397 | Making Real Life More Compelling Than Screens, The Purpose of Fatherhood, and Lessons from Foster Care (Kieran Lenahan)
Episode Description
What if the secret to raising kids who aren't addicted to screens isn't about restricting technology—but about making real life more compelling? In this episode, young dad Kieran Lenahan shares practical wisdom from the trenches of parenting four kids under six, including foster care experiences that changed everything. You'll discover why the simple question "What's the point of fatherhood?" should guide every parenting decision, and how a wooden box might be the game-changer your family needs.
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Kieran Lenahan is the founder of Malachi Daily, a scripture memory tool used by over 70,000 people to memorize Bible verses through gamified daily emails. He's an entrepreneur, coach, and father of four children under six, including children through foster care. Kieran and his wife are passionate about making real life more compelling than screens, intentional parenting, and helping families build rhythms around scripture memory. He lives with his family and leads initiatives that blend faith, technology, and practical parenting wisdom.
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The fundamental question every dad should ask and keep asking: "What is the point of fatherhood?" Let this guide your decisions rather than just reacting to whatever gets thrown at you.
Make real life more compelling than screens by creating engaging experiences—if physical reality is exciting, screens lose their allure naturally.
The wooden box method: Put phones in a physical container and commit to never looking at your phone when kids are asking for your attention.
Each child needs different parenting approaches—situational leadership applies to fatherhood, so learn to speak each kid's unique "language."
Foster care teaches you that every child has infinite value—there's no such thing as "practice" when it comes to loving and caring for any child.
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Learn about the next DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort
Subscribe to DadAwesome Messages: Text the word "Dad" to (651) 370-8618
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And one of those main principles is to make real life compelling. We think that life is good and God created it in the physical real world, in creation that you can touch and feel to be good. And if we can make that as compelling as possible, screens lose their allure. And we've seen that with our kids. And do they like watching shows? Yeah. Do we do a movie night? Yeah. But they would much rather go out and play in the yard and climb than watching YouTube or whatever it is. So a big one for us is let's make real life compelling and make decisions.
through that lens.
Welcome back to Dad Awesome. Today, episode 397, I have Kieran Lenahan joining me and I'll introduce him in just a second here, but want a quick shout out and invite you guys to join this fall, one of our cohorts for the Dad Awesome Accelerator. So we've graduated now 50 dads from across the country and we're about half full for the guys who have already applied and jumped in to join this six week sprint. So the Dad Awesome Accelerator is a team-based coaching cohort.
taking everything we've learned at Dad Awesome in seven and a half years and bringing it to a six week sprint of we're gonna bring the key core discoveries. There's gonna be specific homework. You're gonna be matched up with another battle brother. You're gonna learn and grow. it's like if you step into this, there's no way you can help but growing and learning and changing the way you engage the dad life. So I'm so excited to welcome you guys to apply. Go to dadawesome.org slash coaching.
to find all the information and a link to apply. And I'm so excited to welcome you guys into this journey. You've got about two weeks to apply for the cohort that kicks off in mid September. So definitely apply soon. Today though, Kieran Lenahan, I'm so grateful. I was introduced through a mutual friend. He leads this amazing initiative, resourcing over 70,000 people with a daily newsletter called Malachi Daily, helping dads and helping everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:41.718)
Memorized Bible verses in a fun gamified way. So we're talk about that resource He's a young dad. So he's got a five-year-old four-year-old a little one and a half year old and then a three and a half month old So that's his phase and we talk about young dad rookie dad advice But we also talk about big picture like the deeper like understanding the deeper why behind fatherhood and what is God doing in your family and we we of course Because their journey includes foster care we go
into just man, what has he learned through that journey? It's applicable to all of us dads. So grateful for Kieran. This is episode 397, my conversation with Kieran Lenhan.
Speaker 2 (03:30.882)
You have your little newborn and you haven't yet as dad taken your shirt off and done skin to skin cuddle with that baby. I'm out of that phase. My youngest is four. So I don't, there's not cuddling. There is cuddling, but not in the same way. This precious phase of those first, call it nine months of like as often as possible, skin to skin with your baby. There's an example. One rookie dad advice. Okay, go ahead. Give me your first top of mind.
Thanks.
