Episode 11 — Balancing Time

[admin 330]

Singer-songwriter, fellow podcaster, and father Grant-Lee Phillips takes a break from interviewing musicians on Shortwave to assist Jeff as a co-host on today’s Love, Dad! Jeff discusses feeling disconnected to his daughter, having difficulty factoring in some time for his health, and ways to pare down anxiety. Grant-Lee talks about transitioning his daughter from co-sleeping to her own bedroom, his biggest fear as a dad, not trusting the Supernanny, and giving his daughter a bit of positive reinforcement by experimenting with potty presents. Plus, we hear Grant-Lee’s song to his daughter entitled “Violet.”

[jughead 189]

Thanks for the shout out Jeff! I truly love this podcast and its fun to listen to you go through the same things that I have gone through twice now. There were so many different topics that you covered during this episode that I could probably write a whole essay here responding to them so I'll try to keep this as short as possible

 

sleeping - my advice is to get the child out of your room as soon as possible and into their own room even though she is still in a crib. I know inyour situation that is hard having only on bedroom but that is the ideal way to handle it. Since I've been though this twice now I would say that as your daughter gets closer to 10-12 months its better to let her fall asleep on her own rather than rock her to sleep. I learned this the hard way because I did not do this with my oldest and now that she is 3 1/2 it takes more time to get her to go to sleep. With the 1 year old, we started putting her in her crib, turning the light off, and closing the door and leaving. It may sound harsh, but after a couple of days you will see that she will go right to sleep. The first couple days are tough though with the crying but she will slowly cry less and less until no more crying at all.

 

Disconnected - The first year of fatherhood is tough concerning this issue. There will be times where she will totally engage with you and there will be times when she won't. It has nothing to do with actions you have taken nor anything that you have done. She will naturally be more connected to the mother for obvious reasons. Don't let this get you discouraged. You will see, once she starts getting closer to a year you will start to notice that she will go back and forth between you and your wife for attention and you will learn to not take it personally. She has no concept of how long you are working or how long you are not there. Her mind just says, "that is a famailar face or object" and she will act accordingly.

 

I think with the first child you have so much fear that certain things you may do frighten or scare the child, but you have to understand that their mind isn't able to comprehend those things until they get closer to about 1 1/2 years old. My advice is that whatever you do be consistent, especially between what you and your wife choose as actions for the child. If you don't they will learn to manipulate that dynamic and that is a problem to which I know to much about.

 

Thats enough from me, great episode guys!

[SeanDunlap 0]

100 sows and bucks... yet, you still wouldn't have any doe...

[jeffullrich 652]

Thanks Barry, that's very helpful!

 

I screwed up the joke, it should have been male deer, not female deer. I hope Dave comes back soon!

[kidkinetik 6]

Thanks so much for this podcast, Jeff. I'm an expectant dad (February 13th!) and you guys have helped ease my mind quite a bit! It's so great to hear that you guys seem to deal with all of the issues I'm concerned with. As a performer/corporate drone/student, your talks on time management are immensely helpful.

 

One of the things you touched on this episode that rings true with me was when you talked about fitness. I've struggled with my weight for many years and I always said "I'll be sure to take care of this before I have kids." Well here I am less then 3 months until that grand theoretical becomes reality, and I'm still eating Taco Bell for lunch every day. I'd love to hear you guys talk a bit more about health and how you manage, or would like to manage that aspect of fatherhood. Like Jeff said, if we're not around all this is for nothing.

 

So thanks again for doing this podcast. It is something I look forward to every week and have even turned my wife onto. "Why aren't mom podcasts this fun?" she asked me last week while we were listening to you last week. Keep up the good work friends.

[Lukas Holmes 2287]

Another great one. Thanks for mentioning my name....I think? Best kept secret on the internet. I think that a lot of the reason you don't have more listeners to this is that men like us may have come in a bit late on podcasting and just not understand it. I had an idea recently to take your first episode and burn it to CD with instructions on how to download it on iTunes or listen to it on the website, printed with the CD. I'll let you know if it turns on any of the dads I give it to.

