport. Maybe it was your mum
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: and dad. Is there anything when you look at those
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: ingredients that you can pinpoint to be like this, this
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: was one of the most important things that made me
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: who I am today.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, most of like I talked about my brother,
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: my parents, I won the lotto, right. So Dad stereotypical
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: was a bricklayer, worked in steel works, loved full driving,
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: shooting like you name it, watch footage John Wayne, Rambo Arnie,
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: all that sort of stuff amazing and then Mum was cuddles.
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: You can conquer the world, You'll be everything, right. And
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: so Dad taught me the power of keeping your word,
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: and I've spoke about that a lot, and that still
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: rings true in our house, like to this day. I
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: remember recently my brother said he was going to be
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: somewhere at a certain time and he wasn't and it
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: was just like fury unleash, and it was just because
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: Dad has taught us from such a young age that
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: if you give you words, you keep it. Yes is
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: a real yes. So don't say yeah, I'm going to
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: be there and then pull out early, Like that's not
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: what we do in our house. Say no upfront if
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: you can't make it. But your word is your bond.
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: And if you give someone a handshake, that's as good
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: as in writing. And that was kind of my upbringing
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: and who I am to this day. And Mum used
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: to always say say what you mean and mean what
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: you say, and I just always remember that phrase, like,
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: if we're ever in a bit of trouble or we've
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: been a bit smart with our mouths around the house,
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: Mum would always just to that line. I mean when
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: you're saying, say what your mean? Yeah, okay, gotcha. I
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: was blessed, I won the lotto, I had got two
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: of the best parents. I was on the phone to
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: dad just before I got here and I was like,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: do you reckon? My biggest moment of being in trouble
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: was the bus And he's liked, don't talk about it.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: And I guess that's another thing, like our kids will
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: make decisions that we can't fathom or we go, oh,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: how did they do that? That is not a reflection
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: of you or me when our kids make a poor choice,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: Like our brains aren't fully developed until like twenty five,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: twenty eight, So if my nine year old has an
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: absolute blinder and makes a poor choice, it's pretty easy
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: in the moment to be like, oh crap, what's he
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: doing that for? I'm allegedly got it all together online,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: Take a breath. Their kids they're growing up in a
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: world that's pretty bloody crazy, and I think they've got
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: it harder than we did. Coming up in terms of
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: online influence, all those sorts of things that are happening.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: The world's at their fingertips.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Man, it's crazy because like how quick everything happened right,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Like I was thinking about it the other day. I
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: was at NaN's house and she pulled out this original
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Motorola phone from like thirty five years ago.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: And I was like, no, it was I'm talking. I
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: had a brick like like a like.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Just charging station, and I was like fuck, And it
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: was like that was when.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: I was a child. Was like, yeah, fuck, we've come.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: So far that now, like I kind of feel for
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: them to the minefields they're going to have to dodge
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: on the way through.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: We didn't.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: We had it was like, who's playing soccer at lunch?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, from the hose, not the bottle.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: I missed the hose.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: Like one of the things that I noticed a lot
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: when I'm driving is a lot of young people on
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: screens in their parents' car. You are not uber some
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 5: part of entry in My kids don't have phones yet,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 5: but it will be your phone goes in the glove box.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: I don't mind if you're Spotify DJ off my phone,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: but I'm not your Uber. You will not have your
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: air pods in unless you know it's five minutes before
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: the footy game and you have a pump up song
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: you need to listen to. But absolutely missed opportunity. But
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: the screen's away. Different story. If you're on a long
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: road trip, by all means, do your thing, but around town,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: get the screens out of the car. They're absolutely robbing
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: you of a connection point with your young person. That
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: is so easy, and in a world where we're pushed
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: for time, it's a great little hack to make sure
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: you're up to date. And usually they'll share some pretty
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: randow stuff. So instead of hitting them with how was
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: school today, ask them what the funniest thing that was
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: that happened at school today? Or another one that also
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: works really really cool is ask them if someone fared
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: in class today, because I'll naturally laugh and then that
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: breaks the wall down and then I go, no, no
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: one did, but this happened. So with the younger kids
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: that works. Maybe it works with the ten aagers as well,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: but more than likely someone has fighted in class.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: The work that you do is predominantly around young men.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: Why young men?
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: Why do they deserve the attention?
