For generations, the path to adulthood was straightforward: go to college, get a job, build a life. But many young men are beginning to question the college component of that path; tuition keeps rising, A.I. has made the professional landscape more uncertain, and there’s just a sense that after four years at college, guys graduate feeling like they haven’t been very challenged, haven’t much changed, and haven’t gained a lot of real confidence, competence, and concrete know-how.

My guest today, Matt Smith, has created an alternative to college — a 4-year, 16-cycle curriculum designed to shape participants into Renaissance Men: skilled, self-reliant, and grounded in character. Matt co-authored The Preparation with his son Maxim, who is currently working his way through the program.

In the first half of our conversation, Matt shares what kickstarted this idea and what’s lacking in the education model for young men today. We then turn to the nuts and bolts of The Preparation, and Matt walks us through several of the program’s hands-on cycles — including earning EMT certification, building a house, and training as a fighter in Thailand — and how gaining these real-world skills prepares a young man for whatever is next in life.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Podcast with Luke Burgis on mimetic desire
• AoM Podcast #810: How to Turn a Boy Into a Man
• Leon Battista Alberti
• AoM Podcast #1,025: The Life and Legacy of Louis L’Amour
• Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour
• AoM Article: The Pros and Cons of a 4-Year College
• AoM Article: 11 Alternatives to a Traditional 4-Year College

Connect With Matt and Maxim Smith

• The Preparation Substack
• Maxim’s Substack

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Transcript

Brett McKay:

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For generations, the path to adulthood was straightforward. Go to college, get a job, build a life. But many young men are beginning to question the college component of that path. Tuition keeps rising. AI has made the professional landscape more uncertain, and there’s just a sense that after four years at college, guys graduate, feeling like they haven’t been very challenged, haven’t much changed, and haven’t gained a lot of real confidence. Confidence and concrete know-how. My guest today, Matt Smith, has created an alternative to college, a four year, 16 cycle curriculum designed to shape participants into Renaissance men, skilled, self-reliant and grounded in character. Matt co-authored The Preparation with his son Maxim, who is currently working his way through the program. In the first half of our conversation, Matt shares what kickstarted this idea and what’s lacking the education model for young men today. We then turn to the nuts and bolts of The Preparation and Matt walks us through several of the program’s hands-on cycles, including earning EMT certification, building a house, and training as a fighter in Thailand, and how gaining these real world skills prepares young man for whatever is next in life. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at AoM.is/ThePreparation.

All right, Matt Smith, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Real pleasure to be here. So co-authored a book with your son Maxim and then also Doug Casey. It’s called The Preparation in which you lay out a curriculum as an alternative to college for young men, and it’s kind of an alternative to college as a rite of passage for young men, what was the impetus behind the development of The Preparation?

Matt Smith:

Well, my other co-author, Doug Casey, he actually has been trying to get me to write this book for 12 years with him, but he called it Renaissance Man, is what he called it. He’s been trying over various times to get me to do it with him. It never made sense because he’s written a number of books and he always said, they’re total brain damage to write. You don’t make any money doing him. And then he is trying to sell me at the same time to write this book with him. But when my son turned 17, or my son was in his 17th year, so he’s almost turning 18, and I could see in him this consternation, this anxiety about the future, and I’m a college dropout and I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. So he didn’t grow up in an environment where I was propagandizing him one way or the other.

You should go to college or you should not go to college. But he, I guess always assumed that he wouldn’t because I didn’t. And I think that I even made the path feel more uncertain to him than normal, but I think all 17 year olds probably feel this way. So I could see this anxiety in him and I had a lot of worry. And also, this is all in the COVID era too, so you’re thinking about what would make sense. And then I thought back about the book that Doug had talked to me about many years before and over and over again about writing with him. And I said, maybe we can make something like that work. I didn’t really think about writing a book at that stage. I was really just thinking of seeing if we can turn this into a program that he could follow to help your son. That was the only motivation. There’s no way I would’ve done it without that. Yeah.

Brett McKay:

And you talk about in the book that college these days, there was a time when college was a great way to segue into adult life. You learned knowledge that you could apply to a career that would last your entire life. Why do you think that model doesn’t work anymore for so many young men? Well,

Matt Smith:

There’s a whole bunch of reasons, but I mean, you could argue on one side of it, economy is changing dramatically. So with AI and automation, we’ve already started to see a lot of job cuts around that. We’ve seen people that have specialized in the fields. They were told to go into computer science, come out and not be able to find a job when they get out of school. There’s like two weeks ago in the New York Times, there was a long article about this. Somebody had applied to 5,000 jobs, had 13 interviews I think, and no offers, computer science. So there’s a question of what that future looks like without the problems of college. So one thing is the future AI and the future that might cause, and the other thing is just it’s extremely expensive and it’s no longer rare. Now 53% of people graduate high school go to college.

So you’re not among the, of course you can go to more elite schools and then the track is different of course, but people are graduating with this huge debt around this burden that they’re carrying around with them. And totally, if they find out that job that they’d specialized in, they really, they feel it’s totally soul crushing. They now no longer have options because they have to service that debt from college. They pay their rent, and so they’re kind of trapped and they find themselves, I think totally different than when even 20 years ago when costs were so much lower than now

Brett McKay:

Going back to that idea of how AI is changing the career landscape. I had this conversation with my son a couple months ago. He’s 14, he’ll be 15 next month, and we were on a walk and he said something pretty incisive for a 14-year-old. I was surprised he caught onto this. He said, dad, I think what worked for you and mom and even my grandparents as far as transitioning adulthood like college. He says, I don’t think that’s going to work for me. And I said, I think you’re right. It’s a completely different world. And he said, what do I do then? What should I major in? Where should my career be? And I said, but I don’t really know, to be honest.

Matt Smith:

That’s amazing. A 14-year-old is asking these questions

Brett McKay:

And I think a lot of young people have that anxiety like your son did. What am I supposed to do? Because it used to be you could pick out your career, even if you worked in a factory, let’s say 60 years ago, you knew you’d have a job for six years because nothing really changed all that much. Or you went to college and you decided to become an accountant or an attorney, not much change. You knew what the game would look like for your career. That’s no longer the case. And I can see that just causing so much stress and anxiety for young people.

Matt Smith:

Yeah, I think so. Even if we were wrong when we went to college, like I said, I’m a dropout, but I did go for 18 months anyway, even if we were wrong, but we believed that accounting job would be available for us even if we were wrong, it still gave us something to pursue some clarity. Today it’s clear to everybody that the future is going to be vastly different. So knowing that just increases people’s uncertainty so dramatically. And yeah, it’s a tough position for these kids. They’ve been through the ringer with all the COVID stuff and then it’s uncertain future. It’s a really tough time to be a teenager.

Brett McKay:

This book is geared towards young men. We’ll talk about the curriculum and The Preparation. I think a young woman could do it and it’d be awesome for them, but it’s geared more towards young men. But you talk about one of the things that young men, they have this anxiety, they don’t know what to do. And so what they typically do is they just default to drifting and looking at what their peers are doing, whether in person or online. And you talk about the role mimetic desire plays in this drift. So we’ve had Luke Burgess on the podcast before who’s written about mimetic desire. But for those who aren’t familiar with it, can you briefly describe it and then how does this mimetic desire contribute to dissatisfaction in a young man’s life?

Matt Smith:

Happy to. I mean, Luke does a great job. I think the book’s called Wanting, I think of the name of it, but it’s based upon Renee Gerard’s work, which essentially he says that humans are unusual animals and that basically our drives are shaped by those around us. And this doesn’t just apply to young men or young women, it applies to you and I we’re subject to, we can be subject to things if we’re not aware of them. And this is why you see things become really popular, whether it be a fashion trend or something, how they just take off you as like, why do humans follow these trends like that? It’s kind of programmed into us. And so we look to others for what they appear to want, and then it becomes our own want. It feels legitimate. It feels like we really truly desire that thing too, because we’re taking the cues from the people around us. But it’s not genuine, it’s not really authentic. And I really believe, again, this is not a young person problem. This is a every person problem. You have to be aware of it, the effect of others on you and what they desire. I mean, it’s like keeping up with the Jones’ idea. That’s that concept in a nutshell.

Brett McKay:

And I think for a lot of young men, they don’t really have good models anymore. So mimetic desire can be a positive force if your model is noble and good and positive, but a lot of young men don’t have that.

Matt Smith:

Well, I would say if anything, the great role models that might even exist even in literature are taken out of the classroom for young men especially. So I think they’re gone and there’s been an attack on masculinity in the culture, and that’s certainly made it worse. And then the counter reaction to that, the bros is also negative. It’s just not really the right thing either. It’s not real masculinity. So there aren’t heroic figures for them to look up to except I guess superheroes, which is nonsense. So yeah, I think it is a real struggle for young people to have good models and to then know where to go and what to do.

Brett McKay:

So what you do, let’s talk about The Preparation. So the goal of The Preparation is, the original idea was to help young men turn into Renaissance. Men who are competent, confident, and dangerous, basically turn ’em into the most interesting man in the world from those Dos Equis commercials. Tell us more about this renaissance man model that you’re trying to follow. So basically the Renaissance man ideal is the model that you’re hoping young men will use their mimetic desire to become like. So tell us about that. What is this renaissance man model that you’re trying to create with The Preparation?

Matt Smith:

So fundamentally, instead of the focus being on what kind of job do you want to have? The question that confronts young men at this stage in life, it’s like what kind of job you want to have or the three main choices, of course, college, military, or a trade school, nothing really wrong necessarily with any of them, but all of them are simply designed to get you a job that gets you economic viability so that you can be hopefully reasonably prosperous and have some economic security. But none of them address the most important question, which is what kind of man do you want to become? And what we try and do is get them to think about that early in the book and we focus on this, the idea of the Renaissance man, essentially as a person who’s able to, who not only knows a lot about broad range of topics, from music to art, to building a house and milking a cow, anything you can imagine, just a broad range of knowledge, but also knows how to shape the world around him, knows how to put it into action, knows how to create with it.

And that’s the difference between a polymath and a real renaissance man is a polymath, knows a lot, but a renaissance man uses that knowledge to create, to shape the world around them. Yeah,

Brett McKay:

I think we have this kind of a distorted idea of what a renaissance man is. When we think of like, oh, he’s a Renaissance man. It’s like, well, he just knows a lot. Basically we’re describing a polymath, the actual Renaissance man from the Renaissance era, as you said, they not only knew a lot of stuff, but they could do a lot of stuff and they were actively engaged in trying to shape the public sphere. So use this example of Leon Batista Alberti, who was this guy,

Matt Smith:

He was a badass, obviously a guy. He lived in the 15th century in Italy, and he is one of the central figures really of that renaissance period. He was a painter and architect, a photographer, a philosopher, mathematician, and he was also quite an athlete. He was a great horseman apparently too, and a mountaineer. I mean, he was quite accomplished in every walk of life. And he thought that the only thing that limited what you could do was your will, this renaissance area. What it did is it combined these classical virtues that were sort of rediscovered in the Renaissance from ancient Greece and Rome, and with this new life that was sort of fed into the period once actually the Renaissance period fundamentally was about revitalization by a rediscovery of these ancient virtues where a man could shape themselves and ought to shape themselves. So that that’s what life’s about, is that pursuit of shaping yourself into something great. And so he’s kind of the iconic figure of that period really, who really proved it true.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. Going back, one of their goals was they wanted not only shape themselves, but they wanted to shape themselves so they could shape the world, have an impact on the world, and I think all humans crave that. We crave that desire to mold our outside environment. Nietzsche said, joy is the feeling of power increasing and for Nietzsche power was like creativity. It’s like, yeah, you had an impact. I think all humans have that desire, but I think particularly in young men, young men really want to feel like their actions have an impact on the world around them. I think that’s one of the reasons why video games are so seductive. It gives you the feeling that you’re doing something but you’re really not. So I really love this idea of the renaissance model of someone who acquires knowledge and skills to act in the world.

Matt Smith:

And these are, I think with young men, what they really want is they want to be somebody. So they have this angst to do something meaningful. They know that by doing something meaningful, they’ll become something meaningful, but there’s so little that they can do. They’re so restrained. It’s like so little freedom on kids. I say they’re the most surveilled group of people that have ever existed on the face of the earth. Everything’s scheduled and organized for them and almost infantalized because of it.

Brett McKay:

Any other fictional or historical characters besides Alberti that you think are examples of this Renaissance man who not only knows a lot but can do a lot and have an impact on the world?

Matt Smith:

You can look at a lot of the founding fathers, frankly, like Ben Franklin. That man knew a lot and did a lot. It’s actually quite impressive of his accomplishments. You go through the founding fathers and you’ll find at least half a dozen that I think would qualify as Renaissance man amongst them. I’ll say for my son what was particularly motivating for whatever reason, and you never know why certain characters connect with you or don’t, but he really loved Edmund Dantes from the Count of Monte Cristo. I really made him watch one of the versions of the movie with me when he was younger, and I said, you’ll like it, trust me. He never really liked movies, but it or not. And he loved it. He loved that idea. And then he read the book and then he read the Under bridge book and he’s now read it a couple times. And this idea of this guy’s like a good virtuous guy, but really innocent and got basically everything that mattered to him, completely taken away from him all of a sudden and was at the total bottom of a, well, essentially in prison and really couldn’t get any lower, but built himself up and to become quite a remarkable man who absolutely did have the ability to shape the world around him.

Brett McKay:

Another one, as I was reading the curriculum for The Preparation, which we’re going to talk about here in a bit, another person that reminded me of this sort of renaissance man ideal that’s more modern. Louis L’Amour, the Western author, a hundred percent. You like him? Oh, I love Louie L’Amour.

Matt Smith:

Oh, oh, good. That’s good. That’s a good sign. Yeah, no, he’s great.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, we’ve had his son on the podcast to talk about his work, but also his book Education of a Wandering Man, which is basically an education of a renaissance man.

Matt Smith:

Yeah, my son has read that book three times. It’s a really good book going through this process. It’s been, he said, it’s been interesting going back and my son has been the beta tester for this program for the book. What ended up being the book, he’s been doing it in real life for the last two years. And so as he goes through different stages of it, he’s read it at different points and he’s like, I see different things at each stage. So it is quite an inspiration for him as well. And Lou, the More absolutely was a renaissance man,

Brett McKay:

And I would even say a lot of actors from the golden age of Hollywood, I’m talking Steve McQueen, even writers like Jack London, Ralph Ellison, if you look at their lives, they didn’t follow. They didn’t, a lot of ’em didn’t go to college or if they did go to college, they dropped out and they just did weird stuff. Like Steve McQueen, he was in the Marines and then he labored on a chain gang in the deep south because he got arrested for vagrancy. He was a lumberjack. He joined the circus, I think Ralph Ellison before he became a rider, he tried to become a professional trumpet player in New York City and he was living in A-Y-M-C-A trying to be a trumpet player. And that’s where he met Langston Hughes and he got kind of brought into that circle of the Harlem Renaissance there in New York City. Sean Connery, I mean he served in the Royal Navy. He was a milk man, he was a lifeguard. He was like a bodybuilder for a little while. And what stands out to all of these guys? They were just doing stuff. They’re just trying different stuff, increasing their surface area of luck and just these opportunities came up where they found something they really were good at and passionate about and the rest was history.

Matt Smith:

They did it their own way too. I think they were able to, in all those cases, I think they were able to devote their time and energy to the things that drew them in more because they had this broad exposure to many things and broad exposure to lots of different people and different things. It just increases their total decision set. So like their optionality in life increases dramatically. The more like the way I guess you put it surface area they touch, but I have to include people they touch within that as well because you build this weird networks that connect you with weird people. If you do unusual things

Brett McKay:

And if you just go to college like, well, you go to college and you might learn some interesting things, but your experiences aren’t going to be as varied as these guys.

Matt Smith:

And today you can learn anything. You can learn in college without going to college. That’s the thing. It’s available to us now in a way that it was not before. There is some advantage if you happen to have a great professor who can take whatever the subject matter you’re studying and they can bring it to life in a way that you would not catch without them. There are those rare instances, but most of it is not like that, at least in my experience.

