Episode Description
Unlock five steps to become a moment-maker dad. In this DA+3 Group Guide, Patei Iyegha will encourage you to slow down, create “sticky moments,” and reflect on your family’s values. Tune in to this bite-sized episode and walk away with practical ideas to become more intentional and present as a dad.
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Patei Iyegha is a trauma surgeon who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Andrea and 8 kids, ranging from 18 to 2. When he’s not working or spending time with family, he’s probably training for or competing in an obstacle course race or other endurance event. If it’s hard, he’s interested!
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· Power of Words: Actions speak louder than words. Pay attention to the words you are speaking over your kids.
· Slow Down: Slow is pro, so lean into simplicity and creativity.
· Technology: Take back 13,000 hours with your kids just by spending two fewer hours a day on your phone.
· Sticky Moments: Invest in connection now so you’ll have influence in the future.
· Family Values Audit: Your time and money will always reveal your priorities.
DA+3 Group Guide Discussion Questions:
Are there any words or phrases your parents said that have stuck with you since childhood?
When did you last ask your wife or kids to audit your words?
What holds you back from slowing down and embracing simplicity and creativity?
Why do you think slowing down is important as a dad?
How has your phone/technology use changed over the years?
What would you do with an extra 13,000 hours with your kids if you put down the phone for 2 hours a day?
When thinking about your own childhood, what “sticky moments” stand out to you (ex. fried egg Fridays, family Bible story time, Christmas light adventures, etc.)?
Do you have any existing “sticky moments” that your family regularly looks forward to?
If you were to pull up your calendar right now, what percentage of time is spent with your family?
What are three ways you can invest time and money to create closeness with your kids?
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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] What's up guys? Welcome back to DadAwesome. This is episode 441. My name is Jeff Zaugg and we're in this summer series, the DadAwesome Plus Three Group Guide. So we've been over and over this summer saying, man, to be DadAwesome, you need to get a group, you need to be having conversations with other dads. You have to be growing together. Being DadAwesome is not a solo journey. It's a group journey. That's how we bring our best to our families is being in relationship with other dads. So, this is a short episode to help you guys have conversation topics to talk about with other dads. So today we're going back in time, five and a half years ago. Patei Iyegha is one of my best friends, an incredible supporter of this ministry. He's done more Fathers for the Fatherless events than anyone. He's been on the podcast twice. He's one of our advisory team members helping to bring direction to this ministry, and he does not know that I'm resurfacing this conversation, so it's pretty fun. This was way back from episode 49. This was December of 2018, we recorded this conversation, and this is a, this is fun because we actually arranged this conversation with five taking action, five ways to take action around being a moment maker dad, being a moment maker dad. We actually pulled some insights from the book The Power of Moments from, this is by Chip and Dan Heath, that will be linked in this podcast show notes. But let me jump right in. These are five action steps from that podcast. The full podcast will be listed as well, but these are five action steps for being a moment maker dad. The first one is the power of words. Our words, what words are we speaking over our kids? There's also tone that's involved here. So it's what we speak. It's how we speak those words. And do we have action that follows up those words that we speak. So guys, we have to open our mouths, as dad, and we can't stay silent, we have to speak life into our families. We get to speak life. Our words, their foundational, moments, we can make all kinds of moments. We can create moments as a family, but if we're not speaking words to our kids, encouraging with our words, that lights up the eyes of our kids. And if you're curious, if you're like, man, how are my words? My best litmus test for this area is my wife. She'll tell me, I don't have to ask. She'll tell me if my words have some sharpness or some crabiness or some edginess to them. But if you're curious, do a little audit by asking those closest to you. You can ask your older kids, you can ask your wife, hey, how have I been speaking? How are dad's words? Am I bringing encouragement? Am I bringing care and love, or am I bringing, are my words communicating disappointment or frustration or aggression? So words. The power words is the first one. The second one, today, is slow down. How often do I need to hear this? Slow down. Slow down the way I'm leading my family. Slow down my calendar. Slow down the way I'm loading up the girls into the car. Slow down. One, sage kind of wise voice that I've heard multiple times, I'm blanking on his name right now, but he says slow is pro. Slow is pro in so many aspects of life to