Important Conversations to Have With Your Son

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Go to FocusOnTheFamily.com slash about slash careers to learn more about these and other job opportunities here at Focus. He literally grabbed me and he hugged me and it was probably one of the greatest I mean, it was one of the best 60 seconds of my 65 year old life. Well, that's Steve Graves sharing about the important role of a dad in his child's life. And Steve is with us today on Focus on the Family.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller and we're going to hear some great advice from Steve about how to intentionally invest in your son and really equip him for adulthood. You know, John, I haven't met anyone who really regrets spending that intentional time with their children.

I mean, that's a healthy parent, right? You want to spend that kind of time with your kids. But I know many parents who wish they had been more intentional about spending that time. I think of that with my boys. One of the things I didn't do well now in retrospect, I mean, Trent's out of the home, Troy just graduated, you know, so, but spending individual time with them. Because I had two boys, we just did everything together as guys, right? Whatever we did.

And I think that was a shortcoming. I should have spent a little more time with each one of them individually. And today we're going to talk about how to do that balance, how to work as a good father to develop that relationship. And deposit into their souls the things, particularly your sons, but this will apply to daughters as well. But what your sons need from a dad.

Yeah, there's some great principles for every dad. So lean in and hear from Steve. He and his wife Karen have three adult children and he works in the corporate world advising business owners and entrepreneurs. And Steve speaks and writes about faith and work and has a book called 41 Deposits, Crucial Conversations for Fathers and Sons. And we'll encourage you to get your copy.

Just stop by the episode notes for the link or call 800 the letter A in the word family. Steve, welcome to Focus on the Family. Hey, thanks, Jim. John, good to be here.

It's good to have you. I love this topic being a father of two boys. I mean, whenever we're talking about being a dad of sons, it excites me. And like I said, I think these applications will work for daughters as well. There's some differences. But generally, what we're going to talk about today is how to be a good dad.

Right? Yes, absolutely. And they do apply to women as well. You have three children, you have two daughters and a son. And I think they're grown now, right?

Yeah, they are. They're all they're actually, we went it's really funny, we went from having no married children to all married children in two years, three weddings, you know, everybody got married. And then we just had our first grandchild not too long ago. So we've we've moved fully into the parenting of adult children quickly.

That sounds like warp speed. It is. We need help.

We need help. Yeah. So you've experienced it all rather quickly.

Yes. So, you know, being that kind of dad, that intentional dad, what was raising your kids like? What How would you describe yourself in that regard? Well, you know, it's really interesting. You know, I'm an intentional person by nature, my jobs working with CEOs, I advise CEOs is what I do every day. And so I have to be a little proactive and, and out thinking ahead and around the corners.

And so by nature, my wiring is intentional. But, you know, when you you know, when you're parenting, you have to be very careful. You know, when you're parenting kids, you just kind of get in that zone where you're just doing everything you can do to keep things moving and keep it going.

And you get to Sunday, and then you start again on Monday, and you wake up and all of a sudden, people in junior high, and then they're graduating, and you just say, wow, what really happened? And, and so it was really interesting, my girls, I was clearly intentional with them. But my son somehow really triggered some things in me, that made me want to make at least even a greater series of intentional deposits into his life, kind of from a dad to a son kind of a thing. And, and I try to apply it to my family when I can. Let me you know, let me make sure dads are hearing this clearly and and the the wives that love them. Yeah, I wrote a book called the good dad because one of my concerns is that we as as men tend to want to do a good job. And if we're not doing a good job, we kind of recoil we go and hide. And I think fathering has so many challenges that we're not equipped for you may be a person that came from a household like me that you didn't have a dad.

Right. I mean, I was lost. I didn't blueprint. Nobody taught me how to be a dad.

And you can have a father live in a home and intact home and have that same outcome, where you didn't really have modeling on how to be a father because your dad was emotionally distant or what have you. So I want I wanted to ask you that question in terms of that perfection drive that many men have. And the fact that no one's perfect.

It's okay. You're not you don't need to be working with CEOs. I mean, a lot of men that just heard you went, Whoa, okay, this guy's qualified. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I hope I at least have something to say that they'll have 35 years. But that's the point. The perfect versus the good.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I mean, if I would have had to have been the perfect dad, you know, me, Mike, I'm not. And that was, to be honest, Jim, that was really my biggest challenge in really putting this into a book. I did it because I wanted to impact my son. And it was a great journey for the two of us.

