How to be there for your kid when you aren't physically there.

Hey, you're listening to the Single Dads podcast. A podcast for single dads by single dads. In this podcast, you're going to be encouraged and hopefully given some practical tools to be able to become the parent that you've always wanted to be and that you know you can be. Hopefully, this podcast encourages you. Make sure that you download the Single Dads podcast app to join our community. Hope you enjoy the show.

What's up, everybody? I am very happy to be back. Covid free.

Yeah, Scott had Covid. He had it bad too.

Apparently, man, it sucked. But let's not harp on that. I'm back, I'm healthy. And we will be having the support group tonight. Monday, 9 o' clock central standard time. Be there whether you like it or not.

Man. Excited about our subject today. Hopefully you guys are enjoying these two episodes a week. I know last week we only did one. That's because Scott. But that's okay. It's not his fault. It's Kova's fault, bro. It's your fault. It's not your fault. Covid's fault. But. But today I'm excited about this episode. We're going to be talking about how to be there for your kid when you're not there for your kid.

How to be there for him when you can't physically be there. Yeah, I guess is a more spot on. Way to put it, right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because it comes up. It comes up quite a bit, honestly. And maybe you're listening to this right now and your situation is in a situation where you get to see your kid, you know, twice a week and then every other weekend. Like, like me. Maybe it's like some other people that I know where you're actually in a complet. Different state or for some people in a different country for. For this season in your life. And those feelings of just, man, I'm failing like a dad. I'm not being able to show up, like, my kid's gonna forget me. I'm. All these things start to creep in because, man, you're just not close.

There's just countless things that can creep into your head when, you know, maybe you get used to a summer or half a summer with your. With your child or children or, you know, your ex has been away or whatever the. You know, there's just countless, countless scenarios we can come up with. But yeah, what, what about the times when, you know, I know there's a lot of people in the support group who, who aren't able to. To be with their kids. And, uh, one comes to mind who. Who brought up a really cool idea.

Yeah.

And I'm sure he doesn't mind me saying his name. Tyler, who actually started writing letters to. To his son. And, you know, it's like one of those things. It's for him. And I know a handful of people actually started doing it as well.

I started doing it, bro.

You're one of them.

I started doing it whenever my little girl's not with me. I write to her. All the fun things I'm thinking about her.

It's. It's for some, maybe therapeutic at the time. It doesn't have that. That effect, that, or. Or maybe a instantaneous resolution. It's more of a macro. Yeah. Resolution. But there will come a time where, when those letters make all the difference in the world that demonstrate, hey, my dad was being a dad. He wasn't there. And when they're able to understand. And those letters are going to be gold.

Exactly.

And there's. I guess that's kind of the premise. And we want to talk about some other ways that you can be there for your.

Your.

Your child or children when you're not physically able to be there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And. And one of them. I know. I know this single dad, and he's a beast for this man. I know not a lot of people know him, but I'm gonna say his name anyways. This boy, his name's Johnny. This man, man's incredible, incredible, incredible dude. And he's in. He's in a different state from. From his kids, man. And I know that he was really, really struggling with feeling like, man, I'm just. I'm not doing my job as a dad because I'm not there, and just feeling, like, left out and like, he's missing out on all these different things. And then the next thing you know, he just feels so extremely, like, fulfilled. And it's not for any other reason than the simple fact that he showed up and he handled what he could handle, what was in his control, which was that school was starting. So he ordered all of the school supplies via Amazon to get delivered, obviously, over there back home. And he just felt so good because of it.

Did he. Did he communicate with mom on that?

I think so. I think so. I think so.

Yeah. I did, too.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think double supplies, but, yeah, either way, what a. What a phenomenal idea.

Yeah. Just being far away but still, like, fulfilling, like, your duties as a parent. And, bro, we've talked about this on the show before, and if you're listening and you've been hearing for any amount of time, then you know that I've, I've talked about this pretty heavily where, where like confidence and self esteem, it comes from no other way than the illusion of control. You feel like you have some sort of control, which is why you feel more confident and your self esteem rises in a certain situation. And that's all that happened for my boy Johnny in that moment. In that moment, he showed up with what he could control. And all he did think about it, all he did was add to Cart Buy now is really what he did. But it went so much deeper than that.

Absolutely. It it to some. Okay, he pushed a couple of buttons. Big deal. No, so much bigger than that. He had a thought. Hey, how. What, what could I do that I can't do because I'm not physically there? Well, thanks to good old technology and Paul D. Bezos. Yeah, guess what?

You can do it. You can still be there. You can still be there. And here's an idea that, that I gave him also something that I was like, man, maybe you should try this. This might be fun. And, and this idea is really, really, really cool. I told him that he should have a Zoom date with his, with his little girls.

Such a good idea.

And that he should doordash their favorite meal to them so that it gets there at the time that they're going to have like their Zoom. So then they have a, a dinner date over Zoom where they get to have their favorite meal and all those things like, and you're not even there.

Actually see them enjoy it.

Yes.

That's even cooler, you know.

Yes, exactly.

One thing to like, you know, have whatever scent, like food or a treat, but to be able to be on a Zoom call and, and watch them and be there as they experience it and enjoy it, that's, that's just super cool. And it's just, you know, Frank and I were downstairs having a coffee and we were just talking about like, you know, what, what are some things that we can, we can talk about that, that really just open up, opens up your mind to things that you can do, whether you do exactly what we just said or you get your creative juices flowing and think outside the box.