Yeah, man, that is such a good one. That phase goes by so quickly. Yeah, I think I'd say to like, I think I came into fatherhood and I was, I'll say, prepared than I feel, I prepared less than I, knowing myself, thought I would have. And I think the question that often gets asked like, hey, what should I do? What books should I read? Do all this stuff. And I think all those things are great and you should read books. But I think for me, the biggest thing is thinking about like,
Just spend time meditating on what is the point of fatherhood? Like that question for me has framed so many decisions, both in our family, both for me as a husband and as a father. Just think about it. Pray through it, journal on it, talk to some other fathers, and let that be a really helpful guiding question as you enter fatherhood. And you can keep asking that as you go, because there's plenty of stuff that'll get thrown at you, and you want to bring yourself back to that question.
Yeah, let's double down and then we'll go some, few more high level tips as well, but double down for a moment. What has God shown you around the answer to that question in this first chapter? Your oldest is, remind me how old your oldest is.
Speaker 1 (05:08.718)
Five and a half. So we've got four kids, five and a half, four and a half, 16 months and three and a half months. Yeah.
Yes. So what does God show you to the answer of like this broad meta question of like why and what is the point and what is my role around fatherhood? Yeah, I'd love to hear some of your heart on that.
Yeah, and by no means do I have concrete answers that will probably give the same answer 10 years from now. But yeah, I think for me, what the Lord's been showing me, especially recently, is that so much of the point is to be present and in relationship with my kids. Like, and it's very cliche and maybe simple to say, but the more and more that I live, the more I realize there's so much distraction that will want to pull me away from that.
both from good things, like work and other things, but that is for me the things like, I actually being present? When I'm physically present with my kids, am I being mentally and emotionally present? And I think a lot of the fruit of a father-child relationship will be born from that level to which you are actually present with them.
Yes. It's like we almost need a friend to shoot us a message, to text us, to ask again, like, how's that going this week? Because you enter with more intentionality today and then two days from now, next thing you know, you're sitting next to them not thinking at all about the child you're sitting with because of all the other competing forces. What has helped you in these, if you can try to rewind to in those first
Speaker 2 (06:47.096)
kind of in that first six, nine months of as you entered being a dad, what helped you think more deeply, think more intentionally? Was it friends? Was it books you were reading? Was it like, what were some of the things that nudged you in, man, I wanna enter with my whole heart versus just survive this rookie dad mode.
Yeah. For me, reading books wasn't something that I did super early on. It's something I've started to do a lot more now. But for me, it was being around other fathers and fathers who are more experienced than me. that's one of the kind of going back to biggest pieces of advice is get around, get proximate to dads who are further along than you as far as ages and stages of kids, but who have just spent more time thinking about fatherhood, what it means to be a father than you have. Because there's...
amazing content out there. This podcast is one example of it. But there's no substitute for being in proximate community with other fathers who are constantly like doing things like this and asking questions and asking like, hey, how is that going? How present do you feel like you have been? How's it going with this one thing I know you're trying to improve on as being a father? And I think without that piece, it's like me really isolating. It's really hard to be.
a great father when you're not surrounded by others who are also great fathers. So if you don't have great fathers around you, find them. Do whatever you can to find them. That would be a big piece of advice I'd have.
That's good. That's good. What's in this present phase? Like what is, what's something recently that's made you smile in the dad life? It's just a gratitude moment. You're like, this happened and man, it brought joy to my heart. Can you share a recent story with your kids?
Speaker 1 (08:28.898)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because immediately a couple of them just pops in mind. Last night at dinner, we were eating tacos and usually it's the three big kids, my wife and I, and usually the baby's either sleeping, napping, just on the other side of the room or my wife is holding her. My wife happened to be holding her at this point. But our one and a half year old, 16 month old, Judah, is he lights up the room with a smile. It's just like the most contagious smile. He's so silly. He's so happy, so full of joy. And we're eating tacos.
Usually he's pretty good, like surprisingly good at eating tacos. But last night, for whatever reason, he didn't want anything to do with the taco. He just wanted to eat shredded cheese. And so he's just grabbing handfuls of shredded cheese off his plate and putting it into his mouth. And of course, so much of it is just falling. He doesn't like wearing bibs, so it's just all falling down onto his chair, his clothes, onto the floor. And at one point I just looked over and there's a bunch of cheese just stuck to the drool on his chin. And I just pointed out to the...
to the older kids, was like, guys look, Judah's got a cheese beard. And our entire family just broke out in laughter. And it was just one of those moments where I was like, man, this is so good. Like, this is so good. This is the stuff that we're gonna miss these moments when this type of stuff. When are we gonna have cheese stuck on a baby's chin and it looks like they have a beard and then you've got other kids that think that that's the funniest thing in the world. That's, I mean, that's one that immediately pops into mind. That was last night at dinner.