It was an awesome experience for the two of us to bond as, as him becoming, an adult. And I had the outlines, I'd done it. But I did not send my outlines to anybody who wanted them. But I just wasn't really sure I wanted to put it into a book because I'm not the perfect dad. He's not the perfect son. We're not the perfect family.

We didn't do the perfect job. And this notion that that I'm putting out some prescription that if you'll just, you know, take these 41 pills, everything's gonna be perfect. To be frank with you, I had 50 I 50 deposits, we only got to 41. So I'm like a nine. I'm a nine deposit failure if you really want to get down to an A minus. Exactly.

Give me a solid B plus or A minus. But yes, I am not, you know, it was not the perfect dad. But it's the dad who says, You know what, during the season when my children are with me, I'm going to make sure that I at least devote the kind of stewardship to them that needs to be there. And here's the thing, I don't know, most parents that I've that I know, and I've met, you know, I'm 65. And so I've met a lot of parents in a lot of places. Most parents aspire great things for their children. They really do. And that's believing parents, faith based parents.

It doesn't matter what political party most parents aspire great things for their kids. It's just knowing kind of what to do. Yeah, and how to get that done.

That's where we sometimes go a little foggy. Well, let's get into it. The title is catchy 41 deposits. So how do you define a deposit?

What is that? Well, let me tell you what it meant for me. And I would not at all try to tell everybody that you know, this is what it's got to mean to you. But for me, I knew this. I knew that I grew up without a dad in my home. I had a godly mom and that I had I had at least nine very specific men that played a father figure in my role as I was growing up into becoming an adult. And those men deposited certain things into my thinking, my psyche, my mindset, my belief system, whatever. And so I just sat down one time and made a long list of things that I knew at the end of the day, if I could share with my son, what I thought about these things, how I was approaching them, how I was, you know, reaching the challenge of each of these things, and then help him think about them over kind of a really transparent, honest, vulnerable, right. relationship. That was for me, the deposit, the deposit wasn't that I'm going to force feed into him to believe a certain way to think a certain way. And oh, by the way, you need to believe exactly how I do about these 49 things, or 50 things 41.

And because he's a different person, and God has a different calling for him. Now, when it comes to the core values of life and the belief systems, and some of that, I hope that as he migrates into adult hood, and he finds his adult faith and on and on, that I hope we're more aligned than we're not aligned. Sure. But a deposit wasn't I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna kind of like a mold, I'm just gonna stamp these into you. And you have no, you don't really have any varying to really trust them, believe them, accept them or not, you added in there, which I think is important, kind of the tying a knot analogy, you know, it's not just a deposit, but you're actually strengthening the fiber of your son's heart by tying this knot.

Yeah, what were you getting at? Well, my two my two big goals is I wanted to make some wisdom deposits into his mind, the way he thought about things. And then I wanted to try to make some relational deposits into his heart, so that he and I would would really have a life connection, you know, and so what happened is, that made me think about, I have to contextually get inside my kids lives, as they go through inflection moments, yeah, in their lives, whether it's puberty, whether it's learning, having a day, whether it's being a star on a basketball team, whatever.

So fast forward that, you know, with Kyle, I remember I really wanted to somehow make sure that I had tied a good tight knot between the way he was thinking the way I was thinking and what he was feeling in his heart, and what I was feeling. And I really believe it's kind of that last verse in Malachi. It's interesting, it's set in a prophetic context.

It's not necessarily set in a family building context. But the context is, is that when parents tie their hearts to their kids, and their kids are also tied to the hearts of their parents, there's this two way tie that's going on, good things happen. And that was for me, this realization all the way back to when my kids were younger, I realized that the notion that I'm just going to wrap a really nice tight knot with my children when they're young, and that's going to ride for 50 years is crazy. And it's I don't need to feel guilty about that.

And I don't need to be shamed. It's the knots going to fray, it's going to come undone. It's my job to go tie it again, and tie it again and tie it again. And make sure that because if I've got that, I've got a pretty good sound framework to work through all kinds of issues, whether they're belief issues, their behavior issues, figuring out how to align adult families, whatever.