Yes.

That's our whole goal here is, is to kind of, you know, get you thinking like, you know what in your situation. Because again, there's limitless, countless scenarios that maybe we haven't even thought of that, that you're dealing with. What can you do to be there without being there?

Yes. That's such a good question to entertain because that's going to give you solutions, man. Like, we've all heard of so many, you know, men and, and moms that feel like they're just failing, and it's just because their attention is always on what they can't control. Like, for example, Johnny, in that situation, he cannot control that he's in a different state. And his whole attention was just going to the fact that I'm. I'm in a different state. I'm in a different state. I'm in a different state. So he just feels like he's failing as a father, like he's going to be forgotten, like he's missing out all those things. But as soon as he changed his focus and started asking a different question. In other words, how can I still show up as a dad right now?

Right.

School's about to start. How can I still show up as a dad? Boom. You know what? I'll take care of all the school supplies from over here. From over here.

And somebody, I won't say their name because they're kind of new to the community, but they wrote in. And we went back and forth via email a few times. And one of his questions was, how can I. Or he asked me if I could recommend a book on self confidence. And, you know, there's a ton of books. I did not recommend a specific book. I said, hey, maybe you can get on YouTube and follow certain people. I sent him a link to a specific person and said, hey, maybe this guy will work for you. Maybe not, but to you, this is one way. And we never even got into, like, what areas of self confidence you're struggling with, but doesn't matter if it has anything to do with, you know, being a single dad, which I hate to assume, but I'm going to, because that's what we.

And that's talking about why you wrote us.

Yeah. So do something like, you know what we're talking about. Start thinking of positive things you can do as opposed to focusing on woe is me, or damn, I suck at this, or I lack confidence in this. And it's really just identifying what areas you do lack confidence and what can you do to build that confidence. And if it's something for your kid. Yeah, Children, then, you know, there's a damn good start right there.

Yeah, bro. Those negative emotions, those negative thoughts, like, I get so many, so many messages from people are like, I just want the thoughts to stop. I'm like, well, you're going to have to die. The only way that's going to happen. They never go away. But they can be treated as an alert. If it's like, for example, if you have the thought of, man, like, I just really suck at this. Use that as an alert. Well, then what am I good at? And take it. You take that negative thought and you turn it into a potential solution. Man, I'm so far away from my kids. I'm not even close to them right now. I'm literally in a different state. Well, how can I show up even from a different state? You didn't eliminate the thought, but you used it to literally fuel you into a solution. Is the same thing here. And it works in every area. I've helped people that like, literally were insecure because of their body weight with this exact same model. Be super secure and super confident in like less than seven days or get Covid. Get Covid. You'll lose weight real quick. But it's all the illusion of control and it's all the questions that we ask. That's it. That's really it. So if you're. If you're struggling with self esteem and confidence and if you feel like, specifically as a parent. So we go back to this episode, right? To like, in regards to this episode, if you feel like you're not doing enough, if you feel like, man, this is just out of my control, just see what you can do in that situation. Regardless, get as creative as you can be. And as soon as you start moving on it, I'm telling you, you're gonna start feeling better because you're executing.

Identify what you are in control of.

Yeah.

And so good. Put that to work. Right?

Yeah.

And like, I'm sorry, was it Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny on the spot? I mean, what a cool idea. Yeah. To. Hey, I'm gonna. I'm gonna cover the school supplies from dad from another state.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

Yeah.

And how old is his daughter?

He has a couple. I think one of them is like 13.

I guess it's not really that relevant, but because at the end of the day, you know, they recognize it came from dad. Dad was thinking about me. That's cool.

And he's doing a cool thing with like an app in your phone. It's called Slack. It's a communications app that I use. And he's literally creating a group specifically for him and his kids so that they can like, be able. He's creating a fun environment where communication isn't just texting now it's kind of.

Like a Google chat room or.

Yeah.

You can use. There's so many resources out there that you can hop on and do your thing. But, yeah, Slack's one of them. Google Chat, Zoom. Whatever, dude.

I even.

I even said. I was like, bro, what you could do on these Zoom dates, you can challenge them to Game Pigeon on your iPhone. You know, Game Pigeon, where you can play with them live while you're on Zoom. And you get to laugh together. You get to talk crap together. Like, all that stuff. Like, there's so much that we can do that we overlook whenever we blind ourselves by focusing on the one thing that's completely out of our control. Right.

And the whole cliche and to kind of wrap things up. It's like, focus and be thankful for what you have.

Yeah.

What you can do as opposed to focusing on what you can't. And guess what happens? Things start happening in a positive way.

Life feels so much better. Life just feels so much better, man. For real.

So I.

Right now, if you're struggling with that, like, I really hope that that encourages you. I hope you start asking different questions. I hope you start challenging yourself in a positive manner to where like, man, how can I turn this around? How can I do something in this situation, in the middle of this situation? Because I'm telling you, I'm telling you. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, you have way more control than you think you do. You got way more options than you think you do.

But. And, guys, that's. Ultimately the takeaway here is. Is just be original. Think about things that. Our whole. Our whole goal with this episode is to get you to open your minds up and think about things that you haven't thought of that you could do, that you have, that you haven't, that can make your relationship that much better, even though you're not physically there.

Yep. That's so good. That's so good. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Make sure that you guys listen to this next episode. It's gonna be really, really good, too. And I think it's gonna go hand in hand as well.

And the one after that, and the one after that. Have a good day, guys.