What to do when you "drop the ball."

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Sup? What is up everyone?

Single Dads podcast. Got another episode for you. This is going to be a good one. We're going to be talking about what do you do whenever you drop the ball. But before we jump into that, Scott, you want to tell them yes.

So we are going to start, or I should say we're going to have our first men's support group on Monday. Today is Friday the 15th. So in three days, Monday the 18th, 9:00pm Central Standard Time. Everyone that has downloaded our app will receive a link via email. I've had, I'm not going to go into too much, but had.

There's been an interesting chain of events.

Interesting to say the least. But rather than make excuses, I, I'm just, we're just gonna send you a link. Don't worry about the app. As far as for this first podcast or I'm sorry, for this first weekly men's group, we're just going to send invites out and we're going to let this is A1 the one time everybody can join even if you aren't a donor or member yet. The donation is working and functioning on our app, just FYI. So after this first meeting or support group, I should say we want everyone to see kind of how it's formatted. We want everyone to get some value. We want to introduce listeners to each other and kind of, you know, just go from there. And we, we're really looking forward to meeting a lot of all of you face to face. And it's all going down Monday.

Yeah, I'm really excited for it too. And I'm excited like I'm excited for this one because it's kind of, you know, we're letting everybody in. But if I'm being honest, I'm really excited for whenever it's the donors only because it's going to be so, so much more personal for sure. And a lot more like one on one times. Right. And so I'm super stoked for that. I'm super stoked to hang out with you guys. Make sure you bring, you know, your favorite beverage, whatever it is that you want. Bring a Notebook too, man. So that if something pops up into your head while you're. While we're in that group, like, you write it down, you jot it down. It is actually proven that if you write things down, you remember them and you take them in a lot more. And so bring. Bring that in. Let's be proactive. Let's. Let's learn from each other and grow together and become the dads that, you know, we ultimately want to be.

Yeah. And I know we have some listeners in Australia, in Europe, we tried our best to cover everyone, but it's almost impossible.

Yeah.

So we'll. I don't know, we'll see how this goes and see who shows up and if we have some people, because I know. Well, I'm not gonna get in all the time zones, but yeah, 9 o' clock central standard Time, and hope to see everyone there.

It's gonna be really fun. So.

So what we're gonna get into today, what's the topic again, Frank?

What to do when you drop the ball, man? How do you respond to it? How do you. How do you react? How do you make up for it?

How.

How do you turn it around?

So I was talking to Frank that, you know, we've gotten some feedback from listeners that, you know, it. We get on here and, you know, we're. We're vulnerable and we talk about things that, you know, we're not too proud of. We make mistakes, too. And the purpose of us talking about those is so not only do we learn from them, but you guys can too. And to let you know that it's okay to make mistakes sometimes and maybe make you feel a little bit better when we share. When we make mistakes. And sometimes, a lot of times with co parenting, it has to do with communication. Yeah. Or lack thereof. And you hear me talk about effective communication often. I'm an advocate, a huge advocate of effective communication. And so we were actually in the studio yesterday, and, you know, Frank got a call and he had to bolt right away.

Yep.

Why was that, Frank? Why'd you have to bolt?

So I got a call and it was because nobody had picked up my little girl from school. And. And she had been out of school for like 20 minutes now, 30 minutes. And I was like, what the heck? So first thing I do immediately is obviously I call her mom, because this is my weekend and I have her, obviously we know Friday to Monday. And so first thing I do is I call her and she says, yeah, I texted you this morning telling you that you could pick her up today. Because she doesn't have school tomorrow and she bring her back home Monday. And so I was immediately really aggravated, first of all, because my little girl's been sitting there waiting and that's never ever happened, especially if it's like on my watch. Right. And so then after that, as you can imagine, I got the text message from her which was kind of, I wouldn't say attacking, but let's just say like pushing off, pushing some blame in the direction, you know, which I'm sure we've all experienced and we've all done too. So I had to rush over there. And so what happened was, and I, and I told her this, I said that the text message came in at about 7:18 in the morning. Now if anyone ever sees my phone, the notifications on it, whether it's from clients, whether it's from DMs, whether it's text messages, or whether it's from the other things that I use to operate my business, my notifications stack up really quick as soon as midnight hits. Because that's like when everything starts coming in after you turn off. Because if you do like do not disturb at midnight, it turns off. And so then it goes back to disturb. And so her text message came in, but it got covered in all these other push notifications. So I never even saw it. Now we communicate through an app, and in that app, obviously you can tell when the other person has read the text message. And so I just told her I owned it on my part. I said, hey, look, that's, that's my bad that I did not see it. I was like, I think this is just miscommunication. I'm like. Because at the end of the day, I've had situations where I've messaged her about something and when I've messaged her about it and I've seen that she has not yet seen the text message, I make it a priority to call because I need to confirm, make sure that we're both on the same page type of deal.

