337 | DA+3 Group Guide: Dr. Jackson Drumgoole
Episode Description
Gather your DA+3 Group and lean into the wisdom of Dr. Jackson Drumgoole. In this 10-minute episode, you'll encounter brilliant strategies to be an intentional and influential dad. Check out the discussion questions below to prompt meaningful conversations about problem-solving, resilience, hospitality, and more.
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Dr. Jackson Drumgoole is an inspirational speaker, author, and veteran with a heart for fathers and families. He and his wife, ShDonna, have five children.
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· Be the Loudest Voice in Your Kids' Ears: They can't hear you if you're not fully present.
· Encourage Persistence and Resilience: Emphasize the value of sticking with commitments and completing tasks.
· Teach Problem-Solving Skills: Encourage exploration and let your kids see you overcome obstacles.
· Create a Safe and Welcoming Home Environment: Let your home be a place where your kids can invite other children over to experience fun and safety.
· Positive Declarations: Pray bold declarations with your kids and their friends.
DA+3 Group Guide Discussion Questions:
What people or influences do you think are speaking the loudest in your child's ear?
What are those influences telling your children? What do you want them to be hearing from you instead?
When your kids want to quit or give up, how do you encourage them to stick to their commitments?
When you were growing up, what tasks or activities taught you resilience?
How can you create similar experiences for your own kids to teach perseverance?
Do you encourage your kids to explore new interests and hobbies? What kind of activities are they trying right now?
Dr. Jackson Drumgoole describes his home as a "Kool-Aid" house where all his kids can bring their friends. What steps have you taken to make your home a safe and welcoming space for your kids and their friends?
What is your current routine for praying with your kids?
Do you pray with your kids when their friends are around? Why or why not?
What is one new positive declaration you want to incorporate?
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:00:39] Welcome back to DadAwesome. Today, episode 337, this is the second installment of this summer series. So, we've got the summer series going, DadAwesome +3. DA+3 discussion guides, group guides and I just pray that this is helpful. These are shorter podcasts that are launching back to content from the past. So, today's conversation comes for episode 298 with Dr. Jackson Drumgoole. And I'm taking content from the past, I'm saying this is my top five takeaways. So some of you guys, that's helpful, you're like, well, tell me your takeaways. Well here's my top five takeaways, I want to share them with you today. The whole purpose though is in the show notes all of the discussion questions. I'm trying to move you guys, this summer, into activation towards brotherhood. The DadAwesome way is you and other dads together, growing together, encouraging one another together, learning together, holding each other accountable together. Sharing, man, this was hard, can you guys help me here? Friendships and brotherhood is the DadAwesome way. So that's the point here. Episode 337, today, featuring these top five takeaways. So here we go, top five takeaways from Dr. Jackson Drumgoole. And, here's the first one, be the loudest voice in your kids ears. Dads, this is right to me. I want to be the loudest voice for my four daughters. The loudest voice when they think about where's wisdom come from? When they think about where does cheerleading come from? When they think about where does encouragement come from? Where does helpfulness come from? Where does blessings come from? The loudest voice. The loudest voice should be my voice, as dad. And there's a couple kind of sub points from this, one is just be present, be involved. If your voice is not heard, if you're not in proximity to your kids, then you have no chance of being the loudest voice in their ears. Be the primary influence, means that we're, we're trying, in a culture that's all kinds of signals are coming at the kids all the time, we're trying to bring our intentionality and bring our presence and say, hey, actually, this is influence. This is the God's way. It's opening the Bible with our kids. It's, it's talking about things going on in the world with our kids. It's, there's so many ways that we can be a primary influence, and there's so many ways that we can increase the dial of intentionality around our presence, our involvement, our intentionality, our, am I fully present or am I partially there? That's going to affect us being the loudest voice in our kids ears. The second top takeaway is, man, we need to encourage persistence and resilience. I asked some questions around just man, what about like how hard should we push our kids? I want my daughters to be resilient. I want them to finish their commitments. And he, Dr. Jackson Drumgoole, he came back with, man, we actually need to teach our kids the value of sticking with their commitments. Their word is a big deal. We need to emphasize completing tasks rather than just our focus be on competing and in a mindset, this is a big deal, mindset of perseverance. This is what we celebrate. You stuck with it. You stuck with it. That's what we celebrate, not how many points they score in the basketball game. So let's really focus and increase our intentionality around, man, we can help our kids grow in persistence and resilience. The third takeaway is problem solving, problem solving skills. This is such an important area for us to foster and encourage with our kids, is can we can we be a problem solver here? Hey this happened, can we can we solve problems there? And also a way to create more opportunities for problem solving. We actually did this recently, my daughter and I, there's a door handle that was snagging, it wasn't working. So we we took it apart together, looked at all the parts, put it back together, and my daughter saw me a little frustrated because I was having a hard time. I couldn't fix this door handle. The slider door that had this piece that was supposed to retract, it wasn't working. Anyways, she got to be a part of that problem solving with me. But we can also, we can encourage exploration. We just talked up this slack line in the backyard of the house we're renting. The slack line is all about exploration. Balance, you're walking on a tight rope, you got to figure out which trees to hook it to you. Where's the right spot for the ground? How do you ratchet the strap to be tight enough to hold dad's weight? So exploration can be a new park to explore. It can be, trying out a new, let's try kayaking together. Hey, let's try, this summer is a perfect time for encouraging exploration. Exploration leads to challenges. Challenges lead to a need for problem solving. So the problem solving, there's so much more I can grow in this area of helping my girls be problem solvers, encouraging them to explore. The fourth takeaway is create a safe and welcoming home environment. So, they were known as having the Kool-Aid House, this is Dr. Jackson and his wife. A home environment where kids, your kids want to bring their friends over. A home environment does not mean huge money and you're always serving all this crazy food and drinks, it doesn't have to be that. But, but you are, you do have a heart for hospitality. You have a spot that you celebrate and encourage your kids to bring their kids over. It doesn't mean you have to have all the perfect, the game system, the theater room, this or that, but it does mean that you're encouraging and fostering, our house is a house of fun. Our house is a safe place. We celebrate and encourage our kids to bring their friends over to our place. So I think we, there's a lot of growth that my wife and I can still work on to make our home be a spot that, like our girls are, is like, come to my house. That's the spot I want to be. We all can grow in this, but it's a huge deal. And if you listen to the full podcast, man, he has a lot to say about that topic. The last one is positive declarations, and this is such a cool story. I want you to actually listen to Dr. Jackson Drumgoole talk about the driving his kids friends, the culture of prayer, and then him go into praying some declarations, the ones he taught his kids when they were the age three. So take a listen.