Brett McKay:

So before you talk about the specific skills a young man should develop and that your son Maxim is developing with The Preparation, you spend a lot of time in the beginning of the book talking about developing a personal code. Why start with that?

Matt Smith:

I think it’s because it’s the only thing that matters in the end. And so you got to start at the end, I guess, Doug, when he originally pitched me on the book 12 years ago, he was very vague about it. He says, I want to write a book about becoming a Renaissance man. And I said, tell me more. And he said, well, the three most important verbs in the English or didn’t really any language are be and do. And and I didn’t get it. It took me a long time to really understand what he meant by that. But essentially, if you think about it have is what everyone is oriented to generally. It’s certainly a part of this mimetic desire that people have. They look around, they see what other people want, they want to have things, they want to have a beautiful wife or they want to have a new car or they want to have a travel experience.

They basically are oriented almost only toward have. And in our consumer culture, this has been amplified, like the dial’s been turned up to 11. It’s really intense and it’s almost hard to avoid it if you don’t understand this framework. So the problem with focusing on have is that have is a byproduct. You don’t get it directly, you get it indirectly. By doing so, do is the operative, do is what matters. What you do will determine what you have. But the only thing that actually matters is be and be is who you are. What is your substance? What is the thing that differentiates you from the other 10,000 people standing in line? What is the difference? And this is the thing that this essence, a bee is the thing that I find is very motivating to young men. Actually, it’s motivating to men of any age because the bee, the substance, the thing that makes you solid.

And so we had to focus on that. So what is the, the way we think of it is that with this personal code, we ask them to go through this exercise, it seems kind of trivial. I understand at first it can seem trivial. The first part of it, is a set of rules for yourself that you don’t expect anyone else to follow, but they’re just rules for your own conduct. And that requires a little self-reflection. And it’s like when you do things that make you feel small or that make you feel a little ashamed. One example, if a friend invites me out to dinner on Friday, I could say, I’m busy little white lie. Or I could say, I don’t really feel like it this Friday. Maybe we could do it another time. The path of least resistance is simply to just actually say, oh, I’m busy, I just can’t do it.

But every time, personally, when I would do something like that, it made me feel small, made me feel not good. And it’s not real deception, like a really bad lie, but it’s still not good. It didn’t make me feel good. And so we asked them to look at those things that they do that make them feel small and write ’em down and just decide not to do those things anymore. Just set up these rules for yourself. It might sound again trivial, but this is the formation of self-esteem. This is the formation of the self itself because this is how you are separating yourself from going with the flow, from just doing what everyone else is doing because you’re deciding, no, I’m not going to do these things. It’s only a negative thing first. I’m not going to do these things under these conditions. And that’s where it starts though.

It’s like you develop this beachhead where a young person, anybody can build from a real self from that, just a little bit of self-control around I’m not going to do the things that make me feel small. That’s the first part. The second part is things to aspire to, and this goes back to the virtues. So we introduce ’em to the same virtues that inspired the Renaissance from Greece and Rome and we just basically share a list with them and say, which ones do these speak to? You pick five or whatever, six that feel good to you. That’d be awesome. Courage. That’s cool. Yeah, I would like to be somebody who’s known as courageous or maybe it’s that you’ve got what they call the gravitas, which is actually just dignity. I mean virtue, the core of the word is vir, which means man. So the pursuit of virtues is the pursuit of being a man in general.

So anyway, we tell ’em to identify those virtues that they voluntarily decide to aspire to. And unlike the rules which are binary, it’s like, oh, I messed that up. I failed. Or I did the right thing by my own standards. Virtue is something you never get there. It’s always just something you’re trying harder to get. You can always be more courageous, you could always be more disciplined if that’s a virtue you choose, you could always be more steadfast. So it’s something you pursue constantly and this is inspiring to people to be because what kind of man do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to be known as? So that’s the second part. The third part is where we tell them to start to list their stack of accomplishments, which will grow as they get into the book because we actually later on tell them exactly what they should do.

Brett McKay:

So it sounds like it’s all about helping these young men develop a sense of self.

Matt Smith:

It is the most important thing. Be is the thing, and this is what when you see people who are even gainfully employed, having gone to college feeling quite lost, why? Because they still don’t know who they are. They still don’t know what differentiates them specifically. Is it what makes them? So the beginning of that starts with this. I think it’s totally core to, I mean, I would much rather spend time. I like people who have done a lot of stuff. They’re very interesting and I like people who have a lot of stuff. I have a lot of stuff. Stuff is nice. But if the person is not a good person, I mean if they don’t have virtue, if they aren’t pursuing virtue, they’re not people I want to be around. And certainly I don’t want to be someone like that. So it’s a constant barometer for me as well.

And I just think it’s never discussed with young men, they never hear it, they never even hear this. So I think it had to be there first because most of the book is about what to do, but doing for what reason? Because some of these things are hard and when you’re doing them, you don’t like Louis Morris running around doing a lot of weird stuff. Everybody’s doing these weird things, they look weird. And so to everyone around them it might’ve looked like they’re failing. So in that you have to be able to come back to something like a higher purpose than that. And that is the being that is what kind of man do you want to become.

Brett McKay:

Alright, so let’s get into the brass tacks of the curriculum of The Preparation. I think what everyone’s probably like, okay, what’s in this thing? What is my young son going to be doing? So you break the curriculum into cycles. How long do the cycles last and what are the components of a cycle? Alright,

Matt Smith:

So again, we’re competing with college is the way we think about it. And so we imagine four years, my son is through two of them now each year is broken up into four quarters. Obviously we call each quarter a cycle. So there’s 16 cycles and each cycle basically has a few key components. The most important one we call the anchor course, that’s the main event. Sometimes there’ll be a couple weeks long, sometimes they can be a couple months long of that tire cycle, three month cycle. But that’s the main thing. And everything else is built around that because these are hard to schedule so you have to plan everything around it. So you plant the big rock, you put the big rocks in first in the jar, that kind of idea. It starts with that. And then related to it, Doug especially is a strong advocate for academics.

He thinks they’re super important. So every cycle has academic courses as a component to it. As much as possible we try and make it so that they’re related to the subject matter, that they’re anchor course that they’re actually going through at the time as much as possible. So there’s the academic portion, there’s a set of activities that we encourage people to do and they could choose the things that are interesting to them. But we encourage diversity by trying a lot of different things and they could be from learning a musical instrument and it’s a good thing for sure. Definitely learning to play chess is a good thing for sure. But scuba diving and skydiving and well, we have a whole list, a whole bunch of ’em in there of different activities and there’s some time that’s set aside each week for those kinds of things. And other than that, there’s a reading list of course too.

So we have books that we recommend and then it’s reflection. So in total we actually, unlike college, which you can be considered a full-time student if you’re taking 12 credit hours now supposedly there’s a lot more outside of that than that. But I came from the army as I had to pay for my college, I had to go to join the National Guard. So I came from the army to college and I couldn’t believe how much free time everybody had. It was so shocking to me. The difference between high school and college, it’s a huge difference. You’re so much free time. This basically assumes you’re putting 40 productive hours in every week. Now these could be some of these hours. Are you at the gym that counts lifting weights, that’s good for you, that’s one of your activities. But there are required things in there too that we have. But we’re assuming 40 hours a week, which definitely prepares somebody that in and of itself more for the real world frankly, than a heavy course load would.

Brett McKay:

Okay, so each cycle has an anchor course and this is the more intensive hands-on component of a cycle. Then there’s some related academics that you’re going to do and then there’s some activities you can choose from. And then you’re supposed to do a written reflection at the end of a cycle. And as you said, you’re pitching this as an alternative college. And as we talked about earlier, college is just really expensive these days. I think doing four years at an in-state university is something like a hundred thousand dollars in total and then it just goes up from there. So the academics with The Preparation, that’s like online courses you can take for free, but stuff like the anchor courses cost money. So how much does The Preparation cost to do altogether?

Matt Smith:

Yeah, so if you did the exact 16 ones that we have, and there are two that are really expensive in here, the total cost of that over four years is about $70,000. About $70,000 basically. That’s one year to prestigious college in the US today, but it’s a lot of money. 70,000 even that I understand. But the difference, the thing is, is that you can work your way through it. And I have some evidence I’ll share with you. There are two, I don’t know if you want me to get into the anchor courses now, but there are two that are really expensive. You don’t have to do those and saves a lot of money. One of ’em is becoming a private pilot. You don’t have to do that one, but it is, my son went through it, it’s very interesting. It’s a good skill for him to have. And the other one is learning to operate heavy machinery, but you get certified in it. And that could be, you could always fall back on that and do that for work. That pays pretty well. But those two things are pretty expensive courses.

Brett McKay:

Yeah. Okay. Well let’s talk about some of these specific cycles. This is a lot of fun. The first one that you talk about, I think this is the first one your son did is the medic. Let’s talk about the medic. What’s the anchor course of this cycle and then why did you even pick this? You set this out for your son. So

Matt Smith:

Basically the anchor course is just getting your EMT certification. So if you ever unfortunately are in an ambulance, you’ll be there with probably one paramedic in one EMT. EMT is like the base level, the reason that he started with it. And I think the reason why a lot of people should start with it or why we placed it. The first one is simply because it’s the most accessible. It requires wherever you are, wherever you live, somewhere around you, there is an EMT school not too far away that you can attend. And it’s very low cost. I mean some of ’em $1,200 sometimes maybe up to $2,000, depends upon exactly where you are in the country. But basically what it does, it qualifies you to work on it like an ambulance obviously. And that pays basically minimum wage, just not a great job, but it does give you some economic viability.

I mean it does qualify you for a job that you couldn’t have if you didn’t have it. But it also is an amazingly useful skill that actually can be parlayed into quite a bit more as Maxim did. Specifically Maxim because of his part of this is that weekly reflection and accountability we talked about earlier as part of it. So he published, he started publishing a substack just basically at first he was simply listing what he’d done that week. It was like a way to hold himself accountable, just they had to put it out there and no one reading it didn’t matter over time. There’s a few thousand people that have read it now, they’re just subscribed to it. So it’s a little harder for him, but I mean it’s a little harder in that he knows that there’s an audience. But through that someone reached out to him and said, Hey, you’ve got this working on an ambulances and a fund, you don’t want to do that.

I don’t know. It was wildfire fighting business basically where the contracts with the western states during the summers when they have these terrible fires and as an EMT. So he spent one of his cycles, a work cycle. He spent one summer last summer fighting fires in Oregon making $600 a day, no expenses, which for me when I was 18, I know money isn’t worth what it was was worth, but I think that was roughly my take home pay for a month in the army was $600. So through things like that, unique opportunities show up for you and there’s different ways to leverage it, but for him ultimately if there is a emergency trauma type situation, he’s qualified and skilled to be able to be the person who can step up and do something about it, to know how to handle the situation, to assess what’s going on and to take action. And that skill gives you walk into the world differently. You encounter the world differently when you know that if something like that happens, you will know what to do.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, it’s a big confidence booster. I think it’s really powerful. And after I read that section like man, I’m going to have my son, he needs to get EMT certified, I want to get MT certified after reading about it. And so along with the EMT certification, there’s an academic component and as you said, you try to keep the academics related to the anchor course. What kind of academic stuff was your son doing?

Matt Smith:

I mean this one, it’s like anatomy, biology and there’s some practical chemistry in there too actually, which is kind of fun. But yeah, it’s as much as possible related to it. And then there’s part of it that is just like in college there’s required and then there’s room for electives. We have this whole, in the back of the book, there’s basically they could choose, they could fill in electives with things that they’re just curious about. So there’s plenty of options beyond for the elective section, but in the required it’s anatomy, biology and practical chemistry.

Brett McKay:

Another cycle that really piqued my interest, I was like, I wish I could have done this. The builder walk us through the builder cycle.

Matt Smith:

There’s this awesome place in Maine called the Shelter Institute where over three weeks, if you do the three week version, there’s a two week version and a three week version. The three week version you design and build a home and you don’t build it to completion, but you actually just, you put up the timber frame structure in the third week, but the first two weeks are really the most important ones. They really, you go through the entire process of exactly understanding how do you handle plumbing and electrical and how do I choose the site and how do I begin to even start with this? So you learn to design a home. Now you don’t necessarily want to be a home builder, but you can’t understand the benefit of this. And they’re mostly the people that go to this are adults by the way. They’re not children that go, there are people like you and I are like, Hey, this would be cool to know.

But when you have this skill, you see the world differently. You encounter it differently. And also it could expose you to creative outlets that might draw you in deeper. But the whole point of all of this, and there are lots of the 16 we picked, we could have picked another 16 that I think would’ve been just as valuable. But the key thing is that they all build upon one another. Helping being, helping this person have a list of accomplishments that impresses them that is impressive to others and that makes them see the world from what they could do instead of what they can’t do because things are a mystery to them. They don’t understand how anything works. So I order food on Uber Eats, that’s how I eat. Milk comes from a carton, I don’t know. You want to expose them as much as possible to as many of these things as you can. And so their framework and understanding of how the world works and how they can effectively create and it becomes clear to them.

Brett McKay:

After I read about the builder and I learned about this school you could go to, I was like, I’m doing a two week vacation where I’m going to go to this thing. I think a lot of guys have that dream of I’m going to buy some property somewhere and I’m going to build myself a little a-frame cabin. I couldn’t do that. I had no clue what it would look awful and I wouldn’t even know where to start. So I’d love to have that skill. I also think it’s just a useful skill knowing how to build a house just as a homeowner.

So many times where I’ve had something broken into my house and he needs a repair and I bring a contractor and he’s explaining it to me and I’m like, is this guy ripping? Is this actually a problem? Maybe this isn’t a problem. And he’s just saying it is. But I don’t know

Matt Smith:

Exactly. This is the problem with specialization in a way. It’s allowed us to become a prosperous society like this specialization. It’s been good in that way, but on an individual basis, what it does to us is bad. It has a real negative effect where our basic understanding of how basic things around us function are totally outside of our awareness or understanding. And if you think back maybe our parents’ age and if not absolutely their parents’ age, they knew all of this stuff. I mean not necessarily all of these different things, but they basically understood the world around them way better than people do today.

Brett McKay:

The academic component, I imagine it’s a lot of architecture. Yeah, history. There’s some literature in there. That one too. Yeah. Yeah. Another one that intrigued me, the cowboy, again, I think this reminded me of Louis L’Amour. That’s why I liked it. What’s the cowboy cycle? 

Matt Smith:

Maybe it’s because I’m such a Louis Lamore fan too. There’s a lot of benefits. Well, there’s two parts to it actually. For this one, basically there’s this place called this cowboy academy you go to and they teach you all the basics of working with horses and on a ranch. And it’s a pretty short course. I believe it’s five days. That’s a pretty short one. And then there’s a longer one where you actually go on or you do horse and mule packing in Idaho. But learning to deal with these animals and to feel comfortable around them is really important. I think it teaches, it’s humbling in some ways. I mean if for an adult, even if you haven’t been around horses, that could absolutely destroy you if they wanted to and learn how to work them well and work cooperatively with them. And plus it’s so much fun and I think it taps into some of these things will absolutely tap into this wanderlust side of the hero’s journey, the rite of passage.

These things that I really think are totally missing from our culture today that we have to, if you’re a really involved parent, you try and construct these things if you can for them, but they’re limited in that they don’t get to experience it on their own fully. And through these cycles, they do some things that don’t make sense. There’s no rational reason to do it. There’s no obvious benefit you’re going to get out of it. It’s just a journey. And this is definitely one of those I think that comes out of that. I mean, handling a horse teaches patients and discipline, even leadership, believe it or not, it’s weird. I don’t know if you spend a lot of time around horses, but they’re beautiful, amazing. In that time we spent a lot of time focusing on the academics and the academic portion of this cycle. It’s a lot of US history, western history, western literature to give ’em cultural context, including of course the Sackett series.

We encourage them to start reading and get into that because I think virtues are present in the characters of the Old West and certainly in all of Louis L’Amour’s books. But also learning about Kit Carson, I mean his life, just things he accomplished in his life. So you read this biography of him as well during that cycle. And I think these do give these models for when you look at what’s possible, if you’re like a 17, 18 and 20-year-old, hell, if you’re even 50 years old, and you look at these examples of these people who totally break the Overton window of possibility of what you can do with your life, it helps motivate you, inspire you. And so there’s a lot of focus on that in this cycle. A lot of wanderlust in this cycle.