I mean, the fact that your son's name is Judah, I have to share this. This is two nights ago. I have four girls, as you know, and I sing them a good night song. There's a little, and I sing all their names. And I just chose to like mess with the song. This is just two nights ago. And I sang instead of the four of their names, four boy names. I sang four boy names and they were four names that actually are off the,
off our list of if God gave us a boy, these were names. And one of the names of the four was Judah. But get this, halfway through singing it, my six-year-old says, Dad, Judah is the name of the boy who, or no, they're like, where did these names come from? I was like, well, maybe they'll be the names of your husbands, is what I told them first, right? And then she's like, no, because Judah was the boy who hit me on the playground at this co-op. It's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (10:45.784)
This is like these moments that you, things are headed in this direction. for not watching a video. I'm holding my hand out like there's a path, a linear path. You think the dad life's going this way in this certain hour of this certain night. And you pull a left turn in an unexpected way, like celebrating a cheese beard or like singing the name of four boys in a prayer instead of singing there. The reason these stories are like, I want to remind all every one of us dads, like,
how do we take a left turn when all the kids are expecting that we're gonna go with this, we're gonna just continue forward? And the belly laughing that can come from that. Another quick example from our family would be we're watching America's Got Talent. I've never, I don't watch talent shows, but we've been pulling up on YouTube, like the highlights, like the most of Britain's Got Talent or America's Got Talent. And these clips make me cry.
Like I am crying watching these, cause they tell the story so beautifully, the backstory of these performers and the challenges and the struggle. And so the last few days, like as we've watched a few of these clips, the girls are just expecting that they're to look over to the side and see me with tears running down my face. Here's what I wanted to lead into that question though, is Kieran, what stirs your heart and makes you cry? Because often it's what we, you know, what's
stirs us to tears that actually is connected to something that God's put in us for our kids, for our families, for our purpose. I'm just curious, what are some of the things that really move your heart, break your heart? I'd just love to hear some of them.
Man, it's a big question. A couple of things come to mind. One is obviously very deeply connected to our story with foster care and adoption. And that's just knowing of, hearing of, seeing stories of kids who are through no fault of their own, just in a really tough spot, whether it's neglect or abuse or exposure to drugs and things like that at a very young age. That's one of the things that I think God had put on our hearts.
Speaker 1 (12:45.772)
since we were kids, since before my wife even knew we exist, each other existed, and was one of the things that united us in that decision to go into foster care. So I'd say certainly that. And then one that's a little bit more recent and one that we're actually praying through a lot as a family is just seeing some of the ways that an unhealthy relationship with technology is robbing kids of real childhoods and what I would argue is a real childhood and
freedom and maybe I don't know to what extent that's controversial or not but I've just seen I've seen so many examples out in the wild of kids missing out on real life because they're they've got a screen in front of them and that's something that increasingly is is bringing both my wife and I to tears and like it feels like one of those things that we're gonna do something related to that to to try to turn the tide and be a part of of some of the change that we think needs to happen and we're just kind of
patiently praying into that and trying to see where the Lord leads. that's something that really gets us fired up and brings us to tears.
we could spend multiple podcast conversations on each of those, which I love. let's at least take a step into both. Let's start, we'll go kind of reverse order. So let's talk about technology. I wanna talk about both how it's like the dad listening right now to technology, potentially they're washing dishes and they've got in their earbuds or this is a technology medium that we're sharing around something that can be absolutely bring deep harm or distance or.
get between you and the little eyes that need your full focus, right? But let's just, let's explore a little bit. And I actually have some examples I want to share around ways we're using technology to spur creativity and we're using technology. Maybe it's really good and helpful. We'll see, right? But talk first, what are you observing and what in this phase of fatherhood are you choosing to help combat this tide of being in screens all the time?
Speaker 1 (14:48.536)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, at a high level, some things that we've observed is, and this is even with like the teenager, the kids who are teenagers today who kind of grew up with phones in their hands and it feels like we're starting to see the fruit of what was going on, you know, 10 years ago when they were five, six and having screens. again, there's, I guess I'll caveat this with, there's always exceptions. There's always, this doesn't mean, you know, every single person, you know, who's 16 years old right now.