our relationship with our Heavenly Father, to our marriage, to our parenting, slow down. Creativity flows in moments where there's time and space and simplicity. The next, the next action step today is around technology. Guys, does my phone or computer screen or TV, is it adding to, is is technology and screens, are they adding to the creativity in my home? The closeness with my family? Are screens and is technology inspiring closeness and love and care and creativity? Or do video games and screens and movies and shows and social media, does technology subtract from what I want my family to be? This is one that I felt, when I listen back, you know, there's a little bit of a there's a time capsule here when I listen back to a podcast recorded five and a half years ago, when I only had two daughters at that time. It's a little, it was convicting to me because when I talked about screen time, the iPhone had just released screen time. So you could actually see how much time is my phone open. I mentioned, like, the three, four hour a day using a device like a phone, and it's gone up significantly for me. And I'm like, I don't want that. In fact, we, as an action step, if we can, if we can find back, if we can take back two hours a day of screen time, and our phones will tell us if we accomplish that, if we can just take back away from the glowing device to the eyes, the sparkling eyes of our kids. If we can take back two hours a day over 18 years that we have our kids at home with us, that's 13,000 hours. Guys, we get 13,000 hours back. If we can just take back two hours per day, less time looking at this device. I heard recently some, this is from Andy Crouch, who we've had on DadAwesome before that the only things in all of the world in creation throughout the history of time that glow are the sun and a campfire. This idea of introducing things that emit light, things that glow, is so brand new to our world. It's in the last, like 3, 4, 5 decades, right? The idea of a glowing device that's in our pocket, that's with us, it's in our cars, it's at the kitchen table, the glowing device. It was only campfire and the sun. You can't even look at the sun. It's too powerful. So it was like looking at a campfire as your one option for something that glows. It's mesmerizing. It draws our attention. Well, the phone is doing that, and it's harming our families. It's harming my family the amount of time I spend on my phone. So, that was the, that was the third thing is technology. And man, we could, we could spend a lot more time there. The fourth one is Sticky Moments. Here's a clip from five and a half years ago with Patei Iyegha. Sticky moments, number four sticky moments. The example from, from the book was Mystery Waffles, fried eggs Friday, is what I brought up, is something I've been doing for about six weeks now. We did, as a family, we did a Polar Express Christmas light adventure, I mentioned in the last episode, so that's another example of a sticky moment we're hoping to do every year is kind of a rhythm around Christmas time. But the whole concept here is can we create moments that our kids, again, their eyes are filled with wonder and they want to do it again. They're asking for it again. We're creating those kind of ongoing sticky moments as a family. Patei, what would you add to ideas or even reasons why creating sticky moments are important?
Patei Iyegha: [00:07:47] Well, I mean, if your kids want to be with you and want to spend more time with you and begging for you, that's just going to give you more influence over their lives, right. So when it comes to those harder conversations, when they're pre-teens or teenagers, you've got a lot of investment in there because you've been spending the time, speaking into their lives. They've enjoyed being around you, they trust you, they love you. You know, it just that it just leads to more influence when they get when they get older. And so that's a good thing period, for sure. And you know, there's so, so yeah, sticky moments, you know, I think it's important not to, to get caught up and coming up with something super unique and like, you know, and, that nobody else is doing. The kids love it that you spend time with them. And, you know, one of the things that, that that we do is just father daughter date night, and it can be a date night or it can be a breakfast. But it's, you know, it's dad, it's a daughter, we go out, you know, I, you know, I treat them like a, a lady. And, you pay for dinner, obviously. And, and it's just about them. The phone's gone. It's just asking them questions about their, what they enjoy. What, what's going on? And they love it. And they can't wait till it's the next time. And they want to if they want to find out when, exactly when, when's the next time we can do it? Which is hard because of my schedule, but, they're looking for it. They're looking forward to it. And, and so that's, I mean, that's a, that's a, I want to say easy example, but that's a pretty low fidelity. You got to eat and, and just take them with you and and so you don't have to get bogged down with trying to come up with super, super fancy ideas. Not that I'm thinking that Fried Egg Fridays is super fancy. It's just you got a nice, you got a nice title to it.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:36] There's a whole spectrum to it.