Right.

And so that little thing happened, that little exchange, and it kind of started setting, this is interesting. It kind of started setting me off in like a little bit of a ticked off mood. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And, and I'm gonna cut you off for a second because normally I wouldn't even allow you to have said this much because at the end of the day, I think the whole purpose here is to. The first thing I would, I, I was, I asked you today was how, how, how, how, how did your daughter feel when you picked her up? Because that, that was the first thing on my mind. Who cares about the blame game? Who cares why you didn't get the message? Yeah. I mean, when you break it down, bad communication. Yeah. But at the end of the day, if we're going to talk about it, if it's, if it's her day to pick your daughter up. Right. And she sends you a text and leaves it at that, that's not cool. I mean, that's not good enough for me. You have to follow up and confirm. Yeah. To make sure that your daughter's going to get picked up. Especially knowing that Frank doesn't check his text message. I know sometimes because he doesn't respond to me for three days. So I certainly wouldn't soon send him a text and, and think, oh, it'll happen.

Yeah.

But so in your defense. But you know that we're not here to talk about the blame game. It literally it comes down to, you know, your daughter was left at school for a freaking hour by herself with a teacher or two and she'll remember that the rest the rest of her life. Yeah. And you know, and so when I asked Frank this morning, I said, how did you know? How, how did the goose take it? And for those who don't know, who calls his daughter the goose. But he was like, I was worried about you, papa. Yeah, she was worried about him. Yeah. You know how, how heart, heart breaking.

That was to hear?

I mean, I'm like, gosh, yeah, yeah.

And, and that's, I mean, honestly, like that's how it affected her. It affected her to the point because she knows that, you know, like if I say I'm gonna do something and it involves her, I do it.

She doesn't know anything about co parenting issues. All is she, all she knows was her experience is that, hey, I have two parents and neither one of them picked me up. And for a 10 year old, that's like, you know, who, who knows what thoughts go through her head? You know, and that was my biggest concern because like, you have to look at it, you have to empathize and look at it from the perspective of your daughter and.

Yeah, exactly.

What's. What, what is she thinking? You know, she doesn't understand that mom and dad don't communicate effectively. Yeah. You know, or at least didn't in this case.

Yeah, exactly.

And, yeah.

And, and that's where I was like, you know, as soon as she said that she was worried. It can be so easy just to be like, well, your mom this Your mom that.

Right?

Which me. And. Me and her mom hashed. Hashed things out in a civil manner. But there was no reason for me to bring that up with my little girl. And so all I told her, all I told her, I was like. I was like, look, baby, like, you know, there was just a miscommunication. And I know you don't even know what that means. I was like, but at the end of the day, this will never happen again. I was like, it'll never happen again. And then I. That's when I started asking her. I was like, were you scared? Were you this? And then she was like, no, Papa. I was worried. I was worried about you. And I was like, oh, baby. I was like. I was like, that's so sweet of you to be thinking of me in the middle of you experiencing something. But, yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Like, I could have sat and just soaked in it and loathed in it and then just felt bad and felt bad and felt bad and felt bad and felt bad. But at the end of the day, the best thing I could do was listen to what she was experiencing and then reaffirm that it would not happen again. And, you know, and then we just had, like, a little dance party in the truck while we were driving. And so I dropped the ball, you.