I'm not making any crazy claims. I'm just saying what we've observed is teenagers who lack the ability to make eye contact with strangers, to look them in the eye and shake their hand and greet them and say hi. Like we go to a community pool that we've been going to, my wife has been going to since she was born and her parents before that. And we actually worked there the first summers that we were dating. And there's a front desk and people walk in and you say hi, you know people by name, you shake their hand, you offer to help them bring their bags in.
things like that, and the people who are working there now, and it's something that we obviously very easily pick up on because we worked there and we know what it was like to work there. It's not a very hard job. And literally, like kids looking down at their phone, teenagers looking down at their phone, like hand in their heads, or head in their hands, and don't even pick their head up to look at people walking in to say hi, to check if they're signing in correctly.
to offer to help. And so it's like, you that's one example. The other would be, you know, if we're in a grocery store and we're just seeing a, you know, a three to five year old just sitting in the cart with a phone in front of them watching some mindless show that's, yeah, that's created literally to keep them watching the show and has been studied by scientists to keep them engaged. it's like, man, there's so much, there's so much that that child could be learning.
and experiencing in a grocery store or just like just being aware of surroundings and having a moment with their parent that they're with, building a deeper relationship. But they're missing that because that screen is in front of them. That screen is, to borrow language from Andy Crouch, like that screen is more compelling than real life for that kid. And that's been a phrase that I think has shaped a lot of how we're approaching things with technology is it's not like, no screens or it's not about the screens. It's about what's the point of
Speaker 1 (17:09.742)
Parenthood, what's the point of fatherhood? What is the end goal? What is the thing that we're driving towards with our kids? And like first and foremost is like people who love the Lord. And then there's a bunch of other like we want them to be emotionally intelligent. We want them to be able to think critically. We want them to have resilience. It's like, okay, what are going to be practices or decisions or things that we can do that put us in a position so that that's the direction that they go. And one of those like main principles is to make real life compelling. Like we think.
We think that life is good and God created it in the physical real world, in creation that you can touch and feel to be good. I think that, yeah, I think that if we can make that as compelling as possible, screens lose their allure. And we've even, we've seen that with our kids and they're still pretty young. Like, do they like watching shows? Yeah. Do we do a movie night? Yeah. But they would much rather go out and play in the yard and climb than, you know, be on my phone watching.
YouTube or whatever, whatever it is. yeah, anyways, there's probably a million other little practices and things that we can get into, but I'd say, you know, a big one for us is like, let's make real life compelling and make decisions through that lens.
Do you, so upstream is what are we modeling, right? So do you and your wife have any, like you've decided to put these boundaries or create these types of rhythms to keep the phone from being seen from your kids as something that has mom's attention or dad's attention. Any, any just habits, rhythms, boundaries that you've created?
Yeah, we have a wooden box that we keep our phones in and we just put the phones there. So much of this is modeling and we know that when we're not putting our phone in the box, we can notice a difference in our kids and their behavior and even in our own attention and ability to be present. And so for us, we just put it in a wooden box. I know there's a bunch of other technology out there that can help with that, but classic wooden box, we just put it in there out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker 1 (19:11.948)
And we've just decided we committed to each other. My wife and I just said, we will never be looking at our phone when our kids are asking for our attention. So practically what that looks like is we either keep it in the box or if we happen to be using our phone and one of our kids walks into the room and asks or says, hey mom, hey dad, immediately phone down. Like immediately we have to break attention with the phone and give the attention to our kid.
And so we've just made that commitment, like, never going to, I never want our kids to feel like our phone is more important than they are. Cause that's, that's a ludicrous thing. Even if we don't, we would never say that. That's what our actions might be communicating to them. If our phone holds more of our attention than, than they do.
that, I mean, the wrestle with this is if you go back 25 years, the demands for a young mom, for example, of communication demands, things that are waiting, people waiting for a response of this or that or coordinating this or the project management demands from a device, they didn't exist. They required driving to the place or picking up the landline, like in many ways, or sitting down and taking time with an email.
And it does feel like we've changed as a culture to expecting that mom or dad is kind of real time available throughout the entire day. I'm thinking back to like early my first job out of college, like there's no way to reach me or call the organization I worked for and get rerouted up to my phone, right? So there's no expectation of texting somebody back, no expectation of a call back during the day. Like I'm working.
