Two Dads Talking Shop: A Conversation with Myer Krah from Here4TheDads

Get ready for a laughter-filled yet insightful ride as I host a special guest: Myer from Here 4 The Dads! Myer, known for his influential Instagram community and relatable Here 4 The Dads podcast, joins The Unhinged Father to talk about the raw and real moments of fatherhood, from the chaos of parenting four boys under six to transitioning from military life to leading a family.

In this episode, we dive deep into:

•Navigating Healthy Exposure: Discover our thoughts on how much control parents can (or can’t) have over what kids are exposed to, and the right timing for discussing sensitive topics like sex, politics, and societal norms.

•The Madness of Family Movie Nights: With humorous stories about monster trucks taking over the house and kids bouncing off the walls, Meyer and I share tips on turning movie nights into magical family traditions. From hyping up movie picks to delicious snack ideas, learn how to create experiences that everyone, even toddlers, will love.

•The Dad Struggle is Real: We talk candidly about the aches and pains of aging as dads and balancing work, life, and relationships. Hear about Meyer’s adventures blending learning with fun activities, like teaching history through chopping down trees with his kids, because every dad knows: any moment can become an adventure!

With honest reflections, side-splitting anecdotes, and practical parenting tips, this episode is a must-listen for any dad (or parent) looking to lead with love, embrace the chaos, and build a strong, supportive community.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

•Secrets to a successful family movie night that’ll keep kids engaged and entertained.

•How to transform daily challenges into meaningful teaching moments.

•Stories of parenting madness, like singing sports chants at bedtime and managing twin “wrecking crews.”

•The value of finding a community that supports and celebrates fatherhood.

🎧 Tune in for unfiltered conversations that mix humor, wisdom, and real-life dad insights. Don’t forget to subscribe for more laughs, love, and lessons!

👉 Connect with Myer: Follow @Here4TheDads on Instagram for dad tips, community events, and exclusive merch! Check out all his links below.

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/here4thedads/
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Here4theDadsPodcast?app=desktop&sub_confirmation=1
Linktree - https://linktr.ee/here4thedads?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=23aaf450-7b24-49dd-8458-1058f847063f

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Fatherhood and Podcasting
• 6:38 Healthy Exposure: Navigating Childhood Learning
• 13:29 The Balance of Exposure: Preparing for the Real World
• 22:11 Creating a Loving Environment for Children
• 29:28 The Importance of Consistent Expectations
• 39:25 Teaching Through Everyday Experiences

Transcript

Robbie (00:01)
All right. Welcome into the pod. Everyone I'm here. Got a special guest with me today. Got Meyer from here for the dad's, well podcast and also the Instagram account. I was on his podcast a couple of weeks back and he decided to pop on actually that he didn't decide. asked him, basically begged him, forced him to come on to my podcast as well. So I don't have to think about shit for, you know, an entire week to talk about, but Meyer's been doing some great stuff and

Here 4 The Dads (00:22)
.

Robbie (00:30)
just wanted to go ahead and give him some time to introduce himself and we'll jump into the episode.

Here 4 The Dads (00:34)
Awesome, man. Thank you for having me, first of all. You and your podcast was one of the maybe the first things my algorithm actually did, right? The algorithm popped your podcast on there. I saw a clip and I was like, snap. And I reached out, I think like almost immediately. was like, I wanna hop on here. I wanna be able to talk to you and meet your audience. And I wanna have you on mine. So for the audience we have to listen, please come over to my podcast and listen to the conversation that we had. We didn't even have to set up much of anything. It was just two dads.

literally as authentic as it could possibly get, just having a good conversation about a lot of different topics. But just a little bit about me. I'm a, it sounds weird saying I'm a veteran, because I'm not old or anything like that, but I just got out on July 30th. I was in for 10 years, anti-terrorism, force protection was kind of...

my thing, but the biggest transition in my life from being in the military was being a dad. Like that was probably the biggest pivot. I mean, I played football for a long time and then I stopped playing football. That was a pivot, but nothing like it was for fatherhood. So when I decided that I was going to get out, I was looking for different hobbies and I started podcasting along with

I guess half of America thinks that they can just grab a mic and start talking. It's extremely therapeutic, but there's some people who grab a mic and just go crazy. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. But I did that, and I really enjoyed sitting across from other fathers and talking about things that I don't often hear.

And sometimes it's the triumphs and then sometimes it's the challenges. Then I already have a hard time sometimes talking about what we have trouble with. And sometimes we lose the locker room speech once we leave the locker rooms. So knowing that we have podcasts like Unhitch Podcasts where you can legit go in there and either just speak your truth and speak to yourself or speak to another guest about what it is that you believe and talk about fatherhood to me, like, has been extremely cool. And yeah.

That's me, I live in Atlanta, Georgia now. And I'm just trying to live the life, man. I got four kids, six, four, and then two twins who are also two years old. So, four boys, right now.

