62: Mastermind Parenting Dads

0 (0s):
You’re listening to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode 62, my name’s Randi Rubenstein and welcome to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast where we believe when your thoughts grow the conversations in your home. Slow. Okay. Hi guys. Welcome to today’s conversation. And I just wanted to say that the intention of today’s conversation is to hear about Mastermind Parenting from the male point of view. OK. So I have Jen, I have Erin and I have Scott Rubenstein I know many of my podcast listeners who have been anxiously awaiting meeting Scott Rubenstein the one and only Scott Rubenstein so welcome.

0 (50s):
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome guys. Thanks for being here. Good

1 (53s):
To be

0 (55s):
Okay. So the point I just said to you guys, before we started recording the point of this conversation is for new families that are coming in to the Mastermind and my moms who come to me and say exactly like each, have your wives did, how do I get my husband on board? And, you know, you guys are dif you know, it’s interesting because you guys are different because both of you guys truly have a household where it is a co-parenting situation, both you and your spouses work outside the home.

0 (1m 35s):
And yet when your wives came in, they were the ones listening and learning and, and getting familiar with this new conversation. And you guys weren’t like bought in yet. Like, why do you think that is? Why do you think that, like you didn’t buy in from the get-go

1 (1m 56s):
Yes. Do you want to take that one for sure? Yeah, I can start. Sure. Well, I mean, for, for me personally, it was, you know, starting with the Mastermind and, and you Randi, it wasn’t our, our first foray into seeking assistance with our parenting skills and, well, I mean, one that was a big sale in of itself, you know, to, to seek help. I mean, I think for, for men in general, it’s, it’s a, it’s hard to know. I mean, I think that coming from a household like mine were, you know, dad, dad disciplined when he came home after work, you know, I don’t think, I know, I know he wasn’t reading, you know, Parenting books in going and sticking help.

1 (2m 52s):
So, you know, just getting over that hump was hard, but, you know, getting, getting talked into, getting talked into, coming in and doing the mastermind course, you know, doing the work, you know, it was, it was out of necessity and, and, you know, and I trust my wife a lot. And if she says this is different than the other experiences and the other, the other help that we had, that we saw it in the past, you know, like I took her for her word, but, you know, I was still skeptical at the beginning. Certainly.

0 (3m 32s):
Yeah, no, I remember, I remember when she first came to me and she said she was working for corporate America at that time, she’s now gone on to start our own business, but she, at her company, they had offered a Parenting class at like, what’s in it, like at seven 30 in the morning.

1 (3m 50s):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. Love and logic, which, you know, have bookwork as well as have reading as well as going and you’re, you know, going to a conference room within her company’s office building, which was really nice. I mean, it’s great. I mean, you know, if you’ve got it, if you’ve got a job, you know, of anybody out there that knows what love and logic costs, it’s, it’s not insignificant and for a company to provide it for its employees, it’s pretty special. But, you know, I mean, that’s kind of what it felt like. It felt, you know, it felt like a one size fits all kind of, kind of deal.

1 (4m 32s):
And in that respect, I don’t think that it was any different than, you know, some of the other, some of the other programs that are out there and, and Oh, or, you know, books that you read that you just kind of try to apply to your own specific situation. And then, yeah, there was a teacher in front of the class, but, you know, there were 30 other people in there with us. So, you know, not, not being able to drill down and, or, or even customized the program to you, you know, your own, your own situation at any given time as M I would, I would say I, I didn’t, it was disappointing.

0 (5m 11s):
Well, I think that’s interesting because, you know, in, in Mastermind Parenting like in the membership community, we have, you know, a number of families as well. But I think what you’re speaking to is that even though there’s a bunch of people, it’s still feels like your specific needs are getting met. And like, there’s a lot of access to me and, and us, problem-solving your specific situation. So it’s like, whatever you’ve got going on, we’re going to workshop it and we’re going to apply the tools to it. But it’s not just a one size fits all approach. Yeah. Okay.

0 (5m 51s):
And so, I don’t know, I don’t know how your chime in it over here. And he’s now lived with This and the evolution of recipe, which a couple of years ago, he asked me when he was having to share me with all of the business building ventures. He said, what’s the point of this business? Do you remember when you said it? Like, what’s the point ’cause, what’s the point of it? I don’t understand it. And we have a recipe here that I just feel like if we don’t share it with other people, it feels selfish. And, and at that time you were pretty good about being selfish

2 (6m 33s):
And I can still be a pretty selfish. Okay.

0 (6m 38s):
You were like, okay, well, and like, we’ve got a good thing going on here, but now that you’ve seen, like it’s affecting other families and other families or changing their dynamic in their household, like, don’t you get it now? Right.