And now it's just so laced to evening time, daytime, mom, dad. So the idea of what you're saying, if we could just like lower the expectations for ourselves and say, yeah, after they're in bed or during quiet time or this or that, then yes, when they're not in need of my attention, I can send some responses. That's the wrestle. Any kind of a, to play back and forth with this wrestle. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1 (21:18.998)
Yeah, man, what we've done is we've set an expectation with people just by virtue of like, we don't get back to them until we can get back to them. That that's just what they come to expect. Even as funny, my wife even will complain like during the workday, I have my phone on do not disturb always. So it's like you have to call twice in order to like actually reach me. But yeah, it's that is is tough because it's also what we've wrestled with is at the end of the night.
when you're tired and kids are finally down and you finally clean the house and all of that work is done for the day. The last thing that at least I want to do is be on my phone typing responses to people. But at the same time, it's like, all right, there is some element of like, yes, we want to get back to our parents, our friends, and things that we're doing that affect plans and things that we're doing the next day. I don't know that I have any grand insights there other than like,
Voice notes and voice transcription is getting really good now. so speaking is four times faster than typing, maybe even more than that for typing with two thumbs. And so, yeah, maybe just try to reduce as much time. But yeah, I guess I would maybe think through if you wanted to reduce that amount of time, what is that communication that's coming through? And just really put it under a microscope. Is the stuff that needs to...
be answered, is it stuff that needs to be answered urgently? Is there another way to go about communicating or dealing with this information? I don't know, that'd be a fun thing to get into from an outside perspective, me not having any emotional attachment to any of the correspondence going on and just be like, yeah, what if you just didn't answer that? I don't know, what would happen? And I'm, yeah, I'm a big communication guy, so I don't just say that because you can just ignore people, but yeah, it would be an interesting.
interesting thing to wrestle with. Like how much this is actually necessary.
Speaker 2 (23:15.648)
And I love the way you're thinking about that. I mean, you are a coach. This is what you do. You help companies, you help leaders, you coach them. To think about how many areas of my life am I welcoming a trusted friend or even potentially a coach that would come in and say, look at the struggle. These are some of the tensions we're facing. Communication being one of them, of time to project manage life, the things that my wife is kind of committed to. I'm using that as an example because she's primarily during the day with our four daughters.
And to let somebody else look under the hood and suggest like using voice or like saying, Hey, responding to messages without crafting the text that's perfect. there's, there's letting another outside person look in and say, Hey, what if we had turned these dials to allow to go right back to where we started here is that technology is not more valuable. That's glowing screen is not more valuable than these precious.
you know, in my case, four little girls, like they are the treasure, not whatever's on this screen. So, I think I'm affirming completely what you're saying, but I'm also like, I think I need some help. Our family, we could dial some intentionality to allow that to be more doable. So yeah, I want to also just get to for a moment, new things like, so AI and how, here's an example, our family, we are chore chart.
for our family, we've made it more fun using, we have cleaning mermaids in different zones. We've named them with mermaid names. And then we have our kitchen chores are named different fairies. Like we've like created and we've created visuals for these with our charts, the girls can see. And it's just an example of like, instead of just calling it you're in charge of washing dishes, it's the bubble fairy.
We have a system now, we roll the Game of Five, who does what each week. They have to like, they're rolling dice and like winning and they get to choose which role they have for the week. So that's an example of like taking something that could feel like, it's just chores and using technology in a fun way to create something that's a system for our family. Can you think of other ways that you've seen, you mentioned texting and I actually followed your lead, this app that'll voice text crazy. I'm in the two week trial. So you got to mention the name of that, but then any other way
Speaker 2 (25:33.218)
that you're using technology to help bring creativity or bring solutions for your family.
Yeah, this is one, I'm just, feel like in the beginning stages of wrestling with AI, there's a bunch of questions. Yeah, we're gonna be starting homeschooling this upcoming fall and not that our five-year-old needs to be using AI right now, like in his day-to-day for school, like that's the last thing he needs to be doing right now. But just thinking about like the world is changing so quickly and what does it look like? What is the future of what it means to be in a society where AI is prevalent?
it'll probably be a hundred times more prevalent than it is right now. I'd say the, so on the, the voice note thing, the transcribe to text, for whatever reason, my iPhone is, my iPhone is terrible at transcribing accurately for me to send text messages. If I want it to like type out the text, which is different than just sending a voice recording. The one that I am testing out is called whisper flow. There's a bunch out there and there's new ones that'll pop up, but it has been accurate and that's been, been really nice. But yeah, as far as like making our life
more or making mundane things more exciting. I love that use of creating zones and creating visuals and turning something that could be boring and have a ton of resistance and actually making it something that is fun, exciting, that kids look forward to. That's such a great reframe of right, like chores, like the word chores. We use that to describe something that we don't like to do and you've been able to turn that into something really exciting.