So that's, that's where the no, it's good. I'm thinking, you know, we use different terminology. But what you're saying from another angle is just be intentional about developing relationship with your kids.

That's the point. And then cement those values in various ways. You know, a lot of men were about process and structure. So when you look at it, we're going, Okay, what did you do, Steve? What's the next step? What's step one, two, and three? So when you look at the structure of what you decided to do with Kyle, after you identified the 50 things, even though he only got to 41, but we won't talk about that. But what was the structure for you and Kyle?

What age did you start? And, and I think in there, I would ask you to include this idea, the differential between lecturing and communicating relationship building, because I think a lot of his dad's tend to want what we lecture. Look, listen, man, I get paid really good money to be a coach to tell give my point of view on something that should be happening. I mean, that's what I tell I'm wired. That's my skill set. That's my God given calling. And so often, I have to kind of shift in, into a different mode where I'm not lecturing, or I'm not coaching, or I'm not telling them a point of view. I'm creating a conversation with him. The context was this, I made my list. And then Kyle and I agreed that we were going to grab breakfast at a new donut, a new a new bagel store.

And don't shoot. Yeah. No, I know.

It was a brand new bagel store. And so we, he wanted to go. So we joined up. And we decided that we were we would go there. And, you know, it wasn't the deal, guys, it wasn't the thing that we said every Friday, we're going to get together or every, but we decided we were going to get together every week when we could he was going into his high school. season of basketball.

He played basketball, he was really active. And we loved it. And but we met every week or every other week, all the way through his high school season. And we worked our way through these topics. And some of those topics are what I would call a one bagel, a one bagel topic. Other topics would be what I would call maybe a 12 bagel topic, it just took us a while. And what we didn't do is my intention wasn't to simply come in, lay down my my lecture notes, you know, I wasn't some professor where I'm just gonna let him say, here's everything you need to know about this. What's the next question?

Okay, here's everything you need to know about that. What's your next question? And by and, you know, the quicker we can get through the syllabus, we quicker we can go do something meaningful.

That was not our plan. Our plan was to create some honest, transparent dialogue around the topics that I felt like were the most important topics that were in my heart that I wanted to somehow transfer and put in his heart in his mind. And so we just wrestled and we talked about them. And what we usually did is we started with kind of top of mind items. And then from that point on, we would try to slide into the topic of the day, I would always try to have a story or whatever, and a Bible verse that we really anchored everything around. But we just stayed with it all the way till he graduated. And then when he graduated, I gave him the notes.

And I think I want to make sure we cover this because it's the proof of the power of conversation. What happened? And so from the very middle of our conversation, he had to bolt.

Well, when he bolted, we'd already paid. So we'd walked outside and when we walked out, he literally grabbed me and he hugged me. And it was probably one of the greatest, I mean, it was one of the best 60 seconds of my 65-year-old life. I'm telling you, it was, we hugged each other. He started crying. I started crying and not a word was said. And what was happening, and I'll confirm later, but what was happening was he was just thinking about areas that he has failed and areas that he's really human and areas that he struggles in.

But more importantly, or equally important, is he was looking at me, his dad, and he was saying, you know, here's my dad who also struggles, who also fails, who also is a human. And so we were just kind of hugging each other and just kind of holding each other and processing the fact that we as men are going to struggle with that, by the way, our whole life. I mean, that's not like one of those that you kind of grow out of when you're 31. Or as soon as you get married and have kids, no problem with any sort of sexual issues or temptations or struggles.

That doesn't go away. It doesn't matter how godly you might be or how many verses you memorize. All those things are crucial.

But the temptation itself is going to be with us as long as we're humans. And so that was the moment for us that was a really strong moment. Well, I think the power of that is the level of intimacy and authenticity in that when you can have that kind of discussion with your son and he can respond with that understanding. You've connected in such a deep way. That knot that you referred to earlier is a double knot.

It's really tied tight. And my guess would be that he is comfortable coming to you, talking to you about these things. And that's one of the big areas a lot of dads will miss because we tell our sons, you know, this is what you do.

This is what you don't do. We don't tell them our own failures, our own weaknesses, et cetera, where they can then attach to that. And then you have intimacy. Yeah, we certainly are able to talk about all kinds of things. And we do.

We do today. I mean, we talk about all kind of things. And I would say that was probably established in those early relationships. Another thing that you point out in the book, which I totally resonated with and my boys really responded to, was activity based things, whether it was camping, you did canoe trips, I think was your thing.