Dr. Jackson Drumgoole: [00:06:37] I was taking all the kids to school in my huge suburban, right. They come in in the morning about 6:00, fill up my living room, and before we leave there, we say that, we say declaration and we would pray, everybody, everybody, you know. And I would pass the microphone around hey, this morning, hey, you're praying this morning. All right, you're praying this morning. Mr. Drumgoole, I'm sleepy. Hey, you're riding, you're praying, let's go. And there's coverage of it until we got to the point, because again, everything to a child is normal. Everything for a child is normal. And if they, if they didn't experience that in their households, it's okay, come over here, this is what we, this is how we, this is how we rock and this is what we do. And so they would just jump on a mic or whether we forget to pray when the kids in the back, hey Mr. Drumgoole, we forgot to pray. Well hey, take take us to the kingdom, brother, let's go. Take us to throne room this morning.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:28] That's it. And you're going full circle, though, to being the loudest, wanting to be the loudest voice in your kids ears. And because you create a safe, welcoming place, now you're the loudest voice or a loud voice in your kids friends ears. And through declarations, this comes back to flourishing. Because I've heard you pray this prayer that you taught your kids to pray these declarations, and I believe the idea of flourishing is all threaded throughout here. Do you, do you recall off top of your mind, because I know it's been a little bit since, you were driving the kids to school. Can you read some of the, pray some of the declarations with us now?
Dr. Jackson Drumgoole: [00:08:01] I'm a child of the Most High God. I'm a winner. I'm not a winner. I'm the head and not the tail. I'm a strong finisher. I prosper, flourish, and succeed in every area of my life. I prosper, flourish and succeed in my finances. I prosper, flourish and succeed in my body. When I pray, He hears me. When I pray according to His desires, and then I know that I have what I asked for. When I speak to Him, He, when I speak, when He speaks to me, I listen and obey. I'm a child of the Most High God and it, this probably goes about a few, about a few minutes., but that was it in short.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:33] Yes, and all of us dads can write declarations and can teach them to our kids. And then when we hear our kids voices declaring, we get to soak it right back in, which I know is part of your heart there.
Dr. Jackson Drumgoole: [00:08:43] That was the point of doing it. I think I taught them that when they were three years old, and they were three years old, and we'd stand up in the morning and they'd say that. But I wrote it because of what I was going through at the time, and I needed to know who I was in Christ and what I needed to hear from them, to remind to, for them to remind me and me to remind them. And we just have that cycle. That's the flourishing part.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:05] Oh my goodness, I loved this conversation. This was again almost a year ago with Dr. Jackson Drumgoolel, these, these points. But this is my takeaways, simply my takeaways. So, if you look in the show notes of the app that you're on right now listening to this podcast or you just go to dadawesome.org/podcast and just find episode 337. All of the discussion questions are listed right here. So this is all set for you to invite some dads over to your backyard for a campfire. Invite some dads to, to go fishing for the day, but talk about this. Invite the dads out for a bike ride, but at the end of the bike ride, sit down for a cup of coffee, iced coffee, and and talk about these questions. This is simply a resource for you to be DadAwesome. It means it takes someone to be the spark. Someone to go first and say, hey, let's get together, but then let's talk about being an intentional dad. And here's a quick listen, this week's podcast, quick listen ahead of time. And then we'll talk about these five takeaways from this episode. Or you can just show up and you'll have the discussion questions you can lead into this time. So I'm praying for you guys. Have some great conversations this week.
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· 1:54 - "Be the loudest voice in your kids ears. When they think about, where's wisdom come from? When they think about, where does cheerleading come from? When they think about, where does encouragement come from? Where does helpfulness come from? Where does blessings come from? The loudest voice. The loudest voice should be my voice, as dad."
· 5:21 - "Create a safe and welcoming home environment. A home environment where your kids want to bring their friends over. A home environment does not mean huge money and you're always serving all this crazy food and drinks, it doesn't have to be that. But you do have a heart for hospitality. You're encouraging and fostering, our house is a house of fun. Our house is a safe place. We celebrate and encourage our kids to bring their friends over to our place."
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