That's like, that is such a great example. And to me, that is, that is a use of, of technology that is compelling. And I've, I've been thinking about, you talked about the project management load that is on moms today. And I'm, I'm literally, I'm an entrepreneur. thinking about like, what, could I use AI to build something that takes some of that weight off of my wife's shoulders when it comes to meal planning and groceries and all of the logistics and scheduling and things like that. So I don't have any, anything fully formed yet, but that's.
Speaker 1 (27:35.246)
That's something I'm actively thinking through. I think that using AI as a tool for creation to me is a, that feels like a yes with, I'm sure with limits and boundaries and things like that, but that feels like a way to use it, use technology in a way that's healthy and contributes to our family's culture and things like that.
Yeah, when I was a kid, we were allowed a half hour of Saturday morning cartoons and that half hour was the catalyst for imaginative play for the entire rest of our day on Saturday. Whatever, like it sparked something and we've seen some of that with music with, you know, YouTube watching some creative music videos or music projects have actually sparked either dance or writing songs or wanting to learn instruments. And so in the same way, I think you can use
intentionally to expose incredible beauty and creativity. So lots more around that. I know we're just hitting the surface on technology, but I want to move us into the other passion area of when I asked the question around what makes you cry. You and your wife, your journey around foster care and adoption and how it's forever changed your family and you're just sharing that story. I'm going to link actually to a conversation you guys shared after your son came to be a part of your family.
So we won't have time for the whole backstory today, but what are some of areas that you and your wife have learned and what would you want to share with Dad Awesome around your foster care journey?
Yeah. If, man, if you feel like you have the capacity and you feel like the Spirit has planted anything in you that says like, maybe we should do that, it is likely to be one of the hardest things you'll ever do. And everyone's story in foster care is different. But the way that we've come to describe it is that it is messy and beautiful for, especially for believers to enter into that world and enter into a system that is broken and
Speaker 1 (29:35.854)
kids that are in broken families and to be a force for healing, for safety, for nurturing and kind of restoring something that is not as it should be. And so, yeah, I would just, I would encourage you to talk to people. Again, like proximity, it matters so much. A big part of the reason why we got in foster care was because we had really good friends who we watched them go through the process of becoming licensed and then welcoming in their first foster placement.
And we fell in love with the kid and then the kid went back to family, which ended up, you know, it was actually great, but it was also heartbreaking. so I think, man, just if you feel like there's any tug on your heart, just take the next logical step and see where it leads. And maybe it's not becoming foster parents, maybe it's supporting people in your community who are foster parents and in a million different ways that that could be helpful. yeah, I think it's one of those, I think if you ever
have heard about people talk about foster care, it's often said, and I can't verify to what extent it's true. I haven't looked at the actual data, but if each church in the United States adopted one kid or took in one child in foster care, there would be no kids without a home and foster care. it's like, what an opportunity for the church to step up and to fill that void.
One thing that I learned from you guys, you shared the last portion of this podcast process in your journey, things that people could accidentally say that could actually be harmful, hurtful, just they don't understand. And I'm certainly in this spot where I've said things that I'm like, later, I'm like, that actually my heart didn't come through there. But one part was when people say something like,
you guys, maybe you're practicing for your own future kids. This idea of fostering because you're taking, you're welcoming a child temporarily in most cases. And then, you know, back to a family member back when they're in a stable spot, using the phrase practice. Now I've never said that, like I don't at all agree. But your response though, when you were just like talking about children, God's children, children and the infinite value, infinite, like really.
Speaker 1 (31:41.025)
recommend it.
Speaker 2 (31:51.328)
it sparked this deep identity side that I know you're so passionate about, about knowing our identity and the treasured role of us dads knowing our identity, but then helping our kids know their identity and the treasured role with a foster child of celebrating that this is a, like, what a gift to help them see how valuable they are. This is not practice. Okay. So that's why I wanted to bring that up. I'd love to hear your heart on identity and on how we can help our kids see
how valuable they are.
Yeah, this is a great timing. Literally this morning, yesterday morning, I've been praying over that specifically for each of our kids. I know you've had Jamie Winship on the podcast and have listened to a bunch of his stuff and have done some with like listening prayer and some prayer retreats where we've done that practice. And so I had a conversation two nights ago with a friend of mine who, he and his wife, they're about to have their sixth kid. Their oldest is 11 and so he's, you know, he's
five years ahead of me on the journey. We literally set up a call. It was at 10 o'clock at night because we were wanting to learn from them about how do we train our kids on specific things. We've done some here and there, but it hasn't quite stuck and we had a sense that there's some tweaks that we need to make. I should have recorded the conversation. It was such a valuable call. On that, one of the big things that I feel like my friend Grant imparted to me,
was the importance of identity and building rhythms into your day-to-day that reinforce those rhythms. And actually, even the training that you do and the way that you are raising your kids and that you speak to your kids, you can use the language of identity to actually help them be able to distinguish when they do something wrong or do something right. hey, that is you living out your identity. Like, that's who you are. That's you leaning into the way that God made you. Or if they're doing something that's not, it's like, hey, that's like, this is your identity.