Brett McKay:

So another cycle, the fighter cycle. I think your son’s about to start this one, is that correct? Or is he doing it?

Matt Smith:

January he starts that. Yeah, he’s in the entrepreneurship cycle right now.

Brett McKay:

Okay. So tell us about the fighter cycle.

Matt Smith:

Alright, so fighter cycle, basically you go to Thailand and there’s several different schools, but we recommend one in particular. It’s got two locations where you basically enroll in Moy camp and it’s pretty intense. It’s pretty intense, but most of it’s just basic physical training, basic sparring. Of course, at the end of it, the hope to actually do a real bite. And it’s not required of course, but it’s the hope that they would do that I think is good. And that one fundamentally the truth is that we encourage the study of martial arts anyway. So the question is whether or not you make a cycle out of it because a lot of the activities we talk about could have honestly many of them could be turned into cycles that are worth it. So my son was doing BJJ, that’s Brazilian jiu jitsu, almost wherever he was.

There’s almost always a place he could go to do that. So we encourage it anyway, but we decided to make it part of his cycle because that hero’s journey arc — get away going somewhere totally different. Where the world functions in a totally different way, where everything is exotic to you gives you a better sense of the entire, I mean most Americans don’t really see how the rest of the world functions, so we want them to get out and see the world a bit. And this gives them a way to do that in an environment where they’re not just traveling for the sake of traveling, but they’re traveling with the sense of purpose and learning and where they’re going to walk away a different person, they will come out of that not being the same person

Brett McKay:

In the academic portion are you doing Asian Studies?

Matt Smith:

Yeah, pretty much. I mean a lot of, let’s say martial history, part of it too, philosophy of combat. We have the Book of Five Rings for instance, is one of the things they read during that. But yeah, it’s mostly oriented toward while they’re there to learn about the history of the brand.

Brett McKay:

I mean if you did just the cycles we’ve talked about, so the the cowboy, the builder and the fighter, if a young man did just that, he would be head and shoulders above his peers. One of the most interesting young men out there, he would have, as my son would say, aura. He’d have infinite aura if he did these things. And these are just four of the possible cycles. I mean there’s other ones like we’ve talked about. So your son’s doing an entrepreneurial one right now. He basically has to start a business in three months and make money.

Matt Smith:

Well, he doesn’t have to make money. He could fail. I mean I’m not an entrepreneur, I’ve started many businesses and some have succeeded, some have failed. But the things you learn along that process is quite good. And the cycle starts off very hands-on, very specific and structured. And then it gets more into the abstract things like entrepreneurship, investing, the things that I think are very important but don’t give you a sense of self in the same way that these hands-on hardcore recognized skills do. And the four we’ve gone through, basically imagine just if someone just took a gap year before college just did those four in the gap year, different person, they would be going into college. If they still chose to go that route, they’d go there knowing a sense of self and a sense of where they want to take their life.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, I mean so other ones you talk about, and we won’t talk about ’em in detail, but there’s like survivalist cycle where you go to a primitive living intensive school for two weeks. You mentioned the pilot cycle where you get your pilot’s license. There’s a sailor cycle where you’re going to learn how to, you’re going to go to South America and learn how to sail, which would be awesome.

Matt Smith:

My son did that basically around the Falin Islands and then through the Strait of Magellan. And he learned how he’s a certified crewman on a sailboat. And so that’s also an economically viable job actually.

Brett McKay:

For sure. Yeah, the welder cycle, that’s another economically viable job. And it comes in handy. I’ve got a friend who started a farm after selling his business and he had to learn how to weld. He had to go to trade school, learn how to weld. There’s a lot of welding you do as a farmer, surprisingly, the heavy equipment operator obviously. And I mean I think that your big takeaway, all these things you’re going to learn, these skills you’re going to develop that contributes to the do of character and then that leads to the being of character. So it just gives you this sense of self that you’ll carry with you for the rest of your life. But what’s after The Preparation, after your son finishes all these things, what do you going to happen? What do you think he’s going to do with himself? So he’s got this awesome resume. He’s a renaissance man. I think you can make the case that with this diversity of real experience, I can give you the confidence and the capacity to pursue a variety of paths more so than college. But I can imagine that there are people out there listening, dads who are listening that are thinking, okay, well now what

Matt Smith:

I think that’s again the wrong question. I mean I get the question, but when have we known for sure where anything we did was going to take us in reality? Maybe we had a general direction to move toward, but we never really knew exactly what is the question basically cancels out because of the uncertainty of it, it can cancel out the desire to strive to become because it seems impractical because you want to know the practical answer. The truth is I can’t imagine what he’s going to be doing after two more years. I really can’t. I mean the changes I as a father saw where he started with this kid who had a lot of anxiety, he was basically super like I’m an introvert. I trained my kids maybe to be introverts. I don’t know. My daughter’s not so much, but my son certainly reflects that he did.

He’s completely gotten over that. He would never feel comfortable going and interacting with a lot of people, but it’s no issue for him whatsoever. He’s totally got that under control. I dunno if he manages it or if it’s dissolved away. But he’s gone from being basically a boy into being already after two years, every qualification I would say of being a man except for the fact he’s not yet a father. Shouldn’t be a father yet. I want to be a father yet. But I mean that’s the last step where I would differentiate between a boy and a man and after two years he’s already there. The world is full of opportunity for him already. He says no to things, opportunities all the time. So I can’t imagine, I can really can’t imagine what he’ll be doing.

Brett McKay:

Yeah, I mentioned earlier, I think doing all this stuff increases your surface area of opportunities and I think your son’s a testament to that. I mean, he got that job offer to work wildfires, and I’m sure he’ll have other opportunities that pop up just exposing himself to different people in different situations.

Matt Smith:

And lemme explain one more thing I forgot to say earlier about how expensive this is, and I said he could finance your way through it. Now I saved for him. A lot of people might be thinking again, it’s not economically possible for me so I can’t do it. I grew up very poor. My son did not. Okay. But I saved an irresponsibly low amount of money in his Vanguard account. Not enough for that one year at a prestigious university, that’s for sure. And he started with that two years ago and he’s never asked me for money. Today he’s got a little bit more money than he did when he started after two years. So you can work your way through it. And that’s what he’s done along the way. I just don’t want people to be scared off by that because, and the fact that he can work his way through doing this, he is at a level of economic survivability already. It’s like somehow he’s making it work. Of course he’s sleeping with extra bedrooms of family or friends when he is in different places. He is really thrifty with his money. But it works. It works. It does produce somebody who is independent and not just financially independent, but independent and they make sound decisions.

Brett McKay:

I mentioned earlier as I was reading through this book, I was thinking, man, I want to do some of this stuff. Do you know any middle-aged men who are doing some of these cycles for themselves?

Matt Smith:

Well, the book just came out two and a half weeks ago. So the formal structure of these has not been out there. But I could definitely tell you a lot of these anchor courses are not done by kids. I mean, they’re done by adults. I mean on this sailing thing that Max did through the straight of Magellan, he was by far the youngest person there by far. Yeah, I would say it’s the same thing with the Shelter Institute. I mean, that is not young people that are doing that. So certainly these are all things that draw in people like our age to do and older. And most of the readers of the book so far, their parents, their parents like you and I who want to help make sure their kids are pointed in the right direction and they have the same response that you did, which is like, this is stuff I want to do.

And I have to tell you, to be honest, writing the book was a challenge to do and to construct it so that it tells people exactly what to do. It took a lot out of me to do it, but I mean, I was just looking for things that sounded like that I wanted to do. Also, things that I knew would inspire my son and other boys around the world. And it tends, I guess it’s true of men my age and older. I mean, we had a 71-year-old write to us the other day. He said, I’m starting, I’m going to start doing this. So, well, I don’t have any examples yet of them doing it, but I have a lot of, if you read the reviews on Amazon, you’ll see a lot of parents saying echoing the same thing they want to do.

Brett McKay:

Well, Matt, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Matt Smith:

Well go to Amazon to buy the book and currently there’s an audio version coming out, but this is a very physical thing. So even the audio book comes with a PDF that you’ll need or do it because kind of like a workbook in many ways. And there’s a hardcover edition, which if you’re trying to persuade a teen that maybe is unlikely to, sounds like your boy would read a book. He said, this is good for you. And luckily my son is at that stage too. But if you have one who might be a little more reluctant or something like that, the hardcover is designed to be as beautiful as possible within Amazon’s limitations. So it’s full color. And when they hold it in their hands, just open the book a little bit. They’ll know that they’ve not held a book like that before, that there’s something different about it right away.

And I think that it’s designed to be lure for the young man to pay attention a little bit differently to it. So the hard cover is $99. It’s way more expensive than the paperback is just 29. But if you’re looking for good lure, I would definitely get the hard back that’s on Amazon. And then you can go to The Preparation.com, which is a substack that we set up about the book. But also as people go through it, young people start doing, we encourage them to again, put this reflection and accountability to publish it like my son did, and then kind of amplify and connect the people who are doing it. So that, and I have to talk about my son’s substack too, just so you see. It’s maxim smith.com, M-A-X-I-M smith.com because you can see the stuff that he’s done for the last two years. This kind of a proof of work.

Brett McKay:

This is awesome. Well, Matt Smith, thanks so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Matt Smith:

Oh yeah. Thank you very much, Brett.

Brett McKay:

My guest today was Matt Smith. He’s the co-author of the book, The Preparation. It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about The Preparation@thepreparation.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is/ThePreparation where you can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives. And make sure to sign up for a new newsletters called Dying Breed. You can sign up at dyingbreed.net. It’s a great way to support the show directly. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to the podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

When Rick Burgess was growing up, his father, Bill Burgess, was also his football coach. But Bill was a mentor on and off the field not only for his own son but for the many young men he coached at both the high school and collegiate level. Though Bill has passed on, his lessons remain timeless and valuable for all men. Today on the show, Rick shares some of his old-school wisdom with us.

Rick is a radio host, a men’s ministry leader, and the author of Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father. In our conversation, he discusses what his dad taught him through football and beyond, including why men don’t run in the rain and why you need to get out of the stands, avoid being stupid, refuse to rest on your laurels, understand the difference between confidence and arrogance, and take full responsibility for your life without making excuses. We also talk about how Rick drew upon his father’s wisdom when tragedy struck his life.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Bill Burgess
• Sunday Firesides: Quit Acting in Bad Faith
• AoM Podcast #849: Live Life in Crescendo

Connect With Rick Burgess

• The Man Church

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Hey, before we get to today’s show, I want to let you know that enrollment for The Strenuous Life is now open. Summer is the season for movement, challenge, and growth, and there’s no better time to embrace it than right now. The Strenuous Life is our membership program that helps you put into action all the things we’ve been talking about on the AOM Podcast, and writing about on the AOM website. You’ll take on weekly challenges, earn skill-based badges, and work towards becoming a more capable, well-rounded man. Whether it’s fitness, craftsmanship, service, or personal development, there’s something here to push you forward. Join over 11,000 members who are done just thinking about change and are actually doing the work. Enrollment closes Thursday, June 12th at 10:00 PM Central, so don’t wait. Sign up at strenuouslife.co. That’s strenuouslife.co. I hope to see you on The Strenuous Life.

Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. When Rick Burgess was growing up, his father, Bill Burgess, was also his football coach. But Bill was a mentor on and off the field, not only for his own son, but for the many young men he coached at both the high school and collegiate level. Though Bill has passed on, his lessons remain timeless and valuable for all men.

Today on the show, Rick shares some of his old-school wisdom with us. Rick is a radio host, a men’s ministry leader, and the author of “Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father.” In our conversation, he discusses what his dad taught him through football and beyond, including why men don’t run in the rain, and why you need to get out of the stands, avoid being stupid, refuse to rest on your laurels, understand the difference between confidence and arrogance, and take full responsibility for your life without making excuses. We also talk about how Rick drew upon his father’s wisdom when tragedy struck his life. After the show is over, check out our show notes at aom.is/rain.

All right, Rick Burgess, welcome to the show.

Rick Burgess: Thanks for having me, Brett. Excited to talk about this topic today, ’cause this is one that you and I both have a lot of passion about.

Brett McKay: Oh, for sure. So, you got a new book out. It’s called “Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father.” And this book is all about your father and college football coach Bill Burgess. So your dad, he was a football coach in Alabama. He played football for Auburn from 1958 to 1962. After that, he became a high school football coach and athletic director. He coached at Woodlawn High School and Oxford High School there in Alabama. Then he became the coach of Jacksonville State University. Had a lot of success there. He took his team to three National Division II championships, won one of those, won multiple Gulf South conference titles. He was named, National Coach of the Year, was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. So he had a very successful coaching career. And it seems like your dad, he was born to coach. Like, this was his calling and he filled it.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, there’s people that maybe wanna be a coach, and you just put it best Brett, then there’s people that were born to coach. And he just, because it came so natural to him, it was kind of like breathing. I don’t think he even put a lot of effort into saying, I must do this and I have to do that. And I think it’s just what he was born to do. And he was one of those people that if he came into a room, he would influence people whether you wanted him to or not.

Brett McKay: What I love about this book is, we were talking before we got on the show, I played high school football here in Oklahoma, and your dad, he reminded me of some of the football coaches that I had. And his sayings that he had, he’s like, witty one-liners that he had without even trying to be witty, the way he carried himself. And I love how you start off the book, this physical description you give your dad. Because I think it really captures the way he dressed and carried himself. It captures his philosophy towards coaching and life. So what was the Bill Burgess uniform that you knew like, that’s dad. When you think about your dad, that’s what you remember.

Rick Burgess: He wasn’t really, when I look back, he wasn’t, I don’t think over six foot tall, but he seemed like he was seven feet tall. But he was very muscular and he was old school. So he always had the trucker cap on with the team logo right on the front. He wore a coach’s shirt, the standard with the team logo then Cigna on the left chest. And then he would wear these black coaching shoes. You probably remember these, Brett. They were, I think Rodale made them?

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Rick Burgess: They were black, and then of course he would do tube socks of course, and he would pull those up to his massive calves, which were legendary. And those calves would kind of break the elastic of the tube socks and then the socks would fall down around his ankles, never staying up. And then of course he had his whistle on, had kind of a piece of leather around it and it had a whistle. And then on the end of the whistle, was athletic tape.

My dad believed that athletic tape could cure any problem. And of course it would have that on the end, tobacco juice, and sometimes blood would be stained on the athletic tape. And then of course the final part of the uniform was always the bike coaching shorts. They were super, super tight. And that’s the way he was standing in that Alabama sun. He was just the iconic portrait of those classic football coaches from that era that had influence on everybody they coached.

Brett McKay: How do you think that exemplifies his philosophy or sort of his stance towards life?

Rick Burgess: Dad was always about keeping it simple. He probably was one of the most humble people that I’ve ever known for the… Considering the leadership role that he was constantly being put in and the accolades. And he was never an I person. He was always a we person. He always complimented the staff, complimented the players, everybody who worked, the equipment person, the trainers, the janitor, whatever the case may be. And so, I think if you looked at the way he dressed, he dressed in a way that shouldn’t really it did, but it shouldn’t have really. The intent was not to bring attention to himself. He felt like if I was gonna be coaching, this is the things I need to coach. And I’m certainly not trying to make a fashion statement or bring any attention to myself. I’m here to work.

Brett McKay: It made me wanna go get some bike shorts for myself.

Rick Burgess: Oh, goodness. Could we bring them back?

Brett McKay: Let’s bring them back.

Rick Burgess: Could we bring them back?

Brett McKay: I think that’s the next trend that’s gonna happen here. Coach bike shorts. All right, so let’s talk about some of these lessons that you highlight in the book. And the first lesson that you highlight that you got from your dad was, it’s the title of the book, “Men Don’t Run in the Rain.” It’s a very evocative phrase. What does that mean?