Patei Iyegha: [00:09:37] There's a spectrum to it.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:38] It sounds good.
Patei Iyegha: [00:09:39] Yeah, yeah, it sounds good. I got to come up with some fun sounding names.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:42] Exercising together, is one that you guys do. I mean, climbing the rope in the backyard. My, my wife just came up with one, she called it, Starbooks. It was a Starbooks date, and they, she brought her little stars. So my three daughters to Starbucks to read books. And again, it's a play on. But they were like, they just, they loved it. And it was they got to split, they actually split the hot cocoa. So, she paid for one small hot cocoa, and they put it in two little cups for the, for my, you know, my two year old and five year old. And she got her coffee and they sat and just by being in a different location, reading books together, they felt like it was special time with mommy. So we can we can create all over. And they actually mentioned, or I think Ross brought it up, engaging the different senses that sometimes if you just add change or location, change, you know, a taste can be a connection with your senses again. Not just go, hey, let's just watch something or let's just listen to something, but try to combine some of the senses that can help to make them more moments your kids are asking for more often.
Patei Iyegha: [00:10:39] And connect with them. It's just I mean, at the end of the day, that's what you want is that connection with them so that, you know, you know, they're asking for more because it's like, this is me. You're, you have shown them that they are special, that they're worth your time.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:53] That's right.
Patei Iyegha: [00:10:53] And, and they eat that up.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:55] The fifth action step this week with our DadAwesome +3 Group Guide for you guys is do a family values audit. So we can, we can say that this or that is important. We can, we can, we can say man we can put it on the wall. We can say this is our family values. We're going to be this and this and this. This guides and directs our family. But when you audit, when you do an audit, it says, there's two truth tellers to my values. It's time and money. So I can look back at where have I been spending money, where am I spending money and where am I investing my time? You can look at those two things. My calendar reveals my priorities. Your finances, where you invest money reveals what matters most in your life. So what do I value? And this is, this conversation that Patei and I had around this, it's like, man, we need to often look into where's, where am I spending my time and where am I spending my money and and say, is, is this aligned with what I care most about? And first we actually, we have to actually do a little bit of introspection around like, what do I care most about? What do I hope is true about my family, about my journey as a dad? But I want to encourage you guys do a family values audit. It starts with, if you don't have some family values, things that guide your family, you gotta, we need to go into and prayerfully go into that process. But man, this is so valuable. And I've done time studies before where I've actually looked at, man, where is my time going and does it align with those values? I mentioned this at the top of the podcast, but the book The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath,so valuable for us as dads and this idea of, man, can we just create, with intentionality in these five areas we talked about today? Can we help our kids want to be closer to dad? Patei talked about this, like this idea of closeness. If we can just have closeness, we have to put our screens down for closeness. We have to press in with our time and our money, if we want to have closeness. We have to slow down, if we want to have closeness and we have to speak. Man, the power of words are more powerful if there's closeness with our families. So those are our top five action steps this week, onthis DadAwesome Plus Three Group Guide. Praying for you guys. Cheering for you guys. Have a great week.
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· 6:31 - "The idea of a glowing device that's in our pocket, that's with us, it's in our cars, it's at the kitchen table, the glowing device. It was only campfire and the sun. You can't even look at the sun. It's too powerful. So it was like looking at a campfire as your one option for something that glows. It's mesmerizing. It draws our attention. Well, the phone is doing that, and it's harming our families. It's harming my family the amount of time I spend on my phone."
· 7:48 - "If your kids want to be with you and want to spend more time with you and begging for you, that's just going to give you more influence over their lives. So, when it comes to those harder conversations, when they're pre-teens or teenagers, you've got a lot of investment in there because you've been spending the time, speaking into their lives. They've enjoyed being around you, they trust you, they love you. It just leads to more influence when they get when they get older."
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