Speaker 1 (33:50.626)
This is outside of that and helping them kind of put language to that and be able to see like, there's this element of like, yeah, I have, you know, and we don't say this to our five-year-old, but it's like, there's a fleshly part of me that does things. I'm like, and I can feel after I do it, like, that's not actually who I am. That's not me. The enemy might speak that over you and bring shame. But anyways, all that to say, after that conversation with my friend, he encouraged me. He was like, yeah, like pray, listen to the Holy Spirit.
and ask for specific kind of markers of each of your children's identities. And so again, like I'm in the middle of all of this. Like none of this is fully baked. But so we've got two more kids to be praying through like what their identity is. And then we're going to figure out how to work that into rhythms. We'll put it up. We have a whiteboard where we do a lot of our stuff. It sounds similar to like chore chart type thing. And we'll have their identities up there. I want to do, we have four kids. There's usually four weeks and a month.
Each Sunday we do Sabbath on Sunday. Each Sunday we'll pick one of the kids and speak blessing over them at dinner and figure out a rhythm for that. there's always a bunch of things that we're testing out and trying out and trying to figure out what works for our family. the importance of, like, if we think about it for us, if we don't know who we are, it's really hard to live an effective, faithful, obedient.
And if that's true for us, like how much more true is that for our kids? Whether it's foster kids or whether it's your biological kids who are going to be with you forever. yeah.
Kieran, shout out, we can link out to the two-part conversation we do with Jamie Winship, but I want to come in for landing around scripture, Bible, scripture memory, meditating on God's Word, actually like chewing on scripture and letting it change us. And I've actually heard you use that description around when you go over a Bible verse time and time again, like,
Speaker 2 (35:52.046)
a good meal, you actually get more nourishment if you chew longer. I actually don't know if it's true, but you said it, so I'll say that it's true. No, it's true. you take your time versus rush a meal, I'm sure it's better for your body. So the idea of not only taking scripture and treasuring it and memorizing it, but you've actually created a tool that's free and it's available to all the dads listening to help engage deeper.
with, I think it's just two Bible verses a month, right? Every other week you take us through a Bible verse. So could you share why it matters to you first and then make sure we all know how to go sign up to receive those emails?
Yeah, for sure. Man, it matters to me because quite frankly, just, without me intentionally even memorizing a Bible verse, it changed the trajectory of my life. A super quick version of the story was working in a corporate job that I kind of knew deep down, like this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. I had just come to faith a handful of years before that. And randomly, I'm about to go in to try to...
create a new role inside of the company to avoid doing the thing that I felt like God actually wanted me to do, which was to leave that job and to start a business for the first time. And I was trying to avoid it and run away. And that morning I was prayer journaling and he brought this scripture to mind. And I was like, what does that have to do with my situation? But anyways, it did have a lot to do with my situation and that's what eventually led me to leave the job and go on this path of entrepreneurship.
Anyways, all I to say, that was with me not intentionally memorizing scripture. And so I was like, man, I also want to know the Bible more. I would love to be able to, you I have all these friends that can quote scripture and know exactly where it is and the context. And I was like, man, I want to be able to do that. That seems really helpful and didn't really find any tools out there that could help. And so ended up building what is now an email newsletter where we spend five days meditating on one Bible verse and memorizing it and learning its contexts.
Speaker 1 (37:54.964)
And yeah, we do two a month. We will, you we'll have to talk a couple months from now. We're in the process of building an app right now. We're hoping it'll be ready by October. That will help you do that. You can memorize as much scripture as you want and learn its context. And so that's in the works. But yeah, the newsletter is called Malachi Daily. The name Malachi means messenger of God. When we originally started, we sent text messages of God's Word and so hence Malachi Daily.
And yeah, so it's a free newsletter. You can sign up and yeah, come join us. We've got over 70,000 people memorizing Bible verses every other week.