Robbie (02:48)
That's right. And I hate to break it to you, but you're over 30. So you are officially on this side of old. You're there, man. You got the back pain, the knee pain for kids, for kids ages you faster too. like in your, in your age, you're already like 50, man. You're you got four kids. They're aging you quicker.

Here 4 The Dads (02:55)
no.

yeah.

you're right. You're right. You can feel it at the end of the night too. When it's time to go to bed and see your wife walk up the stairs and you take a look at the room and the toys all over the place. You're bending down, bicking. Yeah, that's aging. For real.

Robbie (03:21)
people ask me, when did your back pain start? I'm like, dude, I sat on the ground for like, do you have like a football injury or rugby or wrestling? Cause I played all the, you know, all the physical sports and I'm like, no, I don't have any lagging injuries from that. My worst injury is my lower back. And it's because I sat on the floor with my kids for 15 minutes and then I stood up too quick. So.

Here 4 The Dads (03:31)
Mm-hmm.

People don't know how real that is, bro. Like, it starts even when you go to the hospital and they put you on that cranky, nasty, hard bed chair, couch thing, whatever they want to call it, the torture chair, right? They put you in there, the injuries start from there on.

Robbie (04:01)
Yeah, yeah. actually, side story, we'll jump into the podcast. But when my wife had her, when we had the first one, they put her in this room that had the beds that are meant for the people who are like long term bedridden. So they like would inflate and deflate and inflate and deflate. And it was driving her fucking insane. And so

Here 4 The Dads (04:18)
Mm-hmm.

Robbie (04:23)
I said, all right, if you're not going to sleep in that, she's like, I can't sleep in here. I'm not getting any sleep. I'm like, you could come sleep on this little couch. The couch was not comfortable, but it was better than that. And I couldn't sleep in it either. So I unplugged it and it just all deflated. And I just slept on metal basically for that, that second night that we had our first kid. So it was kind of funny, you know, she, she went through the hard part. Don't, don't feel bad for me, everyone. Obviously I had it easy compared to my wife.

Here 4 The Dads (04:42)
guys.

Robbie (04:51)
pushing out an eight and a half pound baby. But it's just funny that that's, know, my wife ended up getting to sleep on that shitty little couch and I got the metal bars.

Here 4 The Dads (04:53)
Thank you.

The stones you can't build, man, from just hospital stays, my goodness.

Robbie (05:05)
Yeah, no, they need it with how much money we spend they need to be it should be like the fucking ritz-carlton

Here 4 The Dads (05:10)
Absolutely, we need to start, we need to start, do people use GoFundMe anymore? Like do we need to start a GoFundMe to get better couches and beds to put in there for father's during that time?

Robbie (05:20)
I could just see the wives losing their shit. We'll like start this big petition, just like better beds for men in the hospitals. And they're like, you guys have got it. They're going to roll their eyes and you're just going be kidding me.

Here 4 The Dads (05:32)
yeah, I wouldn't get punched. I don't think we want that. I don't think we want that noise. Maybe next time I'll just bring an air mattress. We'll see.

Robbie (05:35)
No. Yeah, no, I'm debating or just sleep on the floor if it wasn't so nasty. So but anyways, yeah, just wanted to jump into the podcast and go into the episode a little bit on, you know, what's top of mind for you. We don't really have a huge agenda for today. Just wanted to get a chance to talk to you. But, know, for you, is there anything that's top of mind or anything that you wanted to jump into that you think could be beneficial for other dads, other parents or just anyone in general?

Here 4 The Dads (06:03)
Yeah, think what popped into mind earlier this morning, I almost dropped it into the group, but I couldn't fully form how I wanted to talk about it, was healthy exposure. Like two weeks ago, my family came down and I got...

a lot of siblings. Well, it really just three other siblings, but other friends and stuff came too. We started having this conversation about healthy exposure. What is healthy exposure? Why is it important? And do we have control over it? The reason why we're having that is because we were talking about things that we learned as kids that we know now that didn't come from our parents. And a lot of times it might've come from school, from the barbershop. Like just no matter if it's good or bad, you're gonna get exposed to something.

how important is it for the parents to be in control of the exposure to their kids and what does healthy exposure look like? So I guess that's the kind of the topic I would love for us to kind of hash out and kind of talk about. I can say for me, we started homeschooling my six-year-old about a couple months ago now. And when I was younger and I heard people who got homeschooled, I thought that was all it was about, was about exposure.