Rick Burgess: It meant more than what it literally means. In the intro, I tell you the story about me being with my dad, and it was actually one of my friends. Dad was, “This doesn’t surprise you.” He was our biological father, but he was a father figure for so many of our friends and, of course, the multiple players that he coached. Because they either didn’t have a father at all, or they may had fathers that were not great people. And so, dad became kind of a pseudo father for many, and one of my best friends in school. And in growing up, his father, was not involved in his life and unfortunately was actually eventually murdered. And so, he looked to dad as his dad. He was at our house all the time. And he was the first one that said to me, when we were little boys, we weren’t very old, and he saw dad in a downpour and dad wasn’t running. He was just walking methodically. He wasn’t picking up his pace, he wasn’t slowing down. As if the rain wasn’t really hitting him. And he looked at me and he said, “Your dad doesn’t run in the rain.”

And I thought, okay, and I didn’t think anything much about it. And maybe dad’s just odd. I didn’t know. So when I got a little older, somewhere around 12, 13, something like that, I was leaving his office and one of those classic Alabama afternoon downpours came with the daily thunderstorm, with all the humidity. And so, I went to run to his truck and he put his arm out and he stopped me and he says, “No, men don’t run in the rain.” And I remember thinking to myself, I don’t think I fully grasp it, but almost what he was saying is, men should never be frantic. Men should not make a big deal out of things that aren’t a big deal. It’s just rain. And I don’t wanna see you nor any man scurrying like the rain falling on them is going to hurt them. And he said, we walk to the truck. And he’s teaching something there about steadiness. He’s teaching something there about not being fearful of things that we shouldn’t be afraid of. He’s speaking about a confidence, a calm that a man should bring to a chaotic situation. So he was saying something much bigger and it took me a while to realize that, but I see now, he was starting to teach that as soon as he could.

Brett McKay: That phrase, that advice, men don’t run in the rain, it reminds me of this Nassim Taleb quote. Are you familiar with Nassim Taleb, Antifragile, Black Swans, he’s this economist guy?

Rick Burgess: Sure.

Brett McKay: But he has this line, “I don’t run for trains.” And I think it’s very similar. And he says this about why he doesn’t run for trains. He says, “I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics and behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life.” And also, just yeah, so it’s just like your dad didn’t run in the rain because he was in control. The rain’s happening, no big deal, I’m still in charge. Nassim Taleb doesn’t run for trains because, first off, you look kind of silly when you’re running in the rain or running for a train. But it also just asserts your agency, hey, you know what, this doesn’t bother me.

Rick Burgess: That’s exactly right. And I think sometimes that’s what’s missing in our homes. See, I always had this sense that as long as this man was here, then we’re good. And if I had looked up and never saw him panic in situations that might have been fearful or scary, it would have caused the entire family to lose all hope almost. He was a calming factor, a steadiness, a foundation in his family’s life, and you’re right. They’re both saying the same thing. If we cast a different vision, it doesn’t just affect us. It’s not about them, it’s the impact it has on all those you influence.

Brett McKay: All right, so you actually played for your dad when he was a high school coach at Oxford. What was that like?

Rick Burgess: My dad was probably the best that I ever have seen or heard of. When you see all these movies, anytime there’s the, here’s the authoritative dad, and he’s coaching his kids, and then he makes them run sprints, like the great Santini that Pat talked about in his famous book that went on to be a movie. It wasn’t that at all. Dad really separated the fact that he was the coach and that he was our father. He never mixed the two. It wasn’t any harder on us than it was anybody else who played for him. It wasn’t any easier on us. Our playing time was earned. That was understood. Now, probably the only thing that was a little bit different, and I understand his caution on this, is he had to be careful about patting us on the back publicly, in interviews and things like that. I think that was difficult for him, and I think at times he might have said maybe you and your brother deserved.

He was more apt to do it for my brother than me because of our personalities, but is that maybe there were times that I could have gotten a pat on the back publicly about a game, and if he wasn’t my dad, the coach probably would have done more of, but that was no big deal, because we didn’t have any of the bad stuff. Hey, I didn’t like the way you played today. What were you doing in practice? Get out in the yard, and let me show you again how to do that. There was none of that. Even if there was something wrong with the team, and he was at home and we were eating dinner, he would never bring it up. And then we got back to the field the next day, he’d bring it up. So he never mixed the two and never made it weird, and playing for my dad was actually a very positive experience, and I’m glad I got to do it.

Brett McKay: I think there’s a lesson right there for men learning how to separate work from home. A lot of guys, they bring work home, all the stress and whatnot.

Rick Burgess: Oh, yeah.

Brett McKay: It just makes their family miserable, and that’s a skill. I think it’s a skill you have to practice and develop. It doesn’t just happen, I don’t think.

Rick Burgess: No, I think he was intentional about it. I think it would have embarrassed him if he’d have done it any other way, and I think he found, and there were some of these men around, like through youth league and things like that, and I remember dad was always repulsed by the Little League Dad. My dad was not a huge fan of Little League. He didn’t keep us from playing it, and he didn’t try to encourage us to play it, but he knew that there were a lot of men that were putting themselves in positions with influence over boys that probably were not gonna be a great influence. Luckily, I had a dad that could kind of offset that, but I remember him being very repulsed by the coach dad that was screaming at his son on the mound, and the son’s obviously upset, and here’s this dad who’s coaching the whole team, and he’s focused on traumatizing his son in front of everybody, and my dad really, really disliked that.

Brett McKay: So one of the lessons you learned from your dad when you played for him, was nobody cares about last year. What’s the story behind that lesson?

Rick Burgess: Yeah, my dad ran a program, and you being from Oklahoma, you saw big programs, and it was very rare that there would be someone younger than a junior to actually play and be in the starting lineup, and in those days, and I’ve even seen in my home state of Alabama, this has changed a lot. Even the biggest schools will still take what we used to call the B-Team. Some people call it junior varsity, and they combine them, and I’ve always wondered why that is, because dad didn’t have near the coaching staff as these big schools have now in high school, but he still made sure the B-Team had it’s own coach, had it’s own practices, it’s own games. You didn’t practice with the varsity and then go play like I saw my sons doing, even at big schools. So he didn’t do it that way, and so for you to be on the team as a sophomore, be on the varsity was almost unheard of. So the year that I was coming up, I had four other friends that we were sophomores that had had good.

We were always playing a year ahead, and his senior class that year was weak, and the numbers were weak, their win-loss record wasn’t very good, and so he pulled five sophomores up to the varsity, which was unheard of, and I got to start. He was not my position coach, but the position coach made me the starter. So I had a good year for a sophomore, and so I was coming back my junior year going, well, I know who’s the starting, defensive or tackle. I know what that is. And so, the first play of the two-a-day practices for the new season my junior year, he erupted, and he pulled me out of the lineup. He told me to go sit on the bench, and they were gonna get somebody in there that was ready to play, that was hungry, and then as that player is running on the field, he walks over to me as I’m confused and standing on the sideline, and he said, “Nobody cares what you did last year, and if you think you’re gonna come out here and start on what you did last year.” He said, “Nobody cares what you did last year, that’s in that year, and today is a whole new day. And you’re gonna have to earn the starting position on this team, just as if you’ve never played a down for me.”

And I even remember thinking, Brett, I don’t think I was given a bad effort. But he knew that was his opportunity, and he was not gonna let a sophomore’s head blow up and was never going to make me think or anyone on that field, that you played for any other reason than you earned it. And he was letting me know, that if I phoned it in and leaned on last year, that I would probably find myself on the bench.

Brett McKay: How have you carried that lesson over to other areas of your life beyond football?

Rick Burgess: Yeah, I don’t want to get overly spiritual, even though the book does have a spiritual component to it, as you saw. But I think a lot of times people and men in their spiritual life, in their careers or whatever, it’s sad for me to think that a man ever has already lived his best year. I’m 60 years old as I’m talking to you, and I remember doing the research, and somebody making me aware of it asked me had I seen it, and I said I had not. And I found out that research shows that if a man has his mental and physical health, that 60 to 70 is the most influential decade of his entire life. Well, if I’ve maxed out in high school, and wanna tell you about me making All State in high school for the rest of my life, and I’m doing that to the point that I’m not even remotely attempting to accomplish something right now, I use the example in the book of Philip. When he had the Ethiopian and he had this big moment where he baptizes this Ethiopian and interprets the book of Isaiah, and I said, a lot of people would have just the rest of their life they would have been Philip, and that would have been the last thing you ever heard.

But it says in Scripture, that Philip immediately left that area and began talking to other people about Christ and interpreting Scripture for them. He didn’t rest on the Ethiopian story. And I think a lot of times men, tell these same stories when there’s a lot of life left as if they’ve maxed out. That was my greatest moment, and I think it also makes us lazy that we think, well, I’ve done enough. And that’s not true. Until we take our last breath, there’s still value to our lives, and we should be having impact and influence and making a difference. And dad was teaching me a life lesson that you don’t rest on your laurels. Nobody cares what you did in 1982. What are you doing in 2025, 2026?

Brett McKay: Yeah, that idea that when you’re 60, you still might have 20 years left, that’s a long time to get a lot done. And just that idea that you can still keep doing things and trying to be better. Reminded me of a conversation I had a while back ago with Cynthia Covey. She’s the daughter of Stephen Covey of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People fame.

Rick Burgess: Oh, yeah.

Brett McKay: And she finished a book that her father had started. He passed away, and then she finished it. It’s called “Live Life in Crescendo.” And it’s all about your most important work is always ahead of you. And she talked about her father. Like, this is a guy who has written one of the most influential self-help books in history, but he always thought, I can do something better than that, and he was always striving more. And he says, “I might not be as well-known for my later work as I was with Seven Habits, but I still got something important to do, and I got to keep working at it.” And he was doing that until his dying day.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, no doubt. Even at 60, I did the same radio show for 31 years, and when that show ended in December, and I sensed that it was time for it to end. I thought it’s best days were behind it, and I started getting a feeling that we were an oldies act. We were starting to rest on the things we’d done in the past, and we had a very successful career, and I decided that it was time for me to do something different. So literally, I’ve been as you and I are doing this interview, I’m four or five months into a brand-new show, and I host a radio show for my day job, and I’m loving it. And I’m talking about, in January, I was sitting down listening to research. They put research in the field. I wanted to know what I was doing poorly, what I could do better, and it would have been real easy to be at 60, say, hey, I’ve been in radio for over 40 years. Y’all have nothing to tell me. But that’s not true.

I still need to bang on my craft and continue to get better at what I do, and as you just stated, I don’t know that I’ll be remembered in my industry, as much for what I’m doing now, as what I did in the past, but if I’m looking in the mirror and I think I’m better at what I was doing and I’m actually doing this job better, then that’s good enough for me. Because I think that I can still improve, there’s no doubt about that. But am I willing to improve? You could come to the reality, you could still improve and still be too lazy that you won’t do it. Not only do I know I can improve, I am trying to improve, which is the second half of it.

Brett McKay: I love this lesson, another lesson you got from your dad, because my dad told this to me. I had football coaches say the same to me, and I’ve told this exact same thing. I coach flag football for my son and his team. I said the same thing to my flag football players that I coach. Don’t be stupid. What did your dad mean by being stupid?

Rick Burgess: My dad was obsessed with removing all stupidity from the planet. He hated for you to do stupid things, and then he had all these analogies. If I’d have ordered a truckload of stupid people and all I got was you, I would have got my money’s worth, which is one of my favorites. But dad thought that a lot of things in life could be avoided if you just wouldn’t be stupid. What you just decided to do was stupid, and if you would minimize the stupid things in your life. For instance, it’s third down. It is third and long. And they throw a pass for eight yards when they needed 12, but I tee off on the quarterback late, and now they get an automatic first down. That’s stupid. We had this handled if you had just not been stupid. And he would say things like, be smart. “Hey, be smart.” Like if he saw us starting to elevate a little bit on the field, you’ve got to think this through. Be smart right here. Hey, they’re probably gonna go on two, or they’re gonna change the cadence.

If it’s fourth down and a half a yard, you can bet they’re gonna try to draw you off sides. Don’t be stupid and jump. You can actually watch the ball. You shouldn’t even be listening to what the quarterback is saying because we move on the ball. It’s stupid to listen to him. And a lot of these things were very simplistic, and that’s why he marveled that we would still do them when it seemed so obvious that these were bad decisions.

Brett McKay: No, I think you’re right. A lot of the problems that people have in life are just the result of being stupid.

Rick Burgess: No doubt. I look back at my life and the problems that I have brought on myself, really, it’s because I just made a stupid decision. That far outweighs anything that happened to me that I said, I don’t think I had anything to do with that. A lot of it is just if I had just stopped and said, let me use logic, which is now common sense is a superpower. Let me just think this through and just don’t be stupid.

Brett McKay: That reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote. He says, “It is remarkable how much long term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

Rick Burgess: That’s good.

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, that’s good. And I’ll tell the story about us setting, the woods behind our house on fire by just being stupid. We thought that we would take dried out pine limbs and suddenly we could turn those into torches like we saw in all the adventure movies. They’ve always got a torch. And so, we thought, let’s make torches out of dried out Alabama sun dried out pine. There’s nothing more flammable than pine straw. So let’s pick up limbs that are brown and let’s light them, and pretend like we have torches in the woods in a drought. That’s just stupid. And then of course it didn’t take long for somebody to go, oh, mine nearly burned me and threw it over to not be burned. And then it set that on fire and off we go.

Brett McKay: How do you not be stupid? Let’s say you’re a 40 year old guy, you feel like, man, am I being stupid? How do you know? How do you stop being stupid?

Rick Burgess: Well, I think the first thing we need to do is to not make decisions without, there’s, have you ever heard the term, and I know it’s been used quite a bit, if you take a rifle, let’s ready ourselves, let’s aim, and then let’s pull the trigger. Well, a lot of times, somebody will shoot ready aim. I’m just squeezing the trigger, and I didn’t take any time to think about what I’m doing. So a lot of times, if you’ll just stop for a minute and go, okay, I’m thinking about taking action on this. Let me go ahead and look ahead of that potential regret. Okay, if I had not done this, then I wouldn’t be sitting in the situation I’m in right now. A lot of things are avoidable in life if you’ll just stop for a minute, reason it out, and then take action. We tend to take action, then think about it later, and that’s a huge mistake. The five Ps, prior planning prevents poor performance. Maybe do a little more thinking and a little less reacting.

Brett McKay: Yeah, something that I told my players when I coached them, and I tell it to my kids too, it’s like one of those things I’m trying to get into their head. I want them to develop this stance towards life. It’s just situational awareness. Pay attention to what’s going on around you. I feel like a lot of the mistakes that happen on the field or even when your kids do something stupid, they just weren’t paying attention. They were just kind of off in la-la land. And I’m like, hey, just keep your head on a swivel, pay attention to what’s going on, know your business so that you can make good decisions. It’s a tough lesson to teach young people.

Rick Burgess: It is. And do you think too, Brett, when you think about this, another thing I would say is look at the history of people who made this same decision. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been counseling men, and I’m like, okay, so you started a relationship with a woman at work when you’re married with three kids. Did you not… There’s quite a bit, if we can look, we can see a lot of examples, that this never ends well. There’s a lot of times you can just look at the history, how many people who’ve made this decision that it turned out well for. And I don’t know why people always think, well, maybe this time I’ll find a way to maneuver through it. And in the very serious scenario I just mentioned, that man is only thinking about one thing. He’s thinking about satisfying some sort of desire, and he’s not even thinking about the mess he’s about to make.

Brett McKay: All right, so another lesson there, to not be stupid, or an antidote to not being stupid. Read, read literature. That includes the Bible. There’s a lot of examples of people being stupid there. But even like The Odyssey, The Iliad, there’s just so many examples, and just history books, so many examples of people being stupid. And you’ll learn, you know what? I’m not gonna do that.

Rick Burgess: That really is helpful.

Brett McKay: Yeah. We’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So, at the beginning of every season, your dad would give these epic speeches to kind of set the tone, particularly for the new players. And during those speeches, he would throw the gauntlet down by telling the players to get out of the stands. What does that mean? How have you taken this advice and applied it to your life?