And I love that. And I would encourage every dad listening and I don't care what age your sons are now. And I'd include your daughters, you know, at different times. But to do activities with them. Boys really respond to that, you know, so they're not just looking at you, hearing your lips flap.

They need to be doing something and they remember those things for a long time. Well, the thing is, and we all know this, I mean, we all could write a book on it, but we all know that when you engage with an activity with somebody else, what you're doing now is you're putting something else in the middle of the relational dynamic. We're in a canoe together canoeing, we're playing pickup basketball, we're playing chess or whatever it is. And so all of a sudden now I've got a whole different toolbox to talk to you about important things or ask questions or maybe even, you know, God forbid, I don't even try to talk about anything. We just get in the canoe and we just have a great day without me feeling like I've got to accomplish 17 things with my parenting that day. That's where that's where overly, you know, kind of over intentional dads. We always struggle. I mean, I have it's amazing how many CEOs that I'll work with and and often when we end up talking about, you know, parenting or kids or whatever, and, you know, I'll just say, look, you know, you're just so wired and I'm so wired to get stuff done every day. We're not wired to get up and just lay around and do nothing. And so when you intersect your canoe trip or you're outing to hike, go hiking somewhere or just go stand on the river and fly fish, I find myself wanting to say, would you come over closer so I can tell you some more things versus like maximize your time.

I'm totally we've got to be got to get a double stack, get stuff, get 16 things done while we're doing one thing versus let's just go stand in the river about 12 feet from each other and just not talk for an hour. I mean, how can that be good? That's awesome. Yeah, especially to the child. Yeah.

The child loves that. And by the way, all I've done is earn the right on the way home to maybe ask a better question and to maybe even talk about something in a more transparent way. Steve, again, you've obviously you wrote 50 deposits that you wanted to do in the book is 41 because that's what you got done. I appreciate your honesty. But in that regard, to some dads listening and some wives who love their husbands and know the kind of wiring they have, it is overwhelming.

I'm not going to create a list of 41 things. Speak hope into that father and their future relationship with their kids. What we struggle has been getting out of the gate because we don't we don't know the process. We don't trust the process. We're not sure it's going to work. So we pull back right away. So what encouragement do you have for that dad that's going, I love what you're talking about, but I don't know what to do.

Yeah. You know, Jim, that's probably the single biggest reason that I decided to go ahead and write the book. Besides getting a green light for my family, I had two friends of mine that live in Utah and they basically said, you know, just come home and you can provide some train tracks. You can provide a framework for somebody that might not be wired to be a pioneer. They might not be wired to come up with the list themselves, but they're executors. They can follow a roadmap.

And I just thought about it. I mean, every city I go to, if I don't know how to get to somewhere, what do I do? I get on my map and I find a map and somebody that's taking the time to provide the framework makes it easy for me to follow the map. And so all I tried to do is I came up with 41 things that were right for me and my son. And basically most people can take those and use those as kind of a train track to run down and then contextualize it as you go. My son has some perfectionism tendencies, you know, and so we had to talk about that.

If your son or daughter doesn't, then you add what it might be there and you know, and and so that's my whole goal was to try to provide a little bit of a framework that people could jump on the road, travel with it, and then they could textualize it. I was talking to a business partner of mine this morning earlier and he asked me what I was doing today. And I said, well, I'm out here doing this deal. And he said, man, I love that book. And I said, well, I'm glad you do. And he said, I use it all the time.

And he said, I'll use it when I'm in the car with my younger kids. I'll just grab a nugget and I'll grab one topic and I'll use it as a point of discussion. Or if I know I want to do a devotional with one of my kids, I'll grab one of those. But it's not like he's just following the book page by page by page because you have to contextualize it, but you don't have to start from a blank canvas.

You don't have to look at the blank board and say, wow, I don't even know where to start. Just go to the table of contents and pick the circle, the ones that you think best apply to you and your child. Start there and where my story doesn't fit you, stick your story in and then just stay with the principles and go. I do want to end with maybe the toughest of the questions that dad that I'm envisioning. And I have friends that are in this spot where their relationship with their teens is so frayed. And, you know, there's lots of reasons for it. There's no blame, but a rules oriented father who is really driving black and white can cause that relationship to fray in your experience.

