413 | Forgiveness Fridays, Throwback Tuesdays, and Building a Close-Knit Family on Purpose (Michael DeAquino)

Rhythms & HabitsFamily VisionRaising Jesus Followers
Written By Jeff Zaugg

Episode Description

What if you could prepare for fatherhood before the chaos even begins? In this episode, Michael DeAquino shares how he and his wife are helping expecting parents get on the same page before baby arrives—and why that window of time matters so much. You'll also hear how Michael's family runs themed dinner nights every single day of the week (yes, including Forgiveness Friday and Scenario Saturday), plus how yearly vision summits with your kids in an Airbnb with a hot tub can transform the direction of your family.

  • Michael DeAquino is the co-founder of The Parenthood Project and author of The Parenthood Primer, a pre-parental counseling resource for expecting and new parents. He and his wife have five kids ages 2 to 12 and are passionate about helping couples get on the same page before the chaos of parenthood begins. Michael spent 15 years in church ministry before pivoting to equip parents earlier in their journey.

    • Creating space to think—like a yearly family summit away from home—is the first step toward vision. You can't see where you're headed when you're drowning in the daily grind.

    • Themed dinner nights (Monday Meeting, Throwback Tuesday, Thankful Thursday, Forgiveness Friday, and more) turn ordinary meals into consistent connection points that shape your family culture.

    • Your kids' names can carry your family's vision. Michael tied each child's name to a core value—closeness, generational faithfulness, righteousness, light, and stewardship—and speaks it over them regularly.

    • The best time to prepare for intentional parenting is before you're holding the baby. Pre-parental counseling removes the shame and chaos that often keeps dads from engaging later.

    • Keystone habits cascade into other habits. Start with what you're already doing (like dinner) and build intentional rhythms from there.

  • JEFF ZAUGG: Welcome to DadAwesome. And here's where we'll start—how, thinking of your older kids, how would they introduce dad? Just kind of a short intro. What are a few of the things they'd say about dad?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, man, I'll have to ask them this afterwards. I actually think I did ask them this recently, but, you know—dad loves God, dad loves his wife. Our kids are always trying to get time with us at the end of the night, and we have a nine o'clock rule, like, this is mom and dad time. And they really know that. So dad loves God, dad loves mom, and obviously dad is about the mission of God. I think those are some of the things that they would say. "Dad works a lot" would probably be some of the throw-under-the-bus comments. Yeah. They're awesome.

    JEFF ZAUGG: I know vision is something you're passionate about—having vision for your family. And in this chapter, you're actually helping other parents have more vision. I think you even mentioned before we hit record that there's a vision summit. What does vision look like in this chapter for your family? How have you found a vision, and how do you reclarify, realign with the vision? Just tell us a little bit about the vision process, specifically in dad life right now.

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I