Know, like, and hopefully both you and your ex learned.

Well, I mean, you know, if she does. If she. If she doesn't, then I learned a lesson, right? Because I'm. I can only be accountable for myself. And, you guys know, that's what, literally, like, what we preach on the show, right, is you can only be accountable for yourself. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and hope that mom learns something, because that's out of my control. I have certain expectations now based on previous events. And so I would be a fool to put the most incredible expectations on someone that's let me down multiple times, right? And so I know what I've learned. So what I've learned is that what I'm going to do is every single morning, whenever I wake up, if it's close to the days where something is going on with, like, the goose, I'm gonna go to the app and check it. I'm not gonna see if there's a notification. I'm just gonna go directly to the app, check it. Cool. Nothing there. Boom. Hop out. I can do that. When I'm, you know, taking my morning glory time, which is the morning poop, it takes no time at all. So that's that's what I'm gonna do. But it was like, yeah, I mean, I dropped the ball. But at the end of the day, I, I, I talked about it with my little girl in a way where it was like, she needed to know, first of all, that it was not her fault, that she didn't do anything wrong. And she just needed to know that, hey, it's not going to happen again. Like, papa was okay, and it's not going to happen again, and I'm not going to let it happen again. So.

Yeah. And so you feel good about. You don't, like, think that she's concerned or it's gonna affect her in the, like, in any other way, like, and be worried about, I don't know, another scenario?

Like, yeah, she probably will. I mean, it'd be stupid to say, like, oh, she's never gonna worry about anything ever again after this. I mean, she definitely probably will. But I think that's why consistency is key. And I think that's why when this happened, her initial response was, I was worried that something happened to you because she's seen me be consistent this entire time. Right now, this is something that I want us all to catch, okay, is like, if you're doing the right things, 80% of the time you're good, you're good. But if you're like half and half, and you're like 50 of the time you're dropping it, and 50 of the time you're showing up and fit, like, then that's where, that's where I, I think we're creating issues in our kids, like, to not trust us. But I think she knows, like, I can rely on my dad. This is just something that happened. And if she doesn't know that, then guess whose job it is to prove that to her with actions. Mine. And that's the only thing that I can focus on. Because if I just focus on, like, you know, all the bad stuff, then I'm just gonna be worried. I'm gonna be sad. I'm gonna be constantly telling her, like, hey, baby, like, are you sure you're okay? Are you sure you're okay? Are you sure? Being very pushy. And now that she's in the adolescent stage, we, we covered that topic, remember? All she's going to do if I'm pushy like that, she's going to push me away. And so I'm going to create more issues because now I'm operating out of a scarcity mindset instead of an abundance mindset where I've learned the Lesson. I'm going to do my best to make that better, and I'm going to do my best to offer her security in that area. You know what I'm saying?