I mean, working with the CEOs and then, you know, working with the father, son combos that you have. What are those things that dads should be aware of in their own behavior? Forget the teenager and we know what they behave like, like their brains aren't formed yet. So let's just accept that. But as the adult, as the dad, how am I stepping on their oxygen hose and I need to be careful?

Yeah. You know, I think it's important that I can dial back a little bit and I can show to my children that I really have some intentional work that I'm doing on myself. When people can see that you're not perfect and that you're working on some stuff, I begin to put barriers down. When I think that when you've somehow made me feel that you're in a different place, you're above me, you don't have the problems I have, that's what disconnect often times happens. And so, you know, the transparency and vulnerability of a parent and you don't have to do it by coming in and saying, hey, I'm struggling with these 19 things.

You just have to say, you know, I'm really working on some stuff that I know I haven't done as well at, you know, and I need to work on that and whatever. And then the other thing is this, I've seen usually kids love to spend time with parents who also enjoy spending time with them. If you somehow just, if you can't get past the kid, the fact that your kids are irritating you and they're driving you nuts and that's going to come out.

And so find a good spot in your mind and your soul and your heart so that you're actually coming across that you're having a good time with them as well. When you're able to do that, you're able to kind of somehow begin to really kind of tie the knot a little bit one more time, but it's not easy, Jim, because we do fail, especially intentional dads intentionally. We mess up all the time. The other key thing for that dad of a 20 something, a 30 something, maybe older where the relationship is frayed, what can they do to begin to repair that? Yeah, you know, I could tell you something that my wife and I are doing with our adult children is we're helping them understand that we don't know how to parent adult children. We didn't know how to parent younger children. We just never told them. Now they're smart enough to know.

Now they know. But like we've said to them, hey, listen, we're trying to figure out how to be good, effective, responsible parents of adult children, but you're going to have to help us. You're going to have to help us learn what that looks like. And you've got to be patient with us. You're going to have to give us some grace. You're going to have to give us some times to fail. It will be some blood on the table sometimes.

I can't help that. But like we're not going to do it right. But the question is, are you willing to help us kind of get involved in being good adult parents? We're going to try, but you've got to help us a little bit. So it could be that a parent, a dad of a son that's kind of estranged or not there somehow maybe over time communicate that, you know, he's trying to learn how to be a good parent of an adult child.

Start there without having to go back and rehearse all the water under the bridge for 25 years. Just start there because the 25-year-old son would say, yeah, I guarantee you, you need some help. I might can even help you. The question is, do I really want help or is that just a ploy? If I really want help, I might get some help from my 25 year old. Oh yeah, you sure will. I probably will.

That's good. Well, you've been so great and I hope every dad listening and again, the wives of these dads listening can help take the first step and move in a direction where we can do a better job as a father. And I certainly want to recommend your book, 41 Deposits, Crucial Conversations for Fathers and Sons. You can get your copy here at Focus on the Family. You know, it works so well for us folks rather than buying it online by some efficient bookseller. Get it through Focus on the Family because all of that money goes right back into ministry.

It doesn't pay a profit or a shareholder. So get the book through Focus on the Family. If you could become a monthly donor to Focus, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for that. If you can make a one-time gift, we'll do that.

At the same time, being Christian, we want to make sure this content gets into your hands. If you're in a rough spot and you can't afford it, we'll get it to you. Just get in touch with us and we're going to trust that the Lord will provide that through other friends to cover the cost of that.

So you don't have an excuse not to get on the ball here. So get in touch with us and get a copy of this great book by Steve and get going on your fathering. We'd love to hear from you. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459 or just click the link in the episode notes. And Jon, also we have a great parenting assessment tool that's free. You can come to the Focus website.

It takes five to seven minutes to fill it out. It's a parenting assessment, the seven traits of effective parenting and it's going to give you your strengths and weaknesses, things that you're doing well and things that you probably need to work on. And that's a great starting place to kind of do a little report card on how you're doing. So I'd encourage you to go there and get that as well. Again, get in touch. If there's any way we can help or if you'd like to donate to the ministry, once more our number 800, the letter A in the word family. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.

I'm Jon Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. I'm here asking people how they could both give and get. I don't know. Maybe love? Yeah, you could both give and get love.

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