It's amazing. yeah, we'll make sure to send in our show notes, make sure to send our, all of our dads over to sign up and to let's, let's enter with not only like a, hey, I hope this happens, but no sign up so it's in your inbox. So we actually can put action to, and yeah, so grateful for this conversation today. Kieran, was there anything?
if you just had like another minute or two to like impart anything else that we haven't talked about yet that you're like, I'd want you to know this or I'm learning or being challenged by this. Any last words before I ask you to pray for us?
Yeah, I'd say one, just one other kind of tip or principle that we've, think we heard, fortunately we heard early on in our parenting and then as our kids have gotten older, we've realized like, man, that is so wise and helpful. And that is understanding that not each of our kids needs the exact same type of parenting. And I studied leadership and organizational culture in college and
Speaker 1 (39:30.422)
there's this idea of situational leadership and there's a bunch of other phrases to describe it, but it's essentially that not every team member that you manage or lead in a business or an organization needs the exact same type of leader. And the best leaders understand what, how do you communicate, how do you speak the language of that team member in a way that's going to motivate them and is going to help them kind of live out who they are and their true identity. And so for us, that has just become the older our kids get, like, wow, they're so different in so many ways.
We have this shared culture as a family, they're also individually, like they are really uniquely made. And so I'd say as if you're a young dad, new dad, old dad, whatever, think about that. Like think about and pray into like what might this child need that is different than some of our other children. That has been a really, like that felt like a paradigm shift for us where both my wife and I grew up where we were all essentially parented the same way. And there wasn't a lot of like
tailoring to each kid. And I think there's an extreme to that and you can probably do too much and have it hurt rather than help. But I think on the whole, just ask that question, think about that question. Like, what is it that each kid needs from us as parents? And what is their currency? What is their language that most connects with them? And how do we speak that? And how we parent them and raise them?
if we could hear from heaven on what their specific, you know, ways that God has equipped us to bring specific, but also to know their identity, what we talked about earlier, if like we knew these two things of like their specific needs and then words from heaven that resonate deeply of who God's created them to be, right? I mean, that's massive. It's massive. And often we're not even asking or looking or searching for that. thank you, Kieran. Would you say a prayer over all of our, all the dads listening?
Yeah, absolutely. Lord, thank you so much for the gift of fatherhood. I just pray for all the fathers who are hearing this, who are listening to this, no matter where they are, what they're doing. Lord, I just pray that you would give strength and a sense of hope to the fathers who are listening to this. Give them vision for what you want their family to look like and the culture that you want them to build and the mission that you have their family uniquely on.
Speaker 1 (41:50.124)
And so just pray that they would have ears to hear that they would make space to listen for your voice to speak into those things because you want to speak into those things. Lord, you created the idea of family that was your invention. That was something that you decided was how you wanted to go about accomplishing your will in this world. And Lord, I just pray that the fathers listening would be able to open themselves up to what it is that you have for them and their families and to steward that well. And so Lord, give.
I give practical advice around the fathers listening to this with other dads who are awesome, who are pursuing being awesome intentionally, and just that there would be an iron sharpens iron interaction on a regular basis that would happen in community between people who love you and are seeking you. And so Lord, let this be so. We pray all this in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.
Speaker 2 (42:46.04)
Thank you so much for joining us today for episode 397 with Kieran Lenahan. All the conversation links, the show notes, the link to Malachi Daily is all going to be listed at dadawesome.org slash podcast. And then just look for episode 397. Guys, I am so thankful that you listened today.
Let's prayerfully be dads with a bias towards action. What is the next step for each of us? Let's pray into that. You can look, of course, in whatever podcast player or at that website that I just linked you to. You can look back through the show notes and say, man, what?
What could be my takeaway? Sometimes it's hard as we listen as we're washing dishes, mowing the lawn, working out, driving. Link back into the show notes and just prayerfully say, what can I put into action today? And then one more time, I want to welcome you guys to go to dadawesome.org slash coaching to prayerfully apply to join us for this fall's Dad Awesome Accelerator Group. Hey, I'm praying for you. I'm cheering for you. Thank you for listening. Have a great week, guys.
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"The biggest thing is thinking about what is the point of fatherhood? Let that be a really helpful guiding question as you enter fatherhood, and you can keep asking that as you go."
"We think that life is good and God created it in the physical real world to be good. If we can make that as compelling as possible, screens lose their allure."
"We will never be looking at our phone when our kids are asking for our attention. I never want our kids to feel like our phone is more important than they are."
"Not each of our kids needs the exact same type of parenting. The best leaders understand how to speak the language of that team member in a way that's going to motivate them."
"If we don't know who we are, it's really hard to live an effective, faithful, obedient life. If that's true for us, how much more true is that for our kids?"
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