Yep. And it's funny you bring that up because I. I spent some time with my son, some quality time, about five or six hours of it, which is rare. I don't know if I should go into what as to why, but he, but he got his learner's permit and had to. I. We had this. Long story short, it's booked. You have to. We literally have to travel to get, you know, learns permit. DPS offices right. In the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex are backed up. So we had to travel, oh, I think about an hour and. Hour and a half one way. And I got. I spent hours the night before getting all the documents ready. Check, you know, had the checklist. And we get there and I faked myself out. I had made color copies of his birth certificate and Social Security card and, And I honestly thought they were the originals, but they weren't, so some good copies. So we had to unfortunately leave. But fortunately they said you. Because I made that appointment two months ago. And they, she said, come back at 8:15 in the morning. So we went back home another hour and a half, got up at 6am the next morning, drove back out there. But so. And he did get his learner's permit. Let's go. Yeah, but, so in the car, you know, we had some great conversation and I haven't taken a road trip with him ever, so I haven't really ever been in the car like that long. So we talked about a lot of things, but I actually learned some interesting stuff. And, you know, we talk about like, you know, our, our kids doing things. If, you know, like, you push them, push them to do something they're going to do, you know, they're going to do the opposite. Like, you kind of just have to support them and you're a guide. Like, my son, like, decided he wanted to grow his hair out for a year, let it grow long. And as much as I didn't like it, you know, I said, all right, cool. Do what you want to do, man. Yeah. And he did. And in the car, he's like, I'm gonna cut my hair off for the summer. I was like. He's like, yeah, it's just bothering me. I'm done. He's like, I just wanted to do it to see how it was. You know, I, if, if I, if I kept bothering him, he'd probably keep it long. Oh yeah, it's, you know how kids are, man. But I, I, I, which I brought up a topic and I was like, you know, you know, I, I support you and kind of everything. I don't, I've, I've not forced you to play soccer when you don't want to play soccer and I haven't forced you to do this when you, you know, you know, try golf, try the, you know, I, I just kind of let you do you. And as long as you're honest with me and you know, we, we have, we have a, you know, our, our little honor code. You're honest with me. If you, if you screw up, come talk to me before I find out the, you know, or escalates or whatnot. And because of that, he has been a great kid. I mean, I literally, he's done a couple of stupid things, but, you know, everyone does. And so my point in saying all this is, is that when you support your kid and let them be them and whatever that, whatever that looks like for you, don't, you know, don't, don't give them resistance on, or force them to go left when they want to go right. And I think you're going to find that the long term outcome is going to be way more advantageous for, for you as a parent. And you know, that's, that's just what I wanted to share. I know it's kind of a long story just to make that point. Yeah.

But no, it's, it's really good because, bro, I think it's so true. I'm reading a book and I showed it to Scott the other day. It's, it's called how to do the Work by Nicola Pera. I've talked about it on the show before, but she was talking about parenting styles and how certain parenting styles affect, affect us. And now that we're adults, we can look back and see how it affected us and then we can also see how it's affecting our kids. And I think one of the things that she encourages the most is exactly like what you were just talking about is we're supposed to be guides, not dictators. And I think a lot of the times without even thinking it, we are dictators. Like, you have to do this, you have to do this program. You have to go in this career, you have to like this, you have to like that. When it's like, dude, like I kind of think of like ice cream. It comes in all different, you know, flavors. And our kids, they're all, they're Part of us, but they're a different flavor. Like, my little girl is not obsessed with Jiu Jitsu. Now, is she gonna do Jiu Jitsu? Absolutely. She's going to do Jiu Jitsu until she gets her first belt rank, and then she can choose if she doesn't want to do it anymore. But it's because I'm instilling resilience in her, and I want her to fail consistently and be comfortable with frustration and be comfortable with failure so that when she gets older, it doesn't take her out of it. But that's not, like, something that I'm like, you have to do this, and you will continue to do this. No, I set a goal. At the end of it, I showed her the why on. On why it's important. And she's still 10, so she still has to do what I tell her to do.

Right.

Riley's a little bit different. You know what I mean? Like, he's. He's making his own life now. Pretty much.

Yes, sir.

Yeah. But no, man. And ladies, if you're listening to this, just recognize whenever you drop the ball, like, I mean, just own it. That's what I had to do. I just had to own it. I'm going to drop the ball again. I know I will, because I'm a human, but I'm going to own it again. And the best thing that you can do is just be as consistent as possible for your kids. Because, you know, the fact that my little girl didn't say, I thought you forgot about me says everything to me, because there are kids that say, I thought you forgot about me, and it's probably because they're feeling unseen. So that showed me that my little girl has felt like she's been heard and seen and prioritized.

And that's. That's literally why, like, we were going to talk about something else today, and I brought this up literally.

Yeah.

30 minutes before we came on.

Seems like that's how it always happens.

I know I just said, you know, Frank, I know it's not your proudest dad moment, but I think our listeners like it when we're vulnerable. And. Yeah, it was a vulnerable moment for you. And I appreciate. And I'm sure our listeners appreciate that story being shared. And, you know, I. I think the whole, you know, there's a lot of takeaways there, but, you know, empathizing with your daughter and. And thinking about what. How it's affecting her. Yeah. Is. Is key. And, you know, so when. When you guys do make mistakes, like that make sure that your number one priority is to empathize and put yourself in the shoes of your child or children. And rather than make you know who you know, don't, don't, don't have the blame game and don't argue with your co parent or whatever the scenario may be, just worry about number one, and that is your child.