2 (6m 51s):
And well, the part that I get is as far as it being relevant to this is just that it doesn’t, in my opinion, doesn’t work for just one Parent to be bought in. It. It really is a team effort. And I learned that even before you started with your deal, when we took a parenting class together years ago, and it wasn’t so much that the content was so amazing. It was just the fact that we both did it together and we were on the same page. And so I definitely recognize that if your teaching it to, to one parent or the other and the other, parents’ not on board, that it’s, it’s not even half as effective as if both parents are doing it.

2 (7m 31s):
Going back to when we took that Parenting class, my choices were a marriage counseling or a parenting class. So it was the parenting class. It has the lesser of two evils, but it very much, this has been very effective in that regard. I’d say I’m like most new parents, we were struggling with just raising our first child and we didn’t get on the same page. And then of course, reading, it took it to a whole nother level and learned a lot of other techniques that we’ve implemented in our family. But, but yeah, just a very much was married. It, it, it served as marriage.

2 (8m 11s):
It served a strength in our marriage

0 (8m 14s):
AE. So Aaron, let’s talk about you because you, you guys were a perfect example of you all are very busy working, couple you’re a lawyer or your wife’s or a dermatologist. She just started her own practice. And she was about to drop out of the Mastermind because she was like, you know, Aaron has been bought in yet. And frankly, I just can’t do this all on myself. And so I recognize how busy you guys were. And so within the Mastermind, sometimes I have some more kind of high touch, like one-on-one experiences in. I said, you know, let me put you guys into a 12 week program where you work directly with me.

0 (8m 57s):
It will be very high touch. And I didn’t even know exactly what I was going to call the program. But once I started seeing you guys getting the results, I’ve named it, Parenting on the same page. And now you’re, you’ve pretty much just completed. Like, you’re, I think we’re in week 11 in that program. So like, what are you in? And let me just say this for the listeners, Erin and I met with Aaron at the end of last week. And he was like, let’s talk about the call, which I’m so happy to do with you next week. But like, I don’t have that all figured out yet. Like I, you know, like, Aaron’s like basically like, am I supposed to get on it? Right. Like, am I supposed to get on?

0 (9m 38s):
And like, app, like, we are the most perfect family in the whole world. We’re doing everything exactly the way, like Randi Free who was a fly on the wall of our home. She would be like, yes, yes. And yes. So Aaron was a little concerned with like, not having the perfectionism thing down, but I would just would love to kinda hear from your perspective on how this has impacted your family and your marriage and kind of where you are.

3 (10m 6s):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think for me, I’ll speak for myself. No, no parent wants to admit that, you know, they can’t handle it on their own or they can’t control their own home and that their home is running smooth or the way it should be. And, you know, the truth was our home was not running smooth. It was a lot of chaos and a lot of issues with our boys and we are both unhappy. And I think some of the resistance for me early on was just maybe, you know, a partly or a big part, mostly ego saying, Hey, we all get this. I mean, you know, we’ll turn around and will get it at some point, but that just wasn’t the case.

3 (10m 49s):
And we had issues and problems that we continued to encounter. And I think what Scott said, right on Pointe, you know, this is not a one person thing and takes a team effort. And I saw the, you know, the effect that it’s having on our home and my wife and me, and it just got to the point said, well, crap, it can’t get any worse. I’ve got, you know, just cost benefit analysis, got everything to gain, nothing to lose. Let’s give it a shot. And so we tried it and we did it together and we’ve been doing it together and I’m no expert. And there are lots of issues that we continue to encounter.

3 (11m 30s):
But what I found is that working together and the recipe is there and you can get your home in order and you can get your kids in your home in a place where you want it to be, but it’s going to take work. I mean, much like working out or dieting or whatever it takes. It takes discipline and, and action, and actually working together. That’s, that’s, what’s happening in our home is we’ve, we’ve kind of bought in and I see that I have seen the effects. I’ve seen what we call wins, right. Will get some wins when you get some of those winds, like getting your kids to bed on time and having that downtime together, then it’s a wonderful thing because it’s good.

3 (12m 15s):
It’s good for the family. It’s good for the, the relationship. And I, and I, I truly believe that not only is our home improving, but the relationship with my wife is getting stronger and stronger. So that’s been the biggest thing. It’s, it’s a it’s work in progress that we’re making that progress. And there’s a plan.

0 (12m 38s):
I totally like they, they were headed, they had a call with me. We did it on my own. We did it in the car. And then they were heading out of town for the weekend, seeing a concert. I won’t name the concert. Cause I’ll let you preserve your masculinity here, but lets just do it that I appreciate it. So let’s just say it was a concert that I was very jealous of and it was a a hundred percent air in being a good has been in, like you guys were in the car, you were heading out on a road trip, your left, the boy’s at home with your brother who just, you know, the uncle, the kid list’s uncle who had just moved to town. Like you have to have your kids in a certain place to be able to a Leave town and leave him with the uncle.