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah? Thank you? And look I get I do get
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: a bit of online flak for this in the comment section,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: so I thank you for bringing that up. I do
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: the work with young men because that's my experience, that's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: my knowledge base. And it's not because I don't value
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: what girls bring to the table. I just don't want
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: to be another clown on the internet talking about something
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: they shouldn't And girls are outside my remit because I
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: don't parent girls. So I'm not going to sit here
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: and tell you what I've seen work in my household
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: because it'd be absolute fabrication and the world's got enough
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: phonies in it that The reason I work with boys
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: is because that's what my experience is. I spent the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: last fifteen years in educational leadership and private coaching one
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: on one with boys. I understand what makes them tick.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: Once I know the young person where the edge is
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: and they need to be pushed a little bit, so
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: challenge my choice where they get to choose and opt
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: in and opt out and supporting them through that. But
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: I work with boys because that's just my knowledge base.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: It'd be like if Ash was a holding mechanic and
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: he absolutely just nailed it, and you worked on forwards like,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: it's no different. I want better boys because in the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: end of the day, it's going to better influence our
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: females as well. But when that thing came out about
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: the bear and the man, that infuriates me that that's
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: where society is at and for good reason that that
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: come out right. And we've got a heck of a
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: lot of work to do. So the work that you
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 5: you boys do on your podcast, the snippets that I
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: get to put out into the community, hopefully we can
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: change that narrative to your listeners. The young men that
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: I have the privilege of working with on the daily,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: I would be picking them over the bear because they're
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: great young men. They're often lost. The goalposts have shifted
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: on what's it mean to be a man so much
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: over the last five years, and if you make a decision,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: it's toxic maxillinity and if you don't, it's femininity. Where
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: when we grew up, you's got to be who you were.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: So I'm super confident in the next generation of boys
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: coming through. I work with them every day. I'm really
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: excited and I know we've got some work to do,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: but proud to be a part of it.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: If there are parents out there whose biggest fear is
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: their child joining the manosphere, or the biggest fear is
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: their son growing up to display toxic masculinity. What are
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: some of the steps that they can have in the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: back of their mind to make sure they don't go
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: down that path.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: It doesn't happen overnight, So I just want parents to
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: take that at ease. It's not just going to wake
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: up and go from sweet boy to arrogant dickhead overnight.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: It's going to be a drift and you're gonna pick
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: up on that. Just be careful though, if they're at
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 5: the age where they're seeking independence, and don't mistake the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: independence for the menisphere. But you'll notice a massive shift
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: in language, so the language they use to explain things
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: that might be outside of the family norm. Be understanding
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: of who you're putting around them in their village. It's
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: super important. And as a family, one of the things
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: that you can do to keep your young person engaged
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: is have those connection points throughout the week, whether it's
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: Wednesday's roast night, or it's moving on on Friday and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: we get pizza. You want them engaged in family activities.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: So that online version that's not reality, looks so far
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: left of field that you're like, what the heck is that?
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 5: I like what we're doing, I like what we're about.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: I'm not interested. Thanks.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, It's one of those things where us now in
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: our thirties looking at you know, younger men coming through it,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: you can see the difference, like it. I know that
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: we also have the world our thinkers tips too, right, Yeah,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: where we're like, okay, and we see the bads off
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: because we're adults and that's going to happen.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: But then also you see the good stuff.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: Of young men taking accountability of their and of themselves
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: and their emotions and being able to you know, and
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that you're soft or you're weak, because
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: it's really powerful.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: And I'm yeah, I'm equally to you.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to see Oscar grow up and then be
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: able to I feel like I wasn't also able to
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: provide enough emotional maturity for my wife until I was older,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: But I would love Oscar to be able to do
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: that from the get go, which is crazy to think
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: It's pretty wild, right, Yeah, the fact that two dudes
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: hold a parenting podcast. If you go back twenty years
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: it existed, right.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, conversation changed.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: It didn't really even exist three years ago when we started.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: Exactly right yeah.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: And to be one of Austraa's best parenting.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: In a world where extreme views get so much cut
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: through and so much attention, it's so reassuring. You know
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: there's people like yourself out there who are putting out
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: such important, valuable messages. So thank you so much before
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: you go, and he to ask you one last question.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: When your boys are all grown up, when they have
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: left the nest and no longer living at home, what
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: is the one thing you want them to remember about
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: the house they grew up in.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, that is a solid question. I want them to
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 5: know that I'll always have their back and that doesn't
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: matter what they do, they can always share it with me,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: and we've got the safe words that they can use.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: Real serious moment but funny side quest because that's when
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: my brain goes. Having this conversation with my six year
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: old about were deciding he was picking what his word
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: was going to be. If you ever had to come
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: and tell me, hold onto your hat, I said, Bud,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: this is the word. You get to choose it it
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: can be anything you want, and when you say it,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 5: Dad promises to sit listen. He might need to walk
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: away when you're older, have a think about things. Will
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: always circle back, but you can always use it and
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: I'll help you. He's like, yeah, cool. I said, all right, mate,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 5: hit me, what's your word? And he went plant. There
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: wasn't even one in the room. There was not even
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: one in the room.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: I think he might have it.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: Okay, that's what we're working with. He definitely wouldn't.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: Want to go to be a guarden because that could