They seem like the families were maybe just hippies or super religious. Like that's the reason why I thought they were homeschooled. They didn't want them to go to school and learn all this bad stuff from all these quote unquote bad kids. Homeschooling now in my understanding of it is completely different. It's about a little bit more control of what they're learning, how they're learning, maybe to be in their lives a little bit more, maybe you have the background. So I would say that's a little bit more of what I resonate with. But a part of that still is exposure and knowing that I do have the control over.

a little bit more control, guess, over exposure, I have to now force myself to expose my kids to it. So, and that's around sex, that's around, it could be around tobacco use and drugs, it could be about politics, excuse me, it could be about all those other things that might seem a little bit taboo that they say don't have a conversation about on your first date, I still need to expose my kids in a way that's like smart and important.

and intentional, if that makes sense.

Robbie (08:17)
Yeah, no, definitely. And I mean, this is something that's big for us because it's like opposite for us. Our five year old just went into public school like a couple of months ago. And so we're having this now where he's being exposed to other kids that have different, you know, different parents, different lifestyles. And the kids, the kids in at the end of the day are, you know, he's five, they're five, six years old. They're all pretty much innocent. But

You don't know what background they come from, what they're seeing at home. And we're starting to see that because he's bringing things back and saying things that were like, dude, where the fuck did you hear that from? Like, you know, he came in and he was like afraid of, you know.

Here 4 The Dads (08:53)
Yeah.

Robbie (08:56)
I don't know, he said that he was afraid of police officers or something because I'm not really sure. like a lot of his family are their police officers, military, things like that. And I'm like, Hey, you know, they're here to protect you and trying to teach him like different things. And it just, it's interesting to have these things come in from the outside. And like you're saying,

that exposure, how do you filter it? How do you talk to them about it? And like you have a completely different challenge now because you also don't want your kids to be too sheltered. You're going to have to expose them to it eventually. But it's like if I'm hearing you right, when do I expose them to it? How do I expose them to it? And like how much all that good stuff and that I don't know. That's a hard question to answer, especially for you. So.

Here 4 The Dads (09:46)
Yes, I don't under expose them. You know what saying? Like my biggest motto and slogan is to lead with love. And I don't know if you can hear that, but my twin, one of my twins is trying to break into the room right now. They hear their daddy's doing anything, they're just like, I need to be a part of that. I don't know what you're eating, but I want to be a part of that too. But the last thing I want to do is under expose my kids because I'm always talking about leading with love. And that's to all of humanity.

Robbie (09:59)
It's all good now.

yeah, I getcha.

Here 4 The Dads (10:16)
anybody that you meet. If you hear an opposing thought or you disagree with somebody, you still got to figure out like how do I leave it. You can't learn to love somebody that you disagree with if you've never even heard that type of point of view before. If you didn't even know it existed, right? And if I under expose them in a way that's unhealthy, when they get to those positions, they're going to be lost. And they're going to be like, like imagine you go into college and understand that like

You telling me everybody's not Christian? What? You telling me everybody's not, like I don't want them to go there and be lost, you know what I'm saying? I still want them to be able to understand humanity, to shake people's hands, and to still have good conversation and to be able to communicate. Because you can get the other side of the spectrum too. You have some people who never had the birds and the bees talk, never even heard how a baby is made, or any of that, right? Then they go to college and they go bug wild.

because they're like, I get a taste of this. I don't know what it is. I don't care what it is. I'm just going to do whatever I want. So it's definitely a challenge. And I didn't know that part would be a challenge. It almost makes me a little bit more envious of public schools in that way when it comes to exposure, because the schools and the curriculum also at least tries to add different parts into the school year where they can talk about it. Remember growing up, we had the DARE program.

Robbie (11:43)
Yep.

Here 4 The Dads (11:43)
There was always a time where we were to talk about sex. There was all these things and sometimes you also give your parents a chance to answer the questions that you have when you come home with something that you've never heard before.

Robbie (11:55)
Yep, no, definitely. I think that one of the things that hopefully will still be able to happen with your kids, just because it sounds like you've got four, it sounds like you've got cousins and relatives, and your six-year-old's probably got friends outside of just your immediate family, is that that's one of the things that's beneficial in exposure, is that you're gonna get this spontaneous exposure.

to where it's like it comes up and then you get to respond back to it. think that sometimes we overthink when should we expose them to it? And if it comes up spontaneously, it's like, all right, well, I can, I could respond to whatever he's being exposed to and try to help explain it to him as opposed to like, not only do I, as a homeschooling, not only do I have to like explain to him what it is and try to keep, like you have to control everything. Sometimes it's kind of nice to just have it happen spontaneously and then you get to just,

jump into action, or at least that's how I feel like it would be for me.

Here 4 The Dads (12:54)
And I guess the other question I would have to ask is what do do when it's unhealthy exposure? Because some of that stuff could be traumatic for some. Like how do you respond to it? I think that's something that fathers learn, parents as a whole learn on the fly is how we respond to it. Like I do like when it's spontaneous and it gets just get to hear it.

What happens when it's unhealthy exposure? Like how are you? Maybe there's levels and degrees to it. What would you say to that?