Rick Burgess: Don’t we all want to be on the field? It’s amazing to me that men, especially when they’re watching sports, they’re disgusted by the thought that they would not want to be in the starting lineup. But then we get into life, and men in life seem to be perfectly comfortable with being third string, not participating, not accomplishing anything. And a lot of men are like, nah, I’m just gonna farm that out to somebody else, and I’m not gonna do that. I don’t wanna get involved. I don’t wanna have to get my hands dirty. But if you were to say to them, would you like to be on a sports team and sit the bench, they’d go, “Absolutely not.” But yet we’re sitting the bench on the important things in life. And so, dad’s deal was, and he would add a little caveat to that, he would say, “Now, if you can’t handle the way things are gonna go here, then leave right now and go sit in the stands and then tell everybody how great you could have been if Coach Burgess hadn’t been so difficult.”

And men do that, and that kind of gets into another thing we’ll talk about, but they’ll sit in the stands and then talk about all the coulda, shoulda, woulda if life just hadn’t been so unfair. And that is just so counter to how men were made. That’s how we act in our fallen state. And the one thing that always gets me, I’ll have people sometimes that’ll be critical of how I’m doing things, and I always ask a man, say look, before I want to listen to what you have to say, what do you do? Because I found being a Christian doing secular entertainment, I don’t do Christian radio, I’m a Christian who does radio, but most of the complaints that I get in the way that I’m in the world but not of the world and try to use entertainment to earn the right to share my faith, the most critical people I deal with are not people who disagree with my belief system. It’s usually people within all the denominational garbage of the Western Church. They complain the most. It’s more of the, “You’re not doing it right.”

Now before somebody, because sometimes I do need to be held accountable, so I’m not saying I’m perfect, but one thing I always wanna know, Brett, what do you do? Tell me, what impact have you had for the faith? How do you use the gifts that God’s given you to advance the kingdom of God? I’d like to hear that first, or are you just some guy who sits in the stands, and tells the rest of us on the field what we’re doing wrong? How about get out of the stands and get on the field and let’s see you make a play?

Brett McKay: Yeah. And he also talked about in that same chapter, a lot of men, or even you see this in high school sports, a lot of boys, they want the perks of playing football or a sport. They want to wear the cool uniform. They want to come out of the tunnel on game night. They want to be cheered, but a lot of people, they don’t wanna do the work that is required in order for you to do that, the two-a-day practices and the practice every day after school for two or three hours. And your dad had this saying, sometimes he’d stop practice, and it’s like 3 O’clock, and you see the buses leaving, taking kids home, and he’d tell the players like, “Hey, there goes those 3 O’clockers.”

Rick Burgess: Yeah. He would tell us, ’cause you remember this, Brett, there’s a lot of days you’re out on that field, you wish you was on that bus. You kind of want to go home and watch Andy Griffith reruns and eat a snack too. And he was basically letting us know that the sacrifice we’re making now, will pay off in the end because he would say, now, we come Friday night, and this isn’t high school, you can change it to Sunday or Saturday if you played at even a higher level, but he said, “Come Friday night, all those on the bus that don’t wanna be you right now.” When the band’s playing, the stadium’s full, the cheerleaders are cheering, and you’re walking out of that tunnel onto the field, every one of them would switch places with you. So what you have to understand is they’re not willing to make the sacrifice you’re making, but when it gets to the reward, they’re gonna wish they would have been you if they could have somehow avoided sacrifice, and he said that doesn’t exist. And so, we think about that all the time.

I remember a very, very jolting statement that was made by Vance Havner. Vance Havner was an old school pastor, and he said this. He said, “The Western church would stop praying for revival, if they had any idea what it was really going to cost.”

Brett McKay: It reminds me of that whole line about, you aren’t willing to pay the price. This is a line from Ronnie Coleman, he’s a bodybuilder. And he says, “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights.” [laughter] And it’s true. Like everyone wants the big muscles or whatever, but no one wants to do the stuff you have to do to get there.

Rick Burgess: Oh, I’ve said this recently ’cause I’ve always struggled with my weight after football when I stopped playing, ’cause when I walked out of that last workout, I said, well, I’ll never do that again. And eventually, I just came into conviction that this was not fair to my wife. This wasn’t fair to my children. And it certainly made me less effective in men’s ministry because it looked like I had no discipline. So I started committing myself and lost weight, got myself in better shape. I wanted to hit my 60s wide open. And I’ve done that. And then people will ask me, and you can tell they don’t wanna hear it. They’ll say, “So tell me how you’ve lost the weight and got yourself in a little better shape. What have you done?” And I know what the reaction is gonna be. And I looked at them, I say, well, I practiced good nutrition, I don’t overeat, and I exercise. Who knew? And I’m admitting that I spent most of my life knowing that, and I wasn’t willing to do it either. So I’m not being hypocritical, but you can tell that is not the answer they wanna hear to your statement that you just made about the bodybuilder, is how can I somehow not be overweight and be in better shape and not be so sick, but I don’t wanna have to put any effort into it?

And that’s why these shots and these pills and all this stuff is so popular right now, because people are trying to find a way to be healthier without ever doing anything. And you may lose the weight with these things, but there’s a bigger question. Are you really healthy? But when somebody says, “What would you suggest?” And you go, I would suggest good nutrition, less eating and more exercise. That does not draw a crowd.

Brett McKay: No, it doesn’t. So get out of the stands, get more involved in life, in your marriage, in your family, in any organizations you belong to, even at work. A lot of guys just kind of stay on the sidelines at work and just carp about things that have been like, “Hey, what can I do to make things better here?” But recognize, there’s a price. There’s gonna be some sacrifice involved in not being in the stands. Another mantra your dad had throughout his career was no excuses.

Rick Burgess: No.

Brett McKay: And I’m sure everyone listening at a football coach probably heard that. No excuses. What did that look like for him as a coach, that mantra?

Rick Burgess: This drove him as crazy as stupid things. People making excuses. And one of the things my dad never did, never, if we lost a game, he never made an excuse. You could have the worst call in the game ever that went against you by the officials. And I can remember some dillies, some good ones. And he would never bring that up. He said, “If we played the way we were supposed to play, then the calls would have made no difference.” There were moments throughout the game we could have won the game and we just didn’t get the job done. And then, he would take most of the responsibility on himself. He would never. I thought one time he was gonna just completely lose control when he started watching these college head football coaches that if it didn’t go well, they would send one of the coordinators to the postgame press conference. They wouldn’t go themselves as if they were blaming the coordinator. That infuriated him. And I remember the first time that I was playing for him and we had a defensive end that let containment be broke.

They bounced outside of him. And he said, “Where were you? You’re supposed to, this funnel that play back inside.” And the defensive end said, “Well, I slipped coach.” And he looked at him. He said, “But you can’t slip. Don’t make an excuse, just tell me you didn’t get the job done. If you’re the person in charge of containment, slipping is not an option. Just say you didn’t contain. And then we work with that. But please don’t make an excuse about it.” And so, he felt like that you should ultimately just admit there was nothing more freeing than if you didn’t have success, is to actually say you didn’t get the job done, not blame it on something else. You didn’t have any responsibility. Well, now he’s teaching more than football there. ‘Cause people are always willing to blame other people for really things they need to take responsibility for. And he taught that lesson. He taught it hard. I never heard him make an excuse. I do remember one time, and this is in the book, and you probably read that when he had the game where they beat a team really bad in college and it was in a torrential downpour.

So he was leaving the house on Sunday after we’d gone to church and was headed back to the office for the next week game. And the other coaches coaches show was on TV. And that guy was talking about how hard it rained and how they couldn’t move the ball because how bad the weather was. Now, dad’s team had beaten the other man’s team 35 to nothing. And so, my dad looked at me as he went out and he said, “Boy, I’ll tell you, listen to this guy, you would think it only rained on one side of the field.” And that’s all he said, but he was making the point, there he is making excuses. He didn’t make them and he didn’t have much respect for other people who did.

Brett McKay: So how can taking, it sounds like your dad was advocating for something like just radical ownership of your life. How can that change a man’s life?

Rick Burgess: Well, if I’m always justifying everything in my life and I’m always making an excuse for the things that are in my life, then ultimately, I’m never gonna go anywhere. I’m sorry if you’re listening to this and you had a bad family life. That’s terrible. I’m sorry if you had a rough go of things. I’m sorry if you’ve had a kind of a rough time. But at the end of the day, that can’t be used as an excuse for you not to succeed. If you saw bad examples in your life, then why don’t you be a good example? We are in control of the things that we do. We may not be able to control what other people do, but my dad always taught, control what you can control. So ultimately, you got to take ownership of how this turned out. And if it didn’t go well, at the end of it all, it’s probably because you didn’t do the job as well as you should have.

Brett McKay: Yet in existential philosophy, there’s this idea of living in bad faith. When you’re living in bad faith, you’re denying the responsibility. You can make decisions that change whatever situation you’re in. You still have the ability to make decisions. Like that can’t be taken away from you.

Rick Burgess: Exactly.

Brett McKay: And so, whenever you try to make excuses, you say, yeah, you’re living in bad faith. You are denying your agency.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, whatever happened to, that’s on me. And I will tell you this, one of the biggest obstacles that I face every single day is myself. I’m my biggest enemy. And so, I try to get myself under control. And if I can do that, what’s coming after that usually is not near as difficult. [laughter]

Brett McKay: So something else, a sort of thread throughout this book, is your dad teaching about the difference between confidence and arrogance. Your dad sounds like he was a confident man, but not an arrogant man. What’s the difference between confidence and arrogance, according to your dad?

Rick Burgess: Well, there’s no doubt he was confident. I think my dad truly believed that there was nobody alive that could take him and that he would overcome anything. And there’s a thing out right now. I don’t know if you’ve been seeing it where, could a hundred men defeat a silverback gorilla? Have you been watching that?

Brett McKay: I’ve been watching that. Yeah.

Rick Burgess: I think my dad thinks he could. And I don’t think my dad… My dad would be like, me, I’ll handle that. That’s not a problem. You think a gorilla could take me? But his confidence was not arrogance. Because also, the same man that was confident that he could stand against anything that life could throw at him, was also the same man that an equipment salesman found cleaning the bathrooms when he was athletic director and head coach. And so, when he went in to find my dad in a stall cleaning a toilet. And he asked my dad, “What in the world are you doing, coach, cleaning the toilets?” You’re the athletic director, you’re the head football coach. And dad said, “I’m cleaning the toilets because it’s my turn.” He never thought he was above cleaning toilets. So yes, he was confident, but he wasn’t arrogant. He always kept that servant’s attitude. My ultimate leadership is actually to serve the assistant coaches, to serve the players, to let them know that though I am confident in my abilities, I would give myself for your benefit. And I remember he had the attitude of he could get onto us, but nobody else could.

He became our advocate if others tried to get on us. And talking about teams and even talking about us as his children and his family. So my dad was confident, but then arrogance is something that I struggled with. And you see in the book, he tried to teach me ’cause I was a bit of a hot dog, which drove him crazy. And of course, he would always try to take me down that road and tell me about that fine line between being confident in your job and being arrogant about what you can do. And the point that he always tried to make, is that if you are not willing to put the work in, if you’re not willing to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the team, that’s not confidence, that’s arrogance. And when you’re arrogant, you’ll get us beat.

Brett McKay: Let’s shift themes here. It’s not football related, but your dad, he was a hunter?

Rick Burgess: Yes.

Brett McKay: He’s a big time hunter. And one year when he was older, and you were older, you’re an adult, you gave him a GPS device ’cause you thought, hey, this would be handy for my dad to have when he’s out hunting turkey or whatever. But the thing is, he never used it.

Rick Burgess: Never. I have it in my office. I still have it.

Brett McKay: Why is that? Like, what lesson did you take from him?

Rick Burgess: Well I thought I was gonna give him the greatest Father’s Day gift ever. I would shame my siblings, because I got this new technology and knowing that he loved the outdoors, I thought, well, he can go anywhere he wants to go now, by just entering in. These were the old garments, still they were a little bulky and you had to put them in your car and all that. These were the early days of the GPS. But what dad said back to me, I’ve never forgotten. He asked me what this thing was. And I said, dad, that’s a GPS. You just enter in wherever you wanna go. It’ll take you right to it. So he doesn’t even take it out of the box and he kind of pushes it to the side. And I see him doing that. And he even asked me for the receipt. And I said, dad, what’s the deal? Do you not want that? And he goes, “I’m not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings or anything.” He goes, “But I don’t need it.” I said, you don’t need a GPS? And then he said, “No, I don’t go anywhere that I don’t know where I’m going.”

And I thought, my goodness, I don’t even have a response to that. His point was, I always know where I’m going. I don’t wonder where I’m going or need someone else to figure out where I’m going. I always know where I’m going. And boy, what a lesson, right, Brett? How many men right now are just kind of making it up as they go? They think that somebody else needs to tell them where they’re going when they need, if you don’t know where you’re going, I don’t know how we expect anybody else to tell us where we’re going.

Brett McKay: Your dad’s story reminded me, I just recently finished Moby-Dick. I finished a couple months ago. Have you read Moby-Dick?

Rick Burgess: I have.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Well, there’s this famous scene with Ahab, and he’s got this quadrant. That’s what the sailors use to navigate.

Rick Burgess: Sure, yeah.

Brett McKay: And there’s this moment where he just destroys it, ’cause he realizes the quadrant can’t tell him where he wants to go. It’s like, that’s on me. And so, he smashed it. He’s like, I’m in charge here. So yeah, your dad’s story, the GPS reminded me of Ahab a little bit.

Rick Burgess: Oh yeah. What’s exactly the same thing? Ahab is realizing this can’t help me decide where I wanna go. I got to figure that out. And of course, then dad was adding the other part, figure out where you wanna go, but you also need to know how to get there.

Brett McKay: So how can a man figure out where he’s going in life? I’m sure you deal with a lot of men who have no clue where they’re going.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, I think first of all, what is your passion? Is there anything you feel called to at all? Is there something that kind of keeps you awake at night? Is there something that’s down in like their guts where you’re like, man, I really feel like this is where I should go. I think this is what I need to do. I’d love to have more impact with my life. But until you figure out where you wanna go, then there’s no way to put together a plan on how to get there. But then you have guys that do the other. They know where they wanna go, but kind of we’ve already touched on this, but they’re not willing to figure out what it takes to get there. And then sometimes they figure out what it takes to get there, and they’re just not willing to give that to go, but somehow they still expect it to happen. So I think that the thing that I find with men a lot, Brett, and I remember this period of my life, if you’re listening to this right now and you’re just kind of making it up as you go, news today for a time to change.

Rick Burgess: I’m gonna stop just making it up as I go. I’m gonna figure out what is important to me, what I think I’m supposed to be doing with my life, and then I’m going to put together a plan to do it.

Brett McKay: In 2008, your two-year-old son tragically drowned. Losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent. How did the lessons you got from your father help you prepare for that moment?

Rick Burgess: Well, the thing that you’ve already heard is, men don’t run in the rain. And boy, it was pouring and storming and raining when that happened. And I immediately began to draw on the things that he taught me about, right now your whole family is looking to you. Everybody needs to feel steady. Everybody needs to feel calm. They don’t need to see you panic. You don’t need to become an apart. Now, I didn’t take that to the point that is unhealthy where I didn’t mourn. But there was a moment in the beginning, where your wife is falling apart, your children who are the siblings are falling apart. And frankly, whether you like it or not, we don’t have that luxury. Because if we don’t hold this thing together until everybody can get back on their feet, then it’s all gonna fall apart. And I had been taught, that I don’t run in the rain, that I stand sturdy and I go, and I minister to my wife, and I pull the children together and I start talking to them about life and who God is in these situations. But I would challenge every man, and it’s kind of what we just talked about, about a game plan.

It’s impossible for me to tell my wife and tell my children, who God is when a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy dies, or what’s going on in the world when a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy dies if I don’t already know those answers. See, I didn’t know that this was ever gonna happen, but I had spent a large portion of my life preparing for whatever was coming. For me, it was the word of God. I went there, I wanted to know everything about God I could possibly know. And you say, well Rick, how do you do that? I don’t like studying. I was the same guy. The early days of our family after I was redeemed, my wife was the spiritual leader. I’m not gonna act like that wasn’t true. But that radically changed in my life when I realized that I was actually quite knowledgeable about everything that I deemed of value, and everything that I loved. I knew about hunting. I knew about fishing. I knew about football. I knew about how to run a business. I knew how to do a radio show. I knew how to run that equipment.