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: be really talking to me about what.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I just want him to know. And I
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: had that always. I could ring Dad now, so Dad
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: and each in Sydney and he'd be on the next plane.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: And I want my kids to have that from me
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: and my wife. And hopefully they're starting to feel that now,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: even when we hold them accountable for sometimes they're poor choices.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: When you look at the stats right now, and it's
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: something that it's hard to talk about, but at the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: same time, because a pretty clear picture of what the
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: issue is. Do you know suicide rates among young men?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, look, it's it's pretty wild, not just young men,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 5: but men in general. So on average in Australia daily
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 5: there's nine suicides. Seven of those nine are men. Out
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: of every five male suicides in Australia right now, less
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: than one of those people actually reached out for help,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: which is quite a sobering statistic, which is the reason
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 5: why this work is so important and whilst we're so
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: grateful to be here today to champion the young people
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: that are coming through and to celebrate the fact that
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: we are re educating our young men that it's okay
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: to ask for help and not that it's okay, it's
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: actually masculine to ask for help and to keep working
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 5: through it. We don't completely shut down. We ask for help,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 5: we get the tools, we then use the tools to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: keep working on things, and for me, that's masculinity in
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 5: a nutshell.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wird to think that for some people it's
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: an easier option to end their life than it is
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: to try and ask for help.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's pretty scary, and I'm grateful to be on
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: the other side of that and understand that if we
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: do this work now and we have these tricky conversations,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: we can change that statistic. And it is starting to
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 5: peter but it's still a pretty wild number. I think
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: we'd all agree that even one is too many. But
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: if we ca change the narrative of that by just
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: educating our young men that it's bloody okay to ask
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: for a hand when you need it, and that it's
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: actually a masculine thing to do to ask for help
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: and not to just white knuckle it and cowboy up
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: or whatever the languages you want to use to get
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: through life. Bloody asking mate for help, because I know
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 5: that you would be stoked if Ash called you when
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: he needed you, or vice versa. It's an important thing.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: I think as a friend on the other side of
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: the phone, it's it's it's quite an emotional part of
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 5: it too, but to know that you're helping someone is
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: also a good thing as well.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: It's while do you think just little phrases like you
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: said before, man up and boys don't cry, which is
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: just so off the calf and I don't really have
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: any importance, but what impact that's having on young men
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: as they grow up. Tim, It is an absolute pleasure
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: to have you on the podcast, and for your first time,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: it's pretty good job.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I love it when we get to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: have a chat with someone that leaves me thinking and
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: leaves me with something small than I think that I
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: can change or shift as you would say, for the positive.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people are going to
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: get a lot out of this and the first YouTube,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: so they get to see that beard in action.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: Rush, Look, thank you so much for having me on
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: and for the opportunity to talk about the great things
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 5: that young men are doing. And to all the parents
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 5: out there, it's going to be okay, zoom out. As parents,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 5: we get stuck in the micro zoom out. Look at
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: it at a grand scale. I'm sure you're a young
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 5: person's an absolute legend. Give him some time, but thanks
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: having me. Appreciate it.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: So we have Jen who is the oracle? Yes, but
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: what does it called Tim the Wizard? The Wizard, here's
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: the wizard of parenting.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I love it when we have a guest on that
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: makes me leave the episode and go home and try
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: some of the techniques, especially when it comes to Oscar,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: because yes, I am worried about how he's going to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: grow up and treat women and just respect people all together.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: So now there's so many things that I can take
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: from that conversation that I can apply at home.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Except when you get home to the kids and you're like,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: let me parent you and they're like, leave me alone,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: reading a book and coloring in, don't talk, get out
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: of my room.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: Yea.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: I wish they would say that.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 6: They're like, dad, come and sit down here said I
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 6: can't go down that low.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: So huge thanks to Tim, who actually credit where credit
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: is due. He flew here from the Sunny Coast.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: It was his first ever podcast and he was nervous
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: but killed it. I think he's got no, he's got
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: a strong future.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: This boy a little too strong. But I'm scared for
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: my job, but that's okay.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: There's a massive thanks to Tim for jumping on the pod.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: And if you've enjoyed this episode, we would love it.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: It would just fill our cups if you will, If
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: you would give us a review, follow us on Apple
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: podcast or Spotify wherever you listen to this podcast, and
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: also follow us on social media.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: At Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, two Doting.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: Dads, and throw us any suggestions of parents or experts
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: because everyone said we don't want experts, and we give
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: you experts and you're like, oh my god, this is delicious.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: We want more. So if it's an expert you want
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: us to speak to fire Away, we are open to
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: your suggestions.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: And we did receive a few messages about you, in
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: particular Matt bagging on young boys.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: We joke, We joke a lot around here, and we.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Do love both boys and girls and children equally, equally equally.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 6: It's just just it's just an easier target. I would say,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 6: Oscar's an easy target. I said it, I said it,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 6: But I love I love him dearly. He's like mini me.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 6: So if you do feel that we are bagging on.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: A little too much, it all comes with love.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: Well said, thank you.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 5: Two.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: Doting Dad's podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Australia and the connections to land, sea and community.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: We pay our respects to their elders past and present
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and torrestraight Onlander
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: People's Today.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: This episode was recorded on gadagal Land