Robbie (13:24)
Yeah, I mean, I think you just try to have that conversation with them and you don't. came from a pretty sheltered family and you know, I grew up, went to private school because I'm from, you know, L.A. So my parents put me in a private school, Christian upbringing, and I went to college and I wasn't, I didn't go completely buck wild, but you know, I wasn't like thrown off my, my Christian skirt and, you know, dancing on tables or anything like that. But,

I didn't drink in high school. didn't do any of that stuff. I was pretty straight lace and I went to college and then I started drinking, drank pretty heavily. And I do think that if I would have been exposed and allowed, and this is just like with like the drinking, but it could be, you can put it in any area that you really want to. If I would have been exposed to it and like allowed to experiment or like dip my toes in once in a while, I feel like it wouldn't have been such a, a taboo because we always want

but we can't have. Like if someone tells me I can't have something, I'm like, fuck you, I'm going to go do that. So I do think that there is, even if it's a quote unquote, like negative or traumatic, like I think that small doses of exposure are going to create the vaccine in the end, right? They're going to help create that well adjusted and capable kid that's able to address whatever they come into contact with.

Here 4 The Dads (14:25)
Absolutely.

Robbie (14:46)
If I think about this in more of like a philosophical way, which is not going to help with like the, I don't know, like the, steps or the like how to list on how to do this for you. But I heard someone talk about when you're raising kids, what you want to do is your job is to help, help them grow and be prepared for the world. But you don't want to just like throw them into these shitty situations. You want to

expose them to them in a controlled environment. like your job as a parent is to expose your children to the hardships and the realities of the world, but within a safe environment to where it's not going to like hurt them or kill them or like anything like that. But they're able to see what their actions like their actions are going to have repercussions and whatever they do are going to have repercussions.

within this controlled environment. that way one day when they're no longer in your care, you're not able there to come and save the day. know, Superman is not able to come in and rescue the kids from the danger that they they've already been exposed to it. They know what's going to happen and that their actions are going to have serious consequences. And I think the example I had of this was there was a, it was a terrible story, but it was like kids that stole a car and they drove it and they

got a big car accident and they died. And the example is that you need to like the they went back and like they came from broken. don't know like the whole stories, but like they were broken, broken families and poor, poor home lives. And they didn't have that loving, caring home life. And they didn't have that exposure when they were younger. They weren't taught when they were younger that these actions that they take

are going to have serious implications in life. so like for us as parents, we don't want to overexpose them. We don't want to like dump too much on them, but we want to make sure that they're getting this knowledge of, of life, of whatever you do in life, it's going to have some sort of repercussion. And I might've just gone off like the wheels on that one and just like,

Here 4 The Dads (16:56)
I'm following bro. I'm following all of it. Because today at the barber shop I heard somebody talk about, first he asked, he I see your kids, like what are their ages and all this stuff. And I love getting, I personally love getting unsolicited advice from other fathers who are either my age or way older. Way older is even better. They say that their kids are up and gone. I love getting it. Some people don't like unsolicited advice, that's on them.

He was talking about raising his kids to be like independent versus codependent. And that's literally what you're talking about right now is exposing them in a way so when they're no longer needing to be with you, they can go out and still be successful. Because I can point at different situations or relationships that I know that people have with their parents, where their parents raised them so codependent on themselves and they didn't expose them to anything.

When they look at their kids now who are 21, 22, 23, whatever, they're like, well look at them. They didn't get in any trouble. They didn't do this. They have a job. I'm like, is that truly your meter for success? Is that they just didn't get in trouble and that they have a job? What about them actually flourishing and what it is they wanted to do when they grew up? How much did you expose them to that? How easy or hard is it for them to make friends if they really wanted to? Can they go out?

into a new job and be able to work as a team. Like those are different meters for success that I believe we should be building for our kids. And something I have for my own is how do I expose them in those different ways? And yes, I do understand that every child is different and every adult is different, but did I try my best to make sure that they flourish when they become an adult and that they're independent. And even when, let's say they don't have us, right? Let's say they appear to be independent, but what they're...

actually depending on is all these different risk factors and operational risk management tools that we gave them that still makes them live in this hole and too afraid to do anything. You know what I mean? And that's not where I want to be. That's not where I want to be at all. I want to expose them as much as I can and still understand that I have to continue to expose myself to things that are more than just foods. Talk about hearing different people's

perspective on life, you know what I mean?

Robbie (19:20)
Yep. Well, and that's the biggest thing too. I mean, you talked about like politics and obviously the last episode I just talked about was like politics, not the ins and outs and all that stuff, but just like the desire to get back to a place where we can disagree with people and still get along with them. That's, that's the big thing that I want. It's a, cause I'm, I'm a politically in the gray area. like ideology in talking about like a specific issue as opposed to

Here 4 The Dads (19:44)
Mm-hmm.