Well, if I don’t have good study habits, how in the world did I learn all this? I learned it because I was passionate about it and I cared about it. And I had to come to a terrible conclusion, that I didn’t know who God was and I didn’t know the word of God, because I didn’t deem it of value and I didn’t love it. So I changed that, and began to seek God in a way that I never had and began to study His Word. Well, when this moment arrived, I had the answers. Now, I didn’t come up with them. They had been provided to me by the very God that created me. But in that moment, what the family and my wife can’t see, is me falling apart and running in the rain. And I’ll never forget the words of my wife when it was all kind of clearing and we were reflecting, and it’s always with us. But she said, “That night, at Children’s Hospital, our pastor couldn’t comfort me, our friends couldn’t comfort me, our family couldn’t comfort me, ’cause we all knew one thing. They couldn’t be my husband. They couldn’t be the children’s father, so we waited on you, because no one could replace you.”

Brett McKay: How did your father help you during this time?

Rick Burgess: My father helped me by confidently encouraging me, and telling me that I was doing a good job. And the thing I think that I’ll never forget is, my father and I and our interaction at my son’s memorial service, when I got up to speak and didn’t expect to speak the way it went. It was a supernatural moment. But when it was over, he and I had an interaction. And that was that we were both kind of redefining what it looks like to be a man. And I won’t give it all away. You can read the book. But he basically is telling me that, he knew it was raining. He knew it was storming, and he watched me. And he let me know that I didn’t run.

Brett McKay: Yeah, when I read that scene, basically your dad was telling you, you’re a man. Like, you’re a man. And I think every man, they crave that from their dads. They want that recognition from their dads.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, my dad didn’t patronize me, but my dad never robbed me of hearing, I’m proud of you. And then in that moment, it was the thing that even goes beyond I’m proud of you, is does he see me as a man? Does he see me as his equal? And I remember that moment vividly because he looked at me after it was over, and like you said, and he just looked at me and said, “Now that right there is a man.” And to hear that in that moment, he gave me the confidence I needed to continue on.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I think there’s a great lesson there of a father’s blessing or a father’s recognition. I think that’s something you got to think about as a father. You might not be thinking about that when your kid is five, even 10, maybe even 15, but once they start getting into adulthood, you got to start thinking about that.

Rick Burgess: Yeah, and I think before that, ’cause they’re not men yet, but you definitely need to find these moments to tell them you’re proud of them. Don’t ever assume that your son or daughter knows you’re proud of them. Don’t ever assume that. Don’t ever assume that your wife knows that you love her, if you have a wife. These things need to be vocalized by us clearly, and it really, really has an impact when we do so.

Brett McKay: If there’s one lesson you got from your dad that sort of encapsulates all the wisdom you got from him over the years, what would that be?

Rick Burgess: I think the thing that I take away the most, is that though you are in the leadership role, be someone that is still fun to be around. My dad was intimidating. My dad was clearly in charge and had influence, but he also was fun. It wasn’t just the, I’m whipping everybody into military shape and you never see him. I’m always stoic. He wasn’t like that at all. My dad was a huge cut up, and he picked and chose his moments correctly on when he needed to kind of let the pressure off a little bit and let’s lighten things up a little bit. And so, I looked at him, and I realized that I learned from him, how to love a wife, which he did with my mother incredible, how to be authoritative but still be close to your children, to still be able to cut up and have a laugh with them. And I think that probably of all the lessons we talked about today and talked about in the book, I believe the lesson of being steady, the lesson of not panicking, the lesson of let your family and let society see that you’re there, you’re at your position, you’re watching, you’re over them, and ultimately take responsibility for the mistakes you make in life, and own them, and then change and don’t make those same mistakes again.

So taking full responsibility for who you are, and leading while at the same time encouraging with the same amount of power. Don’t just be strong to correct, also be strong to encourage and take responsibility for when you mess up.

Brett McKay: Well, Rick, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Rick Burgess: You can go to themanchurch.com. We’re a men’s discipleship strategy. All of our resources are there, but this new book will be there too, themanchurch.com. And you can also contact us if we can help you in any way with your men’s ministry, if that’s something you’re interested in. But if not, at least get this book, and it’ll be right there on the homepage.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Rick Burgess, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Rick Burgess: Thanks for having me, Brett. It means a lot.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Rick Burgess. He’s the author of the book “Men Don’t Run in the Rain.” It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website, themanchurch.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/rain where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you’d take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to the AOM Podcast but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

When my kids were little, I was an involved dad. I changed diapers, did middle-of-the-night feedings, and took the tykes to the doctor.

I wouldn’t say I was inherently drawn to doing these tasks. There wasn’t some paternal urge to nurture our kids when they were newborns and toddlers. I did it because I loved them and Kate, and I didn’t want Kate to carry the entire burden of childcare while also working full-time.

But as my kids have gotten older, into their pre-teen and teenage years, I’ve noticed something interesting happening. I suddenly have an intrinsic impulse to be more involved in my kids’ lives.

I have an instinctual urge to teach them how to do stuff in the adult world.

Here’s an example: A while back, as I was sitting on the couch reading, a thought occurred to me: “I need to help my kids open their own bank accounts.” So I took 14-year-old Gus and 11-year-old Scout to the nearby bank branch and had them talk to the teller about opening a checking account. In the process, I had to teach them about Social Security numbers and had them memorize theirs. I also taught them about debit cards and how to check their balances online.

It turns out that this shift I noticed in my fathering isn’t just anecdotal. In my podcast conversation with anthropologist Anna Machin, she noted that across cultures and throughout history, fathers have had a unique role in preparing their children for life outside the home.

Dad’s Outward Orientation

C.S. Lewis once observed that while a mother fiercely prioritizes the immediate interests of her own family, the father’s role is to consider the family’s connection to the broader community: “The relations of the family to the outer world — what might be called its foreign policy — must depend, in the last resort, upon the man . . . A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world.”

Research backs up Lewis’ observation. Sociologists have consistently found that one of the things that separates moms and dads in how they parent is that dads typically have a more outward-facing orientation. While mothers tend to focus on the intimate, nurturing aspects of home life, fathers think more about their children’s place in the wider world.

Fathers are more likely to encourage risk-taking, independence, and exploration, while mothers are more apt to prioritize safety and caution. For example, fathers are likelier than mothers to push children to engage with strangers. They’re also more likely to nudge kids outside their comfort zones.

This is completely anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve noticed that when parents use those chest baby carriers, moms typically have their baby facing toward them, while dads often have the baby facing out. That’s how I did it with my kids. A father’s outward orientation shows up in a lot of places.

The outward focus also appears in how dads communicate with their children. Fathers tend to use more complex and varied language, often referring to events and ideas beyond the immediate home environment. This serves as what researchers call a “linguistic bridge” to society, expanding children’s vocabulary and worldly knowledge.

The Younger Years: Father-Child Roughhousing Prepares Kids for the Outside World

Research shows that fathers consistently engage in more physical play than mothers, and roughhousing has a positive impact on children’s development. One key benefit is that it helps kids learn emotional regulation, which is essential for successful social interactions. Through roughhousing, kids learn to read cues indicating when someone has had enough and how to calm down if play becomes too intense. Consequently, children who regularly engage in rough-and-tumble play with their dads tend to be more socially adept with their peers. They’ve learned the unwritten rules of getting along with others: taking turns, recognizing limits, and resolving small conflicts.

The Teenage Era: Dads Build the Scaffolding to Independence

As children grow into teenagers, Dad’s role as a bridge builder to the outside world becomes even more critical.

During adolescence, kids naturally seek greater autonomy and begin facing the challenges of adult life. At the same time, anthropologists like Machin have noted that dads often feel a growing impulse to play a bigger role in their children’s lives. During a child’s adolescent years, a father’s job is to teach their children the skills they’ll need to survive and thrive in the world beyond the bounds of the familial home.

The content of this teaching will vary, depending on the environment the dad is sending their kids out into.

In environments where physical survival is the primary concern — say, where hunger or violence are common threats — fathers focus on teaching their children how to hunt and how to defend themselves.

In societies where economic hardship is the main risk, fathers teach practical skills: how to tend livestock, negotiate prices, or build trade relationships.

In the modern West, where physical and economic survival is generally assured, fathers tend to focus on cultural and social survival — helping kids get into good schools, handle “life admin,” make the right connections, and navigate complex social hierarchies.

This explains the sudden urge I have to teach my pre-teen and teenage kids how to do stuff like open banking accounts. I want them to have the skills necessary to be a functional, independent adult in suburban America. My dad-instinct is kicking in, telling me, “You’ve only got a few years to get these kids ready to head out on their own. Get busy teaching them all the skills they’ll need so they don’t end up living in the driveway in a van!”

The Fatherly Art of Launching Kids

You’ve got the instinct to teach your kids to get ready for the outside world — follow it. But if you’re seeking concrete ways to help build the scaffolding that will support your kids’ transition from dependent childhood to independent adulthood, here are some suggestions:

• Bring them along on errands.
• Have them order their own food at restaurants.
• Let them see you confidently talking with strangers.
• Take them to work with you occasionally.
• Include them in conversations about what is going on at work.
• Have them ask store clerks questions.
• Give them pointers on driving as they prepare to get their driver’s license. 
• Let them help you with your weekend chores and expect them to complete age-appropriate chores of their own.
• Start paying them an allowance.
• Teach them basic maintenance for cars and bikes, like how to change flat tires on both.
• Teach them age-appropriate lessons about personal finance.
• Help them open a savings account at the bank, and encourage them to interact directly with the teller when they do so.
• Have them memorize their Social Security number.
• Have them be the one to call a business to ask a question they have.
• Take them to community activities you’re involved in, like church/community service projects.
• Show them how to file their own tax return when they get their first W-2 job.
• Explain how insurance works the next time you have to renew a policy.
• Have them schedule their own haircut appointments.
• Have them fill out their own applications for camps and sports.
• Get them our book Heading Out On Your Own — it covers lots of other life skills they’ll need in adulthood.

Fatherhood is about gradually launching the next generation into the world, equipped with the tools they need to thrive. This guiding role may be more crucial now than ever, given the complexities of our modern world. There’s a lot kids need to learn to manage in order to successfully live on their own.

Thankfully, nature has given dads the fatherly urge to teach their children how to do stuff. Lean into it, and help your kids become capable, confident, functioning adults.

For more insights into dads’ unique and essential role in childrearing, listen to this episode of the AoM podcast:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

I’ve been doing this dad thing for almost 15 years now. During that time, I’ve read books and articles about how I can be a better parent.

One parenting framework I’ve found helpful in rearing my kiddos comes from a child development researcher named Diana Baumrind.

Back in the 1960s, Baumrind observed how parents and children interacted in their homes. During her studies, she noticed parents typically resorted to different parenting styles, which could be placed along two dimensions: responsiveness and demandingness.

According to Baumrind, varying mixtures of responsiveness and demandingness resulted in several different parenting-style typologies, each of which was associated with a corresponding outcome in child behavior and well-being.

In today’s article, we’ll unpack what these styles look like and which, according to Baumrind (and subsequent childhood researchers), is the best for kids.

The 4 Parenting Styles

First, some definitions of responsiveness and demandingness:

Responsiveness (based on the level of warmth/supportiveness). This is all about how emotionally responsive and attuned a parent is to their children. A parent high in responsiveness is nurturing, affectionate, and accepting. Low-responsive parents are cold, rejecting, and uninvolved.

Demandingness (based on the level of control/expectations). This is about the extent to which parents set rules and expectations and enforce discipline. High-demand parents set high expectations for their children and consistently enforce those expectations. Low-demanding parents place few expectations on their children and rarely enforce the few rules they establish.

These two dimensions can be visualized on an x/y axis, with responsiveness occupying the x-axis and demandingness forming the y-axis.

Let’s unpack each quadrant:

Authoritarian Parenting (Low Responsiveness/High Demand)

The authoritarian parent is low on responsiveness but high on demandingness. This is the “because-I-said-so” parent who expects immediate obedience without explanation. Rules are non-negotiable, consequences are often harsh, and warmth can be in short supply.

Let’s say a kid throws a tantrum because he doesn’t want to stop playing video games to do his homework.

An authoritarian parent’s response to this situation might sound like: “Stop being lazy and do your homework now! We are not going to discuss this! And if I catch you on your Switch before it’s done, you’ll lose it for a month.”

Kids raised with the authoritarian parenting style are more likely to be socially withdrawn, more likely to be anxious or depressed, and might have behavior issues when they hit adolescence. The authoritarian parenting style doesn’t help children develop an internal locus of control. They don’t learn how to govern themselves because they’ve always had a parent to tell them exactly what to do.

Permissive Parenting (High Responsiveness/Low Demand)

The permissive parent flips the script of the authoritarian parent. They’re high on responsiveness but low on demandingness. This parent is warm and nurturing but sets few rules or expectations for their kids. Rules are always negotiable. They avoid confrontation and often treat their child more like a friend than someone they’re responsible for guiding.

To the child who doesn’t want to stop playing video games to do his homework, the permissive parent would say something like, “You don’t feel like doing homework right now? That’s alright, sweetie. Maybe work on it later, okay?”

As might be expected, kids with permissive parents struggle with self-discipline and impulse control, are more likely to be self-centered, and can have a harder time following rules in school or other structured environments.

The children of permissive parents often get the message that their wants should always be accommodated, which doesn’t prepare them well for the real world, where limits and frustrations are inevitable. They tend to flounder in adolescence and young adulthood.

Neglectful Parenting (Low Responsiveness/Low Demand)

Baumrind initially didn’t include neglectful parenting in her typologies. It was added later by child development researcher Eleanor Maccoby.

The neglectful parent is low on both responsiveness and demandingness. This parent offers their kids neither guidance and structure nor emotional support and nurturing. In extreme cases, the neglectful parent may fail to even meet their children’s basic needs.

A neglectful parent doesn’t care if their kid plays video games or does homework. If their child is having a hard time in school, the parent doesn’t even bat an eye. They’re just completely zoned out when it comes to caring for their children.

Not surprisingly, kids raised with this style tend to fare worst of all. Research shows that children who grow up with neglectful parents often develop attachment issues, are at higher risk for behavioral problems, and are more likely to engage in delinquent behavior.

Authoritative Parenting (High Responsiveness/High Demand)

The authoritative parent is high on both responsiveness and demandingness. And according to Baumrind, it’s the parenting style that provides the most benefits to kids.

Authoritative parents blend warmth and firmness. They set clear expectations for their children but explain the reasoning behind them. They’ll consistently enforce the rules, but not rigidly. They’re also warm and responsive to their children’s needs while still expecting an age-appropriate level of maturity from them.

In the video game/homework scenario, the authoritative parent would neither give in and let the kid keep playing video games, nor offer a harsh, “Get off now because I said so!” edict. Instead, they would approach their child with something like, “You know the rules. No video games before homework is finished. If you finish your homework now, you can get back to your Fortnite match. If you need some help with your homework, I’m happy to help.”

Kids raised by authoritative parents tend to have the best outcomes. According to Baumrind and subsequent child development researchers, kids raised with authoritative parents have better emotional regulation, perform better academically, become more self-reliant, and have a higher sense of agency than kids reared with other parenting styles.

Parenting Styles Aren’t Boxes — They’re a Flexible Framework

Like a lot of advice based on psychological research, there’s a tendency to treat parenting styles as rigid categories — as if being the “best” parent means consistently maintaining authoritative mode at all times.

The reality is that parents naturally shift between different styles depending on the situation and their kids’ needs.

If your 5-year-old is about to bolt into traffic, a stern, authoritarian “STOP RIGHT NOW!” works better than a warm, reasoned, authoritative explanation about road safety.

Some kids thrive with more nurturing and fewer demands, while others need firmer boundaries. Even the same child needs different approaches through various developmental stages.

The best parents aren’t parenting-style purists. Instead, they’re the ones who can read their child in the moment and respond effectively, even if that means changing their typical parenting approach.