0 (13m 22s):
And you also found that the light and happy and like it was such a high for me to hear you guys heading out of town, just like where you are. It just, I loved it.

3 (13m 33s):
Yeah. And I mean, it goes, it goes back to a, you know, working together and, and we’ve seen progress that we’ve seen progress and we’d had some, we’ve seen definite changes to our home.

0 (13m 46s):
Okay. Okay. So let me, let me switch back to Jed real quick. How do you guys feel like, like this learning the Mastermind method, how do you feel it has changed your kids?

3 (14m 8s):
Well, I mean, I just, I’m not sure how it’s that. I mean, that’s a really great question. I think that I, I don’t think that its changed our kids, but I think that its changed us and the, you know, I think because it’s changed us in and changed the way that we parent it’s just made everything work better. They but they’re, they’re still, I mean I have a five-year-old a four-year-old in about two would be a one-year-old. So I have to constantly remind myself that each one of these kids have different personalities and not to have a lump each one into the same group.

3 (14m 52s):
’cause

1 (14m 53s):
One of the things that I would say helped me with your program and you can probably hear one screaming in the background right now is that you, you, you kind of S you kind of told us that you gave us the, the neurological a definition of where these kids are in their, in their development. And I had never looked at that before, and that really helps to understand neurologically where your kid is and the development really helps ’cause it is not, not, it, it just gives you a frame of reference of, of what they understand and what they don’t understand it.

1 (15m 42s):
And, you know, the, the other thing that was really valuable is that you gave us permission to fail, you know, all of the other, all of the other programs out of the other books, all of the, the Supernanny that we hired for $300 and in an hour to come over and just talk with us after she observed our kids’ for 15 minutes, like we thought that was going to work. We did, we did. We thought it was going to work, but they never gave us. They never gave us permission to fail, which we still fail. We still fail in it in the moment at any given moment because of this situation.

1 (16m 22s):
But it it’s it’s okay. We have the tools because we’ve learned the tools, but

0 (16m 31s):
Yeah, you said the pervy thing. It’s like, if this is not, were not changing our kids, we are changing us. Like, this is way more Parent than Parenting. But as a result of, of course your kids are going to have a different trajectory in life and it Scott just goes, I don’t think I get permission to fail. It doesn’t matter. It is. Is that it’s like, there is no failing. It’s just trying again and trying again and trying again. Right, right. Right. Also accepting like work, humans, human, being a human as a messy business. And there is no perfection. Like I say, that connection, not perfection. And so when you say there’s no fail, like when I look over at Scott and I’m in this for 21 years, right?

0 (17m 16s):
Like we’ve been married 23 years. And so for 20 years I’ve been researching, developing, studying teaching. And I still will look over at least on a weekly basis. And the daily, maybe the daily, there is an iPad at my kitchen table with surfing on, in the background when we have a clear, no technology role in our health and it’s in table and I’m not sitting there like reprimanding him at once the kids come and somebody him out on it, or I’ll give them a look, he’ll put it away. But like your, you fail all the time. I just don’t point it out.

0 (17m 58s):
And I don’t have to make you wrong. For choosing to continue to watch surfing from your own table. Right. Like its not my job to be your parents. It’s just my job as a parent with you. Yep. So, okay. Well I do you want to add,

2 (18m 16s):
I mean the only thing I’d add to that and just that, I mean, I don’t like to compare my kids to dogs, but that’s not a lot like dog training and that you get the best version of your kids when you, you know, utilize some tools that Randi teachers. Because at the end of the day they are very teachable skills. It’s not, they are not, it’s not, it’s not, it doesn’t just come to you a second nature of Parenting you know, there’s like a, I think Garren was saying, or dad was saying that it was Jed. There was no there’s no P or your dad didn’t my dad didn’t have a Parenting manual. You just kinda did what came naturally to him. And it helps to have some tools that are teachable skills.

2 (18m 59s):
It’s just like a, you know, I always say that about baseball that, you know, baseball is a very teachable sport that, you know, and, and the more practice you have, the better you get it. And I feel like Parenting is the same way you can try and just get out there and swing the bat and pitch. But if you’re taught and you and you, and you have somebody coaching you, you’re, you’re going to be better at it. And, and, and your dog’s will be a better term

0 (19m 27s):
And you can bond with your kids when you walk your dog. So lets just bringing it all back together. And I think the other thing is, is I now that we have teenage kids, we have 21 year old, almost 18 year old and a 13 year old, I will also say at which, you know, Scott is good to have here because he puts it really in regular people language. I’m like our kids, this is the emotional intelligence.