Robbie (19:48)
whatever the political line is. But I just, you know, I've seen on both sides during this political season, it's just been absolutely terrible, super divisive. And, you know, we, we exposed our son to it. Like we watched like as the election night and stuff like that, and let them know, like, these are the people running for president. But we did it in a very, just like generic way, like, Hey, these are the people that running for the president of

of the United States. One of them is going to win. Mom and dad voted for one of them. That's the person that we wanted to win. And if they win, that's great. And if they don't, then we continue on. It's not like it's the end of the world type thing. hopefully by exposing them like that little bit like we didn't we didn't shy away from letting them see that, especially because, you know, I almost worry about it at at this. It's really crazy is that we voted one way or the other. And my

my kids making friends with other kids and we don't know and I honestly don't give a shit where other people are politically. But like if it gets back to one of their friends that we voted one way or the other and it could be on either side, then we're going to have a whole shit storm that comes our way. And it's like we didn't shy away from that though. We told them like, this is who we voted for. And we just like, that was like the minimal exposure. And if he tells his friends like, that's fine. We'll deal with it at that point in time, but

These are the little things that we're kind of doing along the way. it's, don't know. I don't think there's like a really, a good answer for how much exposure to give. Like you've got a hard task ahead of you, but that's just the life of a dad. I, all I would say is that you're already like a hundred percent ahead of everyone else because you're a, you know, a parent who's interested and involved in their kids lives. Like that's honestly, that's like the biggest hurdle.

of all and a book I read called Hold On To Your Kids. It's got some of the most, important, I think, child psychology within it. They talk about how not to worry too much about the exposure as much because that's going to come. They're going to get exposed. It's about creating a good, loving environment at the household and

making sure that your kids are attached to you and they they look to you for guidance as opposed to looking to other people. Right. You want them to they're going to go to school. They're going to be exposed to all these people and they're going to get a ton of inputs coming in. But at the end of the day you want your kids to look to you for guidance and to rely on what you're saying and care more about that than they care about like what little Johnny down the street said or what their teacher said. So if you create that environment

They will grow up. They're going to get exposed. That's just life. So if you create the environment of loving, understanding and allow this stuff to come in, you don't create like a complete encapsulating bubble, then they're going to be OK. Or they're going to at least be as good as you could possibly make them be.

Here 4 The Dads (22:55)
And let's talk about that part a little bit. It's like how do we get to a point where our children come back to us for their advice and that they feel comfortable with coming to us with the questions or when they hear something that's hard or they just don't know and I think that starts with trust like building trust with your kids and that can come in a bunch of different ways like I'm wearing the shirt presence over presence right it's like I don't want to be the weekend warrior dad

or the one who's just always buying them things or always telling them yes. I want to be there for the hard, the easy, the fun, like the every different parts of their life that is making them who they are. So that when they have these questions about like, hey dad, football was really hard today, super tired. I don't even know if I want to go back out there, but I know that my teammates are going to look at me some type of way if I say I don't want to play football next year.

Now I'm in a position where I can actually talk to him about something. You know what mean? Like actually be able to provide, you know, a response or communicate to him what's from my heart, stories that I have. I'm talking about his own potential or when it's even harder. Let's say it's later down the road and we are talking about sex and drugs, that they feel like they can come back to me because they remembered when they were four or five years old or six years old and they asked about a curse word. I didn't freak out on them.

and say, no, you don't freaking say that. And no, like I didn't just go off on them because they asked something simple. I used the opportunity to answer a question for them and they felt comfortable doing that. All of those things matter. Like I even remember right now as an adult, what my father looked like when I would ask him hard questions. And when it was like, maybe I didn't think they were, I didn't know they were hard questions now, but they might've come off rude. Maybe I didn't ask them right. Maybe they were.

to him that I was asking and it was the culture that he's come from, he's West African-Librarian, the culture he comes from, some things they just don't talk about. But of course as a child I want to know. Children ask why, why, why, why, why many times as you know. So I still remember the responses that I got, either it was a shallow response, no response at all, or the anger that would just come up and I stopped going to my dad for anything. And I don't want it to be like that for my kid.

Robbie (25:04)
yeah.

Here 4 The Dads (25:19)
As an adult, you know, I understand more, I see more, and I'm able to probably go more to him, but that's not the first place I go, because it never was the first place I go. So it's starting that battle rhythm for your kids to know that you are home base and that you've already created a trust for them, a trust base for them, so that when they do have that issue, they come to you first.

Robbie (25:40)
Yeah, and I think it starts, this is kind of like that hard gray area because you've got some parents that go too far with like, no discipline, no structure, no nothing like that. My kids will like just love me and I'm their friend as opposed to their father. And that doesn't work either. And so there is this gray line. And I think for my family in particular, and just for me in general, I think about when my kids are in high school and they're at a party and maybe they've had a few drinks and they've got a friend who was supposed to be a sober driver.

and it's supposed to drive them home and they're not supposed to be there. They're supposed to be somewhere else, right? I want them to call me to come and get them and have that trust in me to know that maybe I'll be upset. Maybe I'll be disappointed, but that I'm going to come and get them because I would much rather them come home with me as opposed to them doing a stupid thing to avoid getting into trouble. And I think that that starts when you're younger is like

Here 4 The Dads (26:14)
Mm-mm.