In my 15 years as a dad, I’ve used authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting styles at different times (I don’t think I’ve ever been neglectful). I’ve had my days when I perfectly balance warmth with clear, firm expectations; I’ve also had days when stress and my kids’ petulance pushed me into authoritarian drill sergeant mode.

While I’m not a perfect dad, having the parenting style framework in the back of my mind as I interact with my kids has helped me aim for the authoritative ideal, while adjusting my approach to family life’s ever-changing dynamics.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Note: The following is an excerpt from The Building of Boyhood: A Manual for Parents, published in 1933.

“Some Reasons Why Some Men Are Successful Fathers”

By Frank H. Cheley

They Believe that being a father is the greatest privilege given any man, and so take their fatherhood seriously.

They Believe that all boys are mostly good, but realize they often get bad handling — especially by fathers.

They Are Convinced that it is worth while to study boy-behavior, as well as the stock market, the baseball score, or the trend of politics. They have become convinced that they need such study in their business of being fathers.

In Addition to Providing their families well with the creature comforts, they give them generously of themselves also — often at great personal inconvenience and cost of time and money, but always counting such cost as among their very best investments.

They Strive Always to Make the Right Thing pleasurable and the wrong thing costly, and thereby teach their boys that character is not only desirable, but that it also pays.

They Have Conceived the Idea that, in addition to being comrades with their boys, they must also serve as instructors, interpreters, and guides — even when they find it a life-sized job.

They Never Try to Bluff their boys — they know it is useless, for as boys themselves they were always shrewd detectors of all hypocrisy, and despised it.

They Recognize that even boys have rights and that they should be respected by elders. For this consideration, the boys are always most grateful.

The Realize Fully That No One, no matter how good his intentions, can satisfactorily interpret the Fatherhood of God to boys as a good father, or make plain to them the real message of their Elder Brother, the Man of Galilee, and so set their best selves to the challenging task of religious education.

They Always Try to see the funny side of every situation, and know that their sense of humor saves many a needless tragedy — for the boy himself — and for his mother.

They Graciously Recognize, nevertheless, the fact that Mother can accomplish certain things with the boys that they cannot — so consistently refuse to unload their own rightful responsibilities onto her.

They Have a Clear Conception of what they are trying to accomplish with the boys, by way of training, so that every day’s activity is used to good advantage as definite construction material.

They Believe That Directed Fun is the most effective antidote for evil thoughts and temptations, so help the boys to keep everlastingly busy and happy at something all the time.

They Are Wise Enough to Know That a Few Tools and a place to work are more of a home attraction than temporary rewards, and more desirable than going to the circus or the movies.

They Are Profoundly Impressed with their duty to the boys as well as their responsibility to society, and, as good citizens, try to earnestly discharge both obligations.

They Abhor Weakness in any form whatsoever and refuse to excuse it. “Victory is to the strong,” is their slogan, whether referring to mental, physical, spiritual, or social life and activity.

They Count It Their Sacred Privilege to give the boys, step by step, the intimate information that they need. Best of all, they themselves practice physical fitness and have no patience with a double standard of morals for anyone.

They Recognize, too, the fact that a boy’s books are his “Silent Comrades,” and so take as much pains in seeing that they are as carefully chosen as are their new clothes, that they fit as well, wear as well, and make the boys as self-respecting.

They Are Real Sports, these fathers, and play the old “Game of Life” for all that is in them, but always according to the rules that every boy understands as “being square.”

They Believe in Team Games as an educator in sportsmanship and social living, and insist that the bleachers are rarely the place for real boys, but rather “Every Boy in the Game” is their watchword.

They Are Friendly With Everybody, rich and poor alike. All the boys and dogs in the neighborhood know them and like to hang around them. Boys often want them for “umps” and to be “IT,” because they have confidence in them and enjoy them.

Their Instructions are always of the positive sort — and backed up by personal demonstration too. They despise “Don’ts,” while “nagging” is strictly against their principles. “Let’s do ‘so and so’” is magic medicine.

They Are Invariably Interested in Dogs and chickens and stamps and stars and electricity. They believe that a boy without a hobby is likely to be no boy at all, and that the making of collections is one of the chief joys of being a boy.

They Believe It Is Worth While to know how to build a campfire, and to cook an appetizing meal over the glowing embers, but when it comes to roasting corn or making flapjacks they endeavor to be “real prize winners.”

They Believe in Boy Gangs and, instead of forbidding their sons the privilege of such experience, they keep themselves worthy to be elected honorary members of the bunch, rewarded with the “password,” the “secret grip,” and even the “whistle.”

They Believe That Cleanliness is next to godliness, and practice it consistently themselves — inside and out, to their mutual benefit.

They Abhor Cheap and Vulgar Things, but keenly appreciate harmony wherever they find it; in tone, in movement, line, or color, and in so far as possible, surround their boys with the best of such influences.

They Study to be Good Listeners and are always given to generous appreciation of real merit in whatever realm it presents itself, whether it be in batting up flies, making good examination grades, the winning of a debate, or the exhibition of real character.

They Maintain a Live Acquaintance with “birds and bugs and things,” and love nothing better than to introduce their boys to such simple secrets of Old Dame Nature as they themselves know, and, through such an acquaintance, lead them on to a finer, larger appreciation of God.

They Constantly Remind Themselves that their sons came, honestly enough, by certain “peculiar traits of character,” which they occasionally exhibit, and endeavor to crowd these traits out by strong cultivation of the more desirable ones, rather than the usual process of “repression.”

They Are Convinced That Vital Character is as contagious as the measles, and never lose an opportunity to “expose” the boys, or themselves, to it.

They Do Not Blame the Boys for falling in love with the girls. They did it themselves once, and are convinced that comradeship with the right sort of girls, under reasonable supervision, is the greatest tonic in the world to right living.

They Do Not Compel Respect of their boys, but rather strive to be eminently worthy of it. Consequently, it never occurs to such boys to even think of their father as “the old man,” or “the old gent,” or “the governor.”

They Believe that boys must actually both earn and spend money in order to learn practical thrift; so take pains to provide them with ample opportunity for both, not forgetting to have them give, too, in keeping with their means.

Their Supply of Stories Is Endless. They seek them like precious jewels, with discrimination, of course; but keep them forever their own by often giving them away to their boy friends.

They Understand Perfectly that a broken will is a greater misfortune than a crippled body to a boy, and that directed will is the greatest of all boy possessions, making possible the only real success, so guide instead of drive.

They Believe That the Practice of brutal thrashing belongs to the savage past; that reason and self-control, if started early and followed consistently, are much more efficacious in producing quality boyhood.

They Believe that it is a far greater thing for a boy to make a life than to make a living, and that what a boy is, is after all his only just claim to greatness — and train accordingly.

They Would Rather Be Known any time as a successful father than as a successful business or professional man, because to be so known is to be measured by much the larger “measuring stick.”

These Are but a Few of the Reasons why many boys, grown tall and straight and true, declare that they wish to be men “just like their dear old dads.”

Is Not That Better by Far than having a whole column in “Who’s Who in America,” a cigar named after you, or even a statue erected to your memory in the City Park?

Such Men Are Real Fathers, true to themselves, true to their son, true to their country and their God.

Are You Such a Man?

The Boys Know!

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

One of my favorite pictures — me, Rick, and Gus fishing in Vermont.

When your kid marries, you not only gain another family member, you gain a new role: father-in-law.

It’s not a role that gets much celebration or attention. If we culturally mention in-laws at all, it tends to be in terms of unwanted meddling.

But a father-in-law can play a positive, supportive role in the life of his son- or daughter-in-law, which enriches their connected families.

I’ve had a great example of this in my own father-in-law, Kate’s dad, Rick Surwilo.

Here are some things I’ve picked up from him in the twenty years we’ve had a father-in-law/son-in-law relationship that I hope to carry forward when I become a FIL someday.

Be an Ally, Not an Adversary

When I asked a friend who recently became a father-in-law what he thinks makes for a good one, the first thing he told me was, “Drop that ‘you’re taking my kid away, and I’m polishing my shotgun sh*t. It’s dumb. D-U-M-B. Dumb. You should see this person as an ally.”

While the trope my friend mentioned is typically focused on the dads of daughters, it’s also applicable to the fathers of boys. Instead of seeing your child’s spouse as a rival or threat, consider them an ally in nurturing your family’s growth and legacy. This perspective shift can dramatically improve your relationship with your child’s husband or wife and contribute to a healthy family dynamic.

I felt nothing but welcome in Kate’s family. I never felt like I was an outsider or intruder. I still remember when I asked Rick for Kate’s hand in marriage; he didn’t make me feel like I was some dubious dude trying to steal his dear daughter away by giving me the third degree. Instead, he warmly made me feel like I was becoming a part of his family.

Offer Wisdom (When Solicited)

What’s nice about getting married is that you gain an additional set of parents from which to get counsel. Even though your child and their spouse are all grown up, they’ll still face times when they’re unsure of what to do and are in need of some guidance. You likely possess knowledge on various aspects of life – from financial management to household maintenance to raising kids — that your son- or daughter-in-law may sometimes want to draw upon.

The key to sharing this wisdom is to only do so when asked. Don’t offer unsolicited advice! Your kid and their spouse have to live their own lives.

And when your advice is asked for, be judicious with it. Don’t tell your child and their spouse that they have to do things a certain way. Just offer your insights and then let them make their own decisions. The goal is to be helpful, not overbearing.

Respect Boundaries

Relatedly, while a good father-in-law is involved with his adult child’s family in a healthy way, he also respects their boundaries and autonomy. Don’t be too enmeshed in their lives. You’ve got to let your kid go and let them live their own life. Allow the couple to establish their own traditions and household dynamics without interfering. I’ve appreciated the way Rick has been supportive of our family without ever being intrusive.

Forge Your Own Bond With Your Child-In-Law

One often overlooked aspect of being a father-in-law is the opportunity to build a unique relationship with your daughter-in-law and especially your son-in-law. Your connection with them doesn’t have to be exclusively mediated through your child. Take initiative in fostering an independent relationship. Suggest activities you can do together – trying out a new restaurant, attending a sporting event, or sharing a hobby.

Over the years, Rick and I have gone to sporting events and restaurants where it’s just me, him, and my brother-in-law. I enjoy chatting with him even when Kate’s not around. We’ve developed our own friendship.

Lend a Helping Hand

One thing I appreciate about Rick is how he’s willing to help me with DIY home maintenance stuff around the house. The guy is super handy! Whenever I’ve had an issue with my home, I go to Rick first since he usually knows how to fix it or who I need to call to fix it. He’s fixed blinds, done paint jobs, and even helped me organize my garage.

Rick picked up the tradition of helping his sons-in-law with home maintenance from his own father-in-law, Kate’s grandfather, George Novak. George would help Rick with jobs around the house when he was newly married. He appreciated it and wanted to do the same for his sons-in-law. He not only enjoys helping out, he likes that it keeps him spry.

I’ve learned a lot from Rick and really appreciate the help. Now I just need to get handier around the house so I can do the same for my future children-in-law. I sometimes wonder if Rick-level handiness will die out with my generation; I hope not.

Be Involved With Your Grandchildren’s Lives

If and when grandchildren enter the picture, be the best darned grandpa you can be.

Rick and my mother-in-law, Sandy, have been deeply engaged in their grandchildren’s lives since the time they entered the world. We actually live in the same neighborhood as them, and Gus and Scout go over their house every day after school to have a snack and watch Jeopardy. Gus will sometimes walk over on a Saturday to watch a football game with Rick, and they’ve built birdhouses and model airplanes together. Sandy and Rick come to our kids’ sports games and have even taken Gus and Scout on trips with them. And while grandmothers are often more at the interactive forefront with their grandkids, while grandfathers reticently retreat to the background, Rick is just as likely to get in the mix and spearhead the fun. It’s been really touching to see how over the moon he is about our kids.

Because of dispositional differences, not every father-in-law is going to desire to have the same level of interactions with his grandkids, but strive to be as involved as you’re comfortable with.

Instead of thinking that becoming a father-in-law means you’re losing a child, think of it as gaining a new family member. That stance towards the relationship and some of the actionable advice above will help you smoothly step into what can be a richly rewarding role.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

As compared to mothers, fathers are sometimes thought of as a secondary, almost superfluous, parent.

But my guest says that fathers actually saved the human race, and continue to do so today.

Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist, a pioneer of fatherhood science, and the author of The Life of Dad. Today on the show, we talk about the role of fathers in human history and how their main role continues to be teaching kids the skills they need to take risks, become independent, and navigate the world beyond their family. We also talk about the physiological changes that happen when a man becomes a father and how dads are just as biologically primed as mothers to parent. In the second half of our conversation, we talk about the experience of being a dad. Anna shares how long it typically takes a man to bond with a baby and transition into the role of fatherhood, how roughhousing is key in building that bond as well as developing your child’s resilience, and how your personality and background will affect your parenting. We end our conversation with the difference in how the relationship between Mom and Dad affects how they parent, and the implications of that for building a strong family.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Article: The Importance of Fathers (According to Science)
• AoM Article: A Man’s Guide to Pregnancy — Getting Ready for the Baby Bomb
• AoM Article: A Man’s Guide to Pregnancy — Your Progeny Enters the World
• AoM Article: New Dad Survival Guide — The Mindset
• AoM Article: New Dad Survival Guide — The Skillset
• AoM Podcast #119: Why Fathers Matter 
• AoM Article: You Don’t Have to Be Your Dad — How to Become Your Family’s Transitional Character

Connect With Anna Machin

• Anna’s website
• Anna on X
• Anna on IG

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Transcript Coming Soon

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Everyone has the general sense that people these days get out of the house and do less face-to-face socializing than they used to. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson recently dove into the data available from the American Time Use Survey to figure out just how large this decline has been.

The answer? Very, very large.

American men are doing a third less face-to-face socializing than they did twenty years ago.

The drop amongst American teenagers is even more staggering: the amount of in-person socializing teens engage in has fallen by almost half since 2003.

Think about that for a second: today’s teenagers get together half as much as they did two decades ago. 

Today’s teens are not only less likely to leave the house to see friends but to do other things like work, date, or play sports, too.

When it comes to the consequences of this trendline for young adults, the discussion typically centers on a rise in loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

But there’s another consequence that may be part of this fallout: fewer young men stepping into independent manhood.

Since the most primitive age of human history, it’s been observed that males seem to have greater difficulty maturing into adulthood than females. Various theories have been put forth as to why this may be so, from the biological (females receive a more significant signal of maturation in the form of the onset of menstruation) to the psychological (boys must not only differentiate themselves physically, but also in terms of identity, from the female body — the maternal womb — of which they were once a part). 

Whatever the cause, boys have typically been given a greater outward nudge towards embracing mature roles and responsibilities. Traditionally, this nudge took the form of rites of passage — a practice common in every age and across every culture in the world.  

From time immemorial, boys have felt the tension between two impulses: One, the desire to stay in the safety and comfort of the domestic sphere, taken care of by their mother and free from difficult and dangerous responsibilities; the other, the desire to take risks, to explore, to win honor, to adventure — to take a place in the world of men. 

The rite of passage, dictated by their community, compelled young men to overcome the inertia of the first impulse to embrace the second.

Today, rites of passage — going to college, traveling the world, participating in a mission trip — are still possible, but the decision to undertake one, rather than being subject to communal forces of shame and honor, is voluntary and individualistic. 

This has been the case for a very long time now. 

But the ratio between the gravitational pull toward one’s childhood orbit and the attraction to the world beyond its borders has never been more lopsided. 

The time teens spend leaving the house and getting together with others really started to dip after 2010, when smartphones began to proliferate. Technology has provided everyone with a simulacrum of the kind of entertainment, conversation, and exploration that formerly could only be accessed by venturing into the outside world. There’s less incentive to leave the house and more enticement to stay at home.

When I graduated from high school, I couldn’t wait to go to college and get out on my own. Anecdotally, the young men I know now are less enthusiastic about this transition. And this hesitancy about striking out on their own could have a big impact on their maturation — on their ability to develop the qualities that make for an autonomous, self-reliant, happy adulthood. 