2 (19m 56s):
Oh yeah. You just end up with better. You have the best version of your kids. Cause yeah, I guess you just don’t do as much damage.

0 (20m 6s):
They just, you know what, they just honestly like, I mean there are so many times every week where we live, we were just out of town. We were just out of town for the weekend and we had our two younger kids in some of their friends with us, we are at a ranch. And like there’s just so many times where we look at each other and we like literally are shaking our head like kind and good human beings and fund to be with like the more you do this work, the more enjoyable your kids are. And then the more you enjoy them. And so it’s just like this cycle, you know, it’s like the dominoes fall and you just sit it up with enjoyable kids.

0 (20m 46s):
And I think it makes your family stronger because you’re constantly looking at each other at the stage where we are and it’s not quite as much work. And your saying like, like you’re just in awe of these little people that are growing up into their own, you know, their own people. And I think it’s just, it’s just a really fun thing to get to witness that you get to reap the benefits later. Well raising human’s like raising really good, healthy people. It just feels good. It just feels good. If you have missed out on learning and being a part of this mastermind Parenting tribe, like how do you feel like your life would be different in the long run?

0 (21m 30s):
Like in the long run? How is your life going to be improved by learning Mastermind Parenting okay. Aaron go.

3 (21m 41s):
Yeah. I, you know, I would say the way I would answer that Randi is, you know, the way that I had been doing it up to that point was getting the short-term fix. Right. And using methods that worked right. And you know, they are not right because you see, even though you might get the result by yelling or doing something that you, you know, you shouldn’t do it, doesn’t fix the problem. It’s like a bandaid. Right. And so it’s all about the longterm. I mean, this, this is why we’re doing this because of the long term. Scott just said you reap the benefits, but who doesn’t want to have good kids who doesn’t want to have kids that can go out and fly on their own.

3 (22m 25s):
And you know, as parents, isn’t it that our obligation to put them in a position of success, right? Their kids, we want to do everything. We can to have a steady home and a fruitful home in a home that thrives and, and, and is a loving home. And so that’s the longterm, that’s what you try to aspire to do. And I think, you know, if we had not been exposed to your Mastermind and your techniques and your methods, we’ve missed out on that, ’cause we would continue to just do the short term fix and the band-aid and, and that’s, as we know, I’m not the recipe for success.

3 (23m 8s):
So I would say to anyone, if you, if you’re tired and you know, and have the same reoccurring issues in behavior, you’d have everything to gain, nothing to lose. And you know, who wouldn’t want to have a better relationship with their wife and a more loving and PRODUCTIVE home. So that’s the longterm for me. And I’m sure these guys feel the same way.

0 (23m 36s):
Thanks, Aaron. Jed, is there anything you want to add?

3 (23m 42s):
Yeah. I mean, I echo one, a hundred percent what Erin says

1 (23m 46s):
And what Aaron said would, I would say is, you know, if it happens so frequently to both me and Erica, we would get home, both being, working professionals. We would get home with this idea of the way that evening was supposed to go. And it wouldn’t go that way. And after the kids were to bed, we were exhausted from our day, but we were twice as exhausted from dealing with that chaos that just took place in the hour and a half or two hours between getting home and putting our kids to bed.

1 (24m 29s):
And we look, we still have, we still have an occasional evening like that, of course, but much more often than that, we have really good nights and good mornings. And for working parents that, you know, on a weekly basis, don’t really spend only spend that amount of time with their kids, you know, having the tools to make those, those times, which are so precious and more peaceful is a, it makes all the difference in the world.

0 (25m 9s):
Hmm. That’s such a good point. I love that. Okay. We’re ending on that note. You guys thank you so much. I think this is going to help so many of the Dads and the families and the mom kind of sell the Dads on why this work is so important. And why is it truly will change your life and, and change your kid’s life and change your marriage? I mean, I think there are so many marriages that end in divorce because of miscommunication because of constant tension in a household and fighting over the kids and, and all of the things that I think Mastermind Parenting helps with.

0 (25m 50s):
So I love having it all on a tribe and I appreciate you guys spreading the word.

1 (25m 55s):
Oh, thank you very much. Like to see your day. Thanks. Bye.

0 (26m 4s):
Have you read my book? The Parent gap. Oh, have you listened to my book for the Parent gap? I doubt you’ve listened because my publisher hasn’t released it yet on audible. However, I had the audio version of a parent gaff that I would love to send to you. You can download it at Mastermind parenting.com For slash book that’s Mastermind Parenting dot com For slash book for your free audio version of the Parent gap. You’re welcome. Bye.