Robbie (26:39)
When my kids get in trouble now, I really try not to scream and yell. I still try to hold the line, right? There's there is discipline, right? There are consequences for your actions. But like lying with my son, you know, he's five. He starts to say little white lies here and there to make sure that he doesn't get in trouble. And I let him know it's like, dude, you need to tell dad what happened. And I'm not going to yell at you. I'm not going to take stuff away from you. I'm not going to like put you in time out.

Here 4 The Dads (26:47)
Mm-hmm.

Robbie (27:10)
Yeah, you may have some consequences for this, the consequences are going to be even worse if you don't tell me the truth, right? If you don't tell me the truth and I find out that you've lied to me, there are going to be serious consequences. And so it's kind of like creating the stress and then following through because a lot of times people will say like, hey, I just want to know what happened. Like, did you push my my eldest push my little, you know, my two year old over because he my two year old's a little battle, a little battle axe who just

Here 4 The Dads (27:39)
You

Robbie (27:39)
head butts, everything. He's, he's going to be a monster. I don't know what the hell I'm to do with him. But, but anyways, my five year old pushes him over cause he took a toy. He two year old starts crying. I'm like, Hey, what happened? I'm not going to get mad. I just want to know what happened. And then my five year old says, Hey, I pushed him over normal or maybe like an older generation. They want to hold true to their word of like, I'm not going to get mad. And they start screaming, yelling at the kid, get mad. Don't do that to your brother.

All that stuff. And so I try to stick as much as I possibly can to like, Hey, thanks for telling me, like, don't do that. If you push your brother again, there's going to be serious consequences, but thank you for telling me the truth. And like having that be that, like the, the start to that trusting me. there's a big difference between that and just letting your kid do whatever the hell they want and having no discipline. But it's, it's difficult because a lot of times the older generation will see that and they're like,

Why are being so nice to your kid? I'm like, because I love them and they're a human being. And I'm trying to build trust while also building discipline and having them understand they can't do certain things. So it's a middle area and it's going to be different for everyone.

Here 4 The Dads (28:54)
I say this all the time, organizations fail when you have uncommunicated expectations and then those expectations just go by the wayside. You don't follow through with them. So it's like you say all these things and then you don't do it. They're no longer gonna trust you. That's just how it's gonna be. And I'm in the same boat. I want my kids to always be able to come to me and I think about the high school party where something's going bad. I want them to call me too. And as I try to keep that in perspective,

and understand the reality of it too, think that it's super possible, And two, the same way we have conversations about our relationship with our parents, that I'm not gonna get everything right. And that's not my goal to get everything right. My goal is to try to do my best and to be intentional. So in doing that, I guess this mixes the idea of that topic and the healthy exposure. I try to create a fail safe. And that fail safe is the relationship that I have with my close friends.

This past weekend we went down to South Carolina with one of my best friends. He's got my goddaughters, he's got two girls and a boy, they're around the same age. They're pretty much become best friends to my kids and all the ages are close to the same. But we fundamentally have the same beliefs. We raise our kids very similar. I love him, I know his wife, same vice versa and we spend a lot of time together. And what I'm understanding and knowing now is that although he's not

blood, my son still calls him uncle and he had the influence on my kid. So as he builds trust with me, he's also going to be building trust with him as they have conversations as he's around. So if I ever, if he ever finds himself in a position where he's in a challenged area or scenario or he's in the high school party and he doesn't feel comfortable calling me for whatever reason, I did something wrong, he doesn't want to let me down.

I still have created fail-safes in his growing up to still be able to call somebody else that I trust as well, that I know will do the right thing. And I'm going to feel okay about that. Like I'm going to know and love whatever situation I put him in and still being able to put him in a place where he's not completely codependent. He's still independent, making decisions on his own. But being within that realm that we kind of set him up with because we cared about what health exposure looked like.

Robbie (30:58)
Yeah.

Here 4 The Dads (31:19)
when they're at the ages our are.

Robbie (31:22)
Yeah, definitely. I that's good. We do the same thing where it's like our close friends. We have our kids just call them uncle and aunt because we want them to do that. But we don't have as many close friends. Unfortunately, we're close to my wife's family, but all of my family is down in Southern California. So don't get as much of that up here. But now that's good. I think that that would be that's going to pay off.

quite a bit, especially when the kids get older. Right now it's kind of like they're, you know, five, six years old. The biggest concern that they've got is like, you know, someone stole my teddy bear. He called me a doo-doo head or something like that.

Here 4 The Dads (31:59)
Monster trucks, we're really in the monster trucks right now. Monster trucks have taken over my home. my God, we got like, I don't know, maybe like 50 of the Hot Wheel monster trucks. like the, we had a monster truck birthday party, so people bought even more monster trucks. There's racetracks all over the garage. I'm stepping on them. What is it? Big La Don? man.

Robbie (32:04)
Blaze and the Monster Machines.

yeah, your son would get along great with my kids because they went through the monster truck. He went through the lizard phase, the snake phase, monster trucks. Right now he's big on minions. So he's like the mega minions.

Here 4 The Dads (32:32)
yeah, I love him. I rock with some names. I could do that.

Robbie (32:37)
Yeah, we started incorporating movie nights on Friday nights and letting the kids, we all get a chance to pick new ones, because when he was younger, he would just pick the same movie. And we'd watch that 400 times. And so mom and dad are just like, all right, dude, I'm not watching Cars 3 for the 700th time. All right, dude. So we

Here 4 The Dads (32:49)
yeah.

bro. Let's make this portion, like, let's make this a small portion. I know this is a little bit off topic, but I want to hear how you do your movie nights. Because I did them growing up, I loved them, and I still think about them all the time. But I have yet to be successful, and I don't know if it's the amount of kids, or the ages, or what I'm doing wrong, from the fathers who I've been taking, like, tell me about yours. How do you set it up so that they're, like, at least somewhat paying attention? Like, talk to me about it.

Robbie (33:15)
Well, you got a lot of kids to wrangle there, man.

We got pretty lucky both kids and even the two year old, he doesn't get to watch the whole movie because you know, we're not, we try not to like do too much screen time with him. But if older brother's watching it, dude, like that's just the way it goes. Older brother, you have to wait till you're five to watch this movie. Your younger brother could be three months old. He's going to get fucking watch it because there's no way we're going do it. But we just, we set it up to where it's like each week.

Here 4 The Dads (33:42)
I'm out of

Robbie (33:47)
one of the family members gets to pick the movie. And we just started letting the two year old kind of pick the movie. You know, we put stuff up there and ask him like, what do you want to watch? But we each get to pick and it has to be something different than like what we've watched before. And we started doing this just to like expose our five year old to newer movies, like movies that we liked growing up and stuff like that. So Friday night, you know, we have dinner. We'll do like a pizza night or we'll do some sort of dessert like all if I'm barbecue in.

I'll get cookies to make like during Halloween. made those like sugar cookie, chocolate chip Halloween cookies on the Traeger. we have dinner and then we picked the movie and we all just kind of sit down, get the blankets out, get the chairs out, make popcorn. sometimes we'll just do the bag stuff. Sometimes we'll do other stuff and then special drinks, but we just kind of try and make it as quote unquote special as possible. And then we'll sit down and pick the movie.

this week, think my wife gets a picket and you we got to watch like he's watched Shrek and Despicable Me and a bunch of the other movies that we've that we watched growing up and then even some of the newer ones. And it's just been it's fun because he gets to he really got into Free Willy like we watched Free Willy, which was big for me when I was a kid and the two year old he doesn't you know, he'll watch but he doesn't give he doesn't care too much.

Here 4 The Dads (35:00)
you

Robbie (35:07)
But the five year old, he'll sit, watch, he'll get like into it. And then our rule is that like if he wants to watch a movie, like if there's more time to watch TV or movies, like throughout the week or on the weekend, he could watch that same movie, but we can't watch any other movie except for the one that was that movie. So that way it's, we're not like cheating and making it not as special to do movie night. So that's really what we do, but we got lucky that the two year old and the five year old, they sit pretty well. They'll watch it, like, especially if they really liked the movie.

Here 4 The Dads (35:24)
Yeah.

Robbie (35:37)
And they'll just they'll sit there and we sit down and we have a beer or glass of wine and eventually a new projector on the outside.

Here 4 The Dads (35:43)
bro, that's a-

I need to get like you, because right now it's complete chaos. Maybe I need to turn the lights, I think sometimes I have to turn the lights down and usually start focusing a little bit more. But you said the one word that I need to make it more of like special, not just pick a movie, let them pick a movie and popcorn it up. know, freezy slushy drinks or something like that. Make it a thing that they're looking forward to, because that's what I was doing. I was looking forward to.

having pizza, because we never used to order food or anything like that. So would order pizza every Friday night. I mean, we don't go to Blockbuster anymore, but we used to go to Blockbuster, know, pick the movie out and stuff. So yeah, thank you for that. I'm going use that. I like that.

Robbie (36:21)
Yep.

Yep. You make it special, make it unique. And then like, we hype it up during the week too. You know, like I said, our two year olds, he kind of doesn't really understand and it doesn't really matter because he just does whatever his older brother wants to do. But the five year old, we hype it up all week. We're just kind of like, Hey dude, what's, what's tomorrow? Today's Wednesday. Then what's that? And I'm trying to teach him the days of the week too. So I like throw it there. I'm like, all right, so what's today? He's like Wednesday. I'm like tomorrow's what Thursday and then what's the next day? He's like Friday. And I'm like, what's on Friday? He's like the weekend.

Here 4 The Dads (36:39)
Pretty much.

I'll just...

Robbie (36:58)
That's what like we always say is like, it's the weekend. I'm like, what else? He's like movie movie night. I'm like, that's right. It's movie night, dude. And who gets to pick this week? He's like me. I'm like, no, it's not you this week, It's mom. So he's like, he's like, yeah, it's me. I'm like, no, it's not you, dude. So but it's fun. And then, you know, you got Amazon Prime and all this stuff and you've got all the movies right there. So you just let him let him pick, you know, rent it if you have to rent it.

Here 4 The Dads (37:01)
We do.

I like to do this.

Robbie (37:27)
And then yeah, we turn the lights down low and they've got their own like little seats that are in front of the couch that they get to sit in. So, but yeah, I mean, you got a hard task in front of you. You four kids. I have two. That makes it a lot easier.

Here 4 The Dads (37:38)
Yeah, I think we just gotta, we gotta pick our times a little bit better. Maybe get the twins down for a nap or something like that. Cause they'll watch a movie in the van. Like if we're doing a long drive, like they'll pay attention. But if they can like jump off daddy's head instead or like find a shelf to climb in the pantry, they would rather do that. That's just, that's just how it works.

Robbie (37:58)
yeah, no, I've seen the videos, man. You got the cleaning crew and the wrecking crew all in one.

Here 4 The Dads (38:02)
my gosh. And when they did that too, like the cleaning crew in the bathroom, the first thing I was thinking about was the Super Mario Brothers movie where Mario and Luigi are in the bathroom and they're completely, it's complete chaos in there. Water's all over the place. That's pretty much them. That's how we made them Mario and Luigi for Halloween because that's them most of their life. And they still learn everything from their brothers. Last night they were supposed to be sleeping and I'm checking the camera and one of the twins is in the bed.

this has been stuck on football and watching hype videos and stuff all day. One of the two year olds in the crib and he's singing, we ready. We ready. I was like, babe, this is kind of, I don't know if this is scary or what, but we got to get it together.

Robbie (38:41)
That's funny.

That's hilarious, man. That's good. Well, you just got to get that oldest one on board with movie night. Get him to hype up everyone else,

Here 4 The Dads (38:53)
That's definitely what I'll do. I'll definitely do that. I'm already gonna start it today, because today's Friday. So I'm gonna go to the store, get some slushies or something like that. Like I'm putting a blender and get them right. And I like that you said you've been implementing like learning into it too. Especially because we're homeschooled. I do that all the time. Like I caught myself out back yesterday teaching them how to chop down a tree. Just because I was teaching them presidents because it was like election time and stuff.

So we got to teach them presidents, and you heard about Cherry Cheese and George Washington and Eddie Lincoln. was like, have you ever chopped down a tree? Me, knowing the answer. I was like, no, you want to? Just walk out back, man. Just start giving them an axe. He doesn't know how to use it, so I'm teaching him that and talking about the trees and the bark. It's always an opportunity to teach, like when you have kids. But you get sometimes surprised and forget how much they don't know. You know what mean? They're learning everything for the first time. It's kind of cool.

Robbie (39:48)
Yeah, now it is for sure. That's a great opportunity you get and I'm somewhat jealous at the same time I would be absolutely terrified to be homeschooling my kids.

yeah. Well, believe me. We're all there fighting on my wife. don't know what the hell I'd be doing either. but but I mean, we're already here at the end, just like last time when I was on the podcast with you, man, it just flies by. good conversation. So I'm going to we're to go and wrap up the episode right here, but I'm going go and let you promote anything that you want to promote or anything you want to talk about, man.

Here 4 The Dads (40:22)
yeah, absolutely. anything guys, follow me on Instagram. That's probably where I'm the most vocal and the most active on Instagram. I'm at Here For The Dads, and it's a number four, so Here For The Dads. And on there you can find everything from my virtual community group to my new merch that just came out. It's in my link in my bio. You can find my YouTube channel and all that good stuff. If you ever have any questions, you ever want to hop on a podcast with somebody that wants to, please reach out to me. I love to talk.

And I love to have new conversations with father.

Robbie (40:54)
Yep, for sure, man. We'll all link all that stuff in the episode too, so that way you guys don't have to remember. I'll put in his Instagram and his podcast, all that good stuff. But I appreciate you jumping on with me. It's been great conversation. I'm sure we'll have to do it again in the future.

Here 4 The Dads (41:09)
Sure, thanks man, I appreciate it.