In staying within the domestic sphere, the childhood orbit, you’re more protected from the judgments, the risks, the slings and arrows of the wider world — the things that catalyze growth, build strength, and develop character. When you conduct all your communication through a digital device, you can carefully script everything you say instead of engaging in the dangerous dance of improvisation. When your parents are always close by to back you up, you’re never forced to figure things out on your own. The less experience you have in being independent, the less capable you become of escaping a life of dependence — a life that’s small, sequestered, and anxious. 

Get Your Son Out of His Bedroom

In reading about the statistics of how much less time young adults are engaging in face-to-face activities and thinking about the effects that may grow out of this cultural sea change, something Jon Tyson talked about in our podcast about “The 5 Shifts of Manhood” kept coming back to me.

When I asked Jon how to help boys step into mature manhood, one of the things he said was:

“You gotta get your son out of his room. You gotta get him out of his room.”

If boys are ever going to live a flourishing, ambitious, adventurous life — a life where they feel comfortable taking risks, relish being independent, and are able to focus less on themselves and genuinely care for others — then they have to be exposed to the energy of ambition, to the excitement of adventure, to the thrill of risks, to the satisfaction of self-efficacy, and to the challenges and joys of other people!

Everyone relishes experiences that happen in the real world more than those that are mediated through a screen; they just have to be given as many opportunities as possible to register and absorb this qualitative difference. 

As a dad (or other male mentor), you’re uniquely suited for the task of increasing the force that attracts a young man to venturing into the outside world. Since ancient times, it’s been recognized that mothers, on average, are more protective and have a harder time letting go of their sons than fathers do. A mother feels a dual impulse with her son; she wants to see him become independent and honorable, but she also wants to keep him close, as a child’s gain in independence simultaneously results in a loss of her maternal identity. Fathers feel a less conflicted pride in their sons growing up. This difference was actually best expressed in one of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time.

All traditional rites of passage included some kind of literal and ritualistic separation of a boy from his mother, as the father took on a greater role in helping him become a man.

Dads today should take an active role in helping expose their sons to the wider world. Invite your son into a bigger life. Take him along on work assignments if possible. Take him to do a service project with you. Take him on fun father/son activities — fishing, camping, going to a ball game. Encourage him to participate in activities that challenge him and get him outside the house, like sports. 

Both Mom and Dad can utilize family vacations as opportunities not only for rest and relaxation, but to broaden their kids’ horizons (daughters need this stuff too, of course). Show your children how big, beautiful, and interesting the world is. While on a trip, try new activities — hiking, skiing, surfing, rock climbing, etc. — that build skill, competence, and a general comfort with being uncomfortable. 

And, while it’s truly weird we’ve arrived in a cultural place where this is needed, parents should encourage their kids to hang out with their friends. If they’re debating whether to stay home or meet up with friends, or deciding whether to skip or attend a school dance, nudge them to go out. It’s normal to worry about the influence of their peers, and you may selfishly want them to hang out with you, but boys need the experience of gallivanting with a gang of buddies. They need to experience the joy of operating independently, outside the orbit of parental supervision. 

Hopefully, the more that boys get a taste of the excitements and satisfactions that can only be found beyond their bedroom walls, the more they’ll feel that an autonomous adulthood, where further such excitements and satisfactions can be had, is something worth striving for. 

For more advice on helping boys move into manhood, listen to our podcast with Jon Tyson:

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

If you’re the dad of an elementary-aged kid, you’ll know that parent-teacher conferences are held a couple of times a year.

Perhaps because of their feeling of routine-ness, parents often kind of sleepwalk through these meetings. If they have a concern, they don’t think beforehand about how to bring it up productively. Or they simply don’t consider what they’d like to talk about until they’re stepping into the classroom, and when the teacher asks, “Do you have any questions for me?” they draw a blank.

I know I’ve typically approached conferences this way, and I’ve wondered what I could be doing to make more of these opportunities to meet with my children’s teachers. To get some tips on this front, I talked to Elle Fowler, an elementary school teacher here in Tulsa. Here’s what she shared.

Why You Should Attend Parent-Teacher Conferences

If you’re a dad with a busy work schedule, it may be tempting to relegate the responsibility of attending parent-teacher conferences to Mom. But you should try to be there whenever possible. 

Elle says the majority of fathers come to PTCs, even when the parents are divorced, and this number has seemed to increase over her 14-year career as dads have gotten more engaged with parenting generally. This is great news, as kids whose fathers are involved in their education do better in school than kids whose dads aren’t. This seems to be particularly true when it comes to the dads of daughters; girls whose fathers are involved with their education thrive more academically while feeling less anxiety about school.

As a dad who’s attended all his kids’ parent-teacher conferences, I’ve found them beneficial in parenting my children. Kids are at school seven hours a day, and what they get up to is kind of a black box. Children show a different side of themselves in the classroom, and a PTC can illuminate what that side is like. These meetings can highlight strengths you never noticed your kid had, deepening your appreciation for them. Or they can disclose a struggle you didn’t fully recognize because you see your kid through the tinted glasses of parental love. Either way, a parent-teacher conference can give you a third-party perspective that can help you get to know your child better and understand what they need to reach their potential. 

General Etiquette for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Be punctual. Respect the teacher’s and other parents’ time by arriving punctually to the conference and leaving on schedule. PTCs are typically scheduled in back-to-back blocks, and if you go over time, then the next conference will start and end late, as will the next. Don’t start a pile-up. If you need more time to talk, schedule a follow-up discussion for another day.

Dress nicely. Dress up a bit when attending a parent-teacher conference. It shows you respect education as a serious endeavor and teaching as a serious profession. You don’t have to wear a suit, but something in the smart-casual category like an Oxford and khakis works. My kids’ school has continued to offer the option of virtual conferences post-pandemic, and I don’t dress as nicely when the PTC takes place over Zoom, but I still try to not look like a slob.

Prepping for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Proper preparation is key to making the most of your parent-teacher conferences. By taking the time to gather relevant information and formulate thoughtful questions, you can ensure that the meeting is productive and addresses your concerns effectively. Here are some steps you can take to prepare for your upcoming conference:

Review your child’s academic work. Before the conference, review your child’s recent assignments, grades, and any feedback on that work the teacher provided. Take note of any areas where your child may be either struggling or excelling. If you have concerns about a specific assignment, write down what the assignment was and the score on it. “If you’re working with a teacher who sees 60+ students, they probably won’t know exactly what assignment you mean when you say something vague like ‘My kid got a bad grade on that test a few weeks ago.’ The more specific, the better,” Elle told me.

Talk with your child. Talk to your child about their experiences in school. If you’re going to a regular check-in conference, Elle recommends asking your kid the following questions:

• What’s something that’s going well at school that I can celebrate with your teacher? 
• Is there anything going on at school that your teacher and I can work on a plan to help you with?

If you’re going in for a conference that’s being scheduled because there is a problem, ask your child how they’re seeing the issue. “Sometimes as parents, we see a problem and think, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a huge problem!’ but the child is not as affected by it,” Elle said. “So that gives us a kind of a recalibration for where we might want to go into that meeting and what our goals might be.”

Also, ask your child what they would change to resolve the problem. They might need to sit somewhere else in class so they’re not distracted as much, or maybe they need to work with another student more often. The more you can nudge your child to develop a solution, the more ownership they’ll feel for it and the more buy-in you’ll get.

Questions to Ask in a Parent-Teacher Conference

After doing a quick review of your kid’s academic work and talking to your child, take some time to develop some questions you want to bring up during your conference with their teacher. Elle recommends asking questions in three categories: academic progress, learning skills, and social-emotional development:

Academic Progress

• Where is my child excelling?
• What are the specific areas where my child may be struggling, and how can we support their improvement?
• Are there any resources or strategies you recommend for helping my child succeed in a subject?

Learning Skills

• Is my child turning things in on time? 
• Do they stay organized?
• When you get assignments, does it look like their best work? 
• When they’ve made a mistake on an assignment, do they revisit those mistakes? 

Social-Emotional Development

• How does my child interact with their peers?
• Does my child have friends?
• Are there any social or emotional challenges my child is facing?
• How does my child handle frustration or setbacks?
• Are there any opportunities for my child to develop their social skills further?

One thing Elle noted on questions about social-emotional development is that if you have questions or concerns about your child being bullied or the like, privacy regulations in many public schools prevent teachers from sharing information about children that aren’t your own.

“As a parent, you can share names and details, and those names and details are really, really helpful for teachers and for principals and administration to hear if you’re reporting things that have happened,” Elle said. “But teachers and administration cannot report back to you what’s happened to that other child. As a teacher, I can say, ‘Our handbook has consequences for these events that you’re welcome to read.’ Which is my hands-are-tied-way of saying, ‘The child is receiving consequences, but I can’t tell you about them because it’s a breach of privacy.’ It’s strange and can be frustrating, but it’s the system that some teachers have to work in.”

Lead With Curiosity, Rather Than Blame

If you have a concern about how your kid is doing in school, it can be tempting to come into the conference with guns blazing. But introducing the issue that way only creates defensiveness on both sides of the table and prevents the discussion from being as fruitful as it could be.

Instead, Elle recommends raising your concern using this framework: “I’m concerned about X. Are you concerned about X?”

Sometimes, something you think is a problem, isn’t a problem, and the above framework gives the teacher the chance to explain that what you’re worried about is actually developmentally appropriate, or something your kid has struggled with, but is making sufficient progress in. 

If your concern is also a concern for your child’s teacher, then the above framework allows them to affirm your concern and segue into what they’re currently doing to address it. If the teacher doesn’t explain what’s being done, follow up with “How can we work together to address this issue?”

Remember that you don’t know much about your kid’s school life, so rather than jumping to conclusions or making assumptions, give the teacher the opportunity to fill you in on needed context. At the same time, because the teacher doesn’t know much about your child’s home life, explain that side of things, and how it may be affecting how your kid shows up at school. 

Instead of focusing on blame or fault, approach the conversation with genuine curiosity and a commitment to exchanging information, fostering a collaborative partnership, and finding solutions. Remember that you and your child’s teacher are on the same team!

Follow-Up

The parent-teacher conference is not the end of the conversation; it’s the beginning of an ongoing partnership between you and the teacher. Elle recommends this parent-teacher conference follow-up:

Email the teacher. If a PTC involved a particularly meaty discussion, send a follow-up email to the teacher, thanking them for their time and summarizing the key points discussed during the conference. This email serves as a record of the agreed-upon action plans and ensures that both you and the teacher are on the same page moving forward.

Communicate with your child. Share the outcomes of the conference with your child. Let them know what was discussed, any action plans that were put in place, and how you will be supporting them. Make sure to pass along the positive things their teacher shared with you!

Schedule additional meetings, if needed. If you feel that further discussions or updates are necessary, don’t hesitate to schedule additional meetings with the teacher. Ongoing communication and collaboration are essential for supporting your child’s educational journey.

Parent-teacher conferences are a time to create a collaborative relationship with your child’s teacher. With a bit of prep, you can get the most out of these meetings and get back to work helping your kiddo be awesome. 

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

When discussing the importance of fathers, the conversation often centers around their impact on sons. Which makes sense. Boys will more explicitly model their lives on their fathers’ example of masculinity and are greatly impacted by the male-to-male mentoring they do or don’t receive. 

But fathers also have an enormous impact on their daughters. 

From academic achievement to physical and mental health, fathers play a significant role in shaping their daughters’ lives and futures. 

Let’s take a look at five areas in which this influence works its effect:

1. Sense of Agency

Agency is the capacity to act in the world according to your desires. Agency is what allows us to shape our lives into what we want them to be. In general, men tend to have a higher sense of agency than women and are more assertive and comfortable with conflict.

Why do men have a higher sense of agency? It’s likely a mixture of biology and socialization. Higher testosterone levels in males contribute to agentic behaviors and impulses, like the drive to explore and strive for status. Layered on top of that is the tendency of cultures to socialize men to be more competitive and independent, and to socialize women to be more cooperative and nurturing.

Having a higher sense of agency comes with a lot of benefits. It helps people stave off anxiety and depression, advance in their career, and develop healthy relationships. It would serve both men and women to have a high sense of agency.

Dads have an outsized influence on their daughters’ sense of agency. Fathers are more likely than mothers to expose their daughters to novel and risky situations. In one study, for example, fathers were more likely than mothers to allow their three- and four-year-old daughters to play on a five-foot-high catwalk or walk across a three-foot-high beam. Dads also are more likely than mothers to encourage their daughters to stand up for themselves and think independently. 

So how can you help your daughter increase her sense of agency? Roughhouse with her for starters. That’s an agency booster. But beyond that, do stuff with your daughter. Take her on errands with you. Work on projects around the house together and teach her how to use your tools. Go on dad-and-daughter adventures where you take small risks. When you experience setbacks in your own life, model what it looks like to be a high-agency individual. All these things can help your daughter to be confident and proactive.

2. Physical Health

Dads have a big influence on their daughter’s health. In one study, it was found that the father’s, not the mother’s, total and percentage body fat was the best predictor of whether or not the couple’s daughter gained weight as she got older. Fathers also have an outsized effect on whether their daughter plays a sport in childhood. It’s dads (in general) who encourage their daughters to take up a sport, not moms. What’s more, it’s the father’s physical activity that has the most influence on a woman’s physical activity in adulthood. 

So what can you do to influence your daughter’s physical health? Again, roughhousing can help here. Encourage your daughter to get involved with sports. Take her on active activities like hiking, biking, kayaking, and so on. Help her develop a physical identity. Most importantly, model good physical health to her by moving regularly and eating right yourself. 

3. Mental Health

There’s been a lot of ink spilled lately about the rise of mental health problems among teenage girls. Dads can play a big role in mitigating mental health problems in their daughters. Strong and warm father-daughter relationships have been shown to stave off depression and anxiety in teenage girls, and this effect carries over into adulthood. The influence a dad has on his daughter’s sense of agency likely plays a significant role in this.

Body image issues are a big source of depression and anxiety among young women. Research suggests that dads dampen body image issues. Daughters with close and warm relationships with their fathers are less likely to have body image issues and more likely to report being happy with their bodies compared to girls who lack this connection with their dads.

Relatedly, teenage girls with a close relationship with their fathers are less likely to experience eating disorders. 

Simply being a caring presence in your daughter’s life can help mitigate the mental health issues facing young women today. Dads can provide a sense of stability and resilience to their children — the feeling that their home is a safe place where they are loved and protected. If you notice that your daughter is struggling emotionally, don’t just leave it to mom to tend to your daughter. Be proactive, lend a listening ear, and provide comfort and support. 

4. Academic Success

Girls who have supportive fathers in their lives tend to thrive more academically compared to girls lacking a supportive dad. Studies show that dads tend to encourage their daughters to push and challenge themselves academically more than moms do. Moreover, when dads regularly help their daughters with their homework, those daughters are less anxious about school. Mom’s help with homework has no significant impact on academic-related anxiety. 

The influence a dad has on a daughter’s academic success carries over into college. Daughters with close relationships with their fathers have higher grade point averages in college than those with poor father-daughter relationships.

Be an involved dad when it comes to your daughter’s schooling. Help her with homework. Attend parent-teacher conferences. Encourage her to push herself and praise her when she excels. 

5. Romantic Relationships

Fathers also influence their daughters’ romantic lives, including dating behaviors, sexual activity, and the quality of their relationships with men. Girls who have secure and supportive relationships with their fathers are are less likely to engage in early sexual activity and have a lower risk of teenage pregnancy. 

What’s more, daughters who have a positive relationship with their fathers are more likely to have emotionally intimate and fulfilling relationships with their boyfriends and future husbands. In fact, fathers generally have a greater impact on their daughters’ relationships with men than mothers do.

Conclusion

Fathers play a crucial role in shaping their daughters’ lives, influencing everything from their sense of agency to their romantic relationships as adults. If you’ve got a daughter, don’t discount your influence on her. Be a strong and loving presence in her life. Spend time with her and initiate meaningful conversations around life, school, and love. Remember, according to the research, you have a big role to play in raising a happy, cool, well-balanced adult.

Source for post: Father-Daughter Relationships: Contemporary Research and Issues by Linda Nielsen

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.