 

As for the sleeping thing, couldn't agree more with Barry. We did the cosleeper for our first kiddo (three now) and did not for the second (two in a week). No difference in personality, no difference in behavior. We're very lucky though because they are sisters and very close and now share a room, so once we did start seeing fear of being alone at night, we just put them together and zero problems after that.

 

One thing I wanted to jump on was your (Jeff's) point about wishing he could give voice mail without having a conversation. (If only there was some technology that allowed for Jeff to record his voice and send it to people...if only he had access to something like that...) I wonder how much our society is breaking down because of a desire to communicate at, and not communicate with. Be careful with this thought process because it translates to your communication with Arden (right?). We fall into a pattern of just assuming/knowing what we are saying is correct and easily understood by others and that THEY are the problem if they don't get it on the first shot. Having actual conversations allow for us to get that back and forth that the other person needs for clarity and that we need just to stay human.

 

Finally, this is for everyone on the forum, anybody have any good websites out there they look to for dad advice? I've been looking for dad's groups here in Denver to try and meet up with other dads, without success. Curious if anyone knows of anything like that. I can bring my Love,Dad CD's with me!!! Like a lunatic!!!

[jeffullrich 652]

 

One thing I wanted to jump on was your (Jeff's) point about wishing he could give voice mail without having a conversation. (If only there was some technology that allowed for Jeff to record his voice and send it to people...if only he had access to something like that...) I wonder how much our society is breaking down because of a desire to communicate at, and not communicate with. Be careful with this thought process because it translates to your communication with Arden (right?). We fall into a pattern of just assuming/knowing what we are saying is correct and easily understood by others and that THEY are the problem if they don't get it on the first shot. Having actual conversations allow for us to get that back and forth that the other person needs for clarity and that we need just to stay human.

 

 

Hi Lukas! I actually agree with you completely. I guess my point wasn't very well made. I find that texts and emails are not "enough" a lot of the time when it comes to being clearly understood. So I was saying instead of sending an email, it would be great to send a voice message. Of course, actually talking in always preferred, but since that isn't always an option, it would be wonderful to improve the one-way communication. Engingeer Cody showed me an app after the show (Voxer) that let's you do exactly what I was talking about.

[Justindan 1]

Hey Guys,

 

Just wanted to let you know that this podcast is coming crazily close to being my favorite Earwolf show. I'm a 25 year old gay guy who worked at Chuck E. Cheese's in Florida for three years through high school and college, all the while cementing a deep hatred of all things under the age of 12. That was about five years ago, but having grown a little and listening to (oddly enough) a lot of Louis CK and your guys' show, I've been thinking more and more that maybe I might want to have a kid someday. Despite all the obvious hardships to be had, I've been feeling like it might actually be much more fulfilling than the soul crushing and exhausting scenario I've envisioned. I was wondering, before you became dads, what were your feelings on fatherhood, and how have those feelings evolved or stayed the same since then? Awesome show!

 

-Justin

[jeffullrich 652]

Hey Guys,

 

Just wanted to let you know that this podcast is coming crazily close to being my favorite Earwolf show. I'm a 25 year old gay guy who worked at Chuck E. Cheese's in Florida for three years through high school and college, all the while cementing a deep hatred of all things under the age of 12. That was about five years ago, but having grown a little and listening to (oddly enough) a lot of Louis CK and your guys' show, I've been thinking more and more that maybe I might want to have a kid someday. Despite all the obvious hardships to be had, I've been feeling like it might actually be much more fulfilling than the soul crushing and exhausting scenario I've envisioned. I was wondering, before you became dads, what were your feelings on fatherhood, and how have those feelings evolved or stayed the same since then? Awesome show!

 

-Justin

Thanks for the kind words Justin! We should discuss this on the show...so I won't say much here, but there is a lot to discuss on the subject. And I would certainly recommend becoming a father. I used to think people with kids just wanted company, but that was a narrow and stupid way to think. It really is great.

[BenjaminNimmons 1]

Jeff, you want a way to send voice messages instead of bonafide voicemails - it exists and it's really easy, and very useful to get a point across instead of indulging an email or text exchange.

 

Your iPhone has an application called Voice Memo, comes stock, and you can use it to email, MMS, or iMessage a voice memo. That's it. Use it, it's super.