Yeah.

And first and foremost and foremost, that was the biggest, biggest point I wanted out of that story. And. But real quick, this is totally off topic. I just thought it was kind of funny because I, I learned something when, From Riley, when we were in the car.

Yeah.

He was like, yeah. So there was this fight. He goes, I didn't see it at school. And he goes, this dude, like beat this chick up. What? And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, he, he punched her and then like picked her up and like body slammed her and threw like through. I'm like, what the hell, dude? I'm like. And you know, my immediate reaction was, you know, you do know, like hitting women or even doing anything to you is, is unacceptable. And I mean, I mean, defend yourself if you piss the girl off and put your hands up or something. But you know, don't, don't ever slap her if a spirit. Close, close your fist. And. And I said, you do know that, right? He's like, I, I do, yeah. And he goes, but you know how a lot of people are thinking his age? He goes, you know what I hear a lot of kids say? Equal rights, equal fights.

Oh, wow.

I never heard that before.

Wow, dude.

And that's wild. I don't want to get into the whole. Yeah, that's wild. I just, I, I only wanted to share it because it was something that I learned and it opened my eyes to something. There's stuff going on way different. Way different, way different that he was saying, like kids at his school don't look at the. What he, you know, the fact that a guy beat up a girl, they don't look at it as like, how poisonous it, you know, like, like we see it and how we were raised about that. So times, times are changing. Be like kids now. That's how they think. And that's the only reason I wanted to share it. I didn't. I don't want to get into anything else about that.

I think you shared it for a reason, bro. Because I think this is a good idea. Tell me what you think. I think you need to go home, you need to talk to Riley. And you'd be like, what else do you guys believe and see how it doesn't match up with us? And we can do a whole episode on that because there's people that are listening that their kids are Riley's age. They're in that generation. You know what I'm saying?

Then I encourage them to sit down with their kids and ask them. Yeah. Because that's.

Wow, that's not right.

And that's one of the reasons I wanted to share it, because I, as an. As a parent, I have never heard that.

Yeah.

And I want, you know, that's the kind of stuff, that's the kind of information you learn.

Yeah.

When you spend time with your. With your kid, you know, they start telling you things like, he otherwise probably wouldn't have come home. And, you know, he didn't see the fight. But it all led to. I even went. Even went back in later and said, what. What was that again? How. What do you say? Equal. What? Yeah. He was like, equal rights, equal fights. I was like, wow, jeez.

That just. That should make, like, put an alarm in us even as parents to know, like, we really got to watch our tongue, man. We like, when we're at home, like, if. Because there's so much stuff going on right now, bro, with like the Olympic stuff that's happened with like the transgender. All that stuff going, like. And there's everyone that has an opinion, and whenever you have your opinion and you voice it proudly and out of anger at home, like, what is that portraying? If you haven't forgiven your ex and so you're still hurting, you're projecting hurt onto your kid, what are you going to lead them to, like, start believing? You see what I'm saying? Like, man, we got to really be aware because that's the next generation up and coming.

Nope. So, yeah, talk to your kids, dig for information, find out, like, bring up topics that, you know are. That have to do with different things like that. Because we're not going to get into to those things on this show because it's just. That's a rabbit hole. We're not going to go down. No.

Thank you.

But just the point, as Frank said, I just wanted to. Awareness, right?

Yep.

Awareness.

That's definitely awareness. Let's bring it away. That's an eye opener. Big eye opener. Well, guys, thank you for tuning in Single Dad's podcast today. Hopefully it encouraged you. Hopefully it brought some value to your life. Thanks for hanging out with us and.

Thanks for hanging out with us Monday in advance.

Yes.

Look forward to it. Look for a link if you have downloaded our app, you will get an email because you have. It requires you to register and put your email in. And if you haven't downloaded our app, do so. It's in the app stores. The Single Dads podcast. Thanks for tuning in. See you guys on Monday.