Becoming a Dad for the first time can be challenging, right?
- What role do I play?
- What am I supposed to do now?
- What do I do to provide?
- I feel like a spare part
?? All quite common feelings I had when I was expecting our first boy when I was 29.
See more about what it means to be a modern man and modern Dad.
I felt that there was limited support for new Dads to help us prepare for the life changing mega bomb that was about to drop. Luckily, there are people like Bernie Landels and Claire Stead who specialise in developing parental confidence for kids.
How do I ‘do’ Dad?
I still struggle to this day if I’m honest. I don’t yet fully know or understand what is expected of me as a busy working Dad and I think with this comes at times an unhealthy amount of pressure and burden. This burden is heavily self inflicted but as an ambitious business owner, striving to create a business that can give the lifestyle I want for me and my family, I feel at time it is necessary to put this pressure on and hold myself 100% responsible and accountable for what I do.
They Don’t teach Dad in school is something you’ll often hear me reflect, and in this duo of videos around the topic of parental confidence and the importance busy Dads engaging more with their newborns, we discuss and uncover so much about the practicalities of what we can actually do but also what it is that might prevent us from going all in with our kids.
Touch and the huge benefits of connection.
Touch connects us to one another and is a language of its own. This is Bernie Landels approach to how she helps parents build confidence through touch. In a fascinating conversation about the lasting benefits of touch we talk how Dads can get more involved, the things we can start to do more of (and when to do it!) and how this plays out in better connections with our kids and also better confidence as a Dad. Often we feel like a spare part, like we might damage the precious cargo and that our input doesn’t matter. Bernie challenges this and embraces a partnership approach to creating better confidence in the family unit. Some really good takeaways here too so watch for those!
How can Dads actively engage with their kids to be more confident and present?
Talking with Claire Stead was a real eye opener in to how important it is to engage more proactively with our kids at a young age and the lasting impact this has on our kids as they grow. Claire recognises that support for Dads in far less than it could be and is keen to share ideas about how Dads can be the one to inspire curiosity, willingness to learn (not just educated!) and what we can do to recognise small success to enable us to become more present and more confident as a working Dad.
Additional resources around the topic of parental confidence and the importance of engaging early with our kids.
Our guests on the topic in this article recommended a couple of additional resources and I’m happy to share them here. Please do take some time to watch these videos and be sure to explore the Oliiki app and connect with our guests if you are interested in the topic of parental confidence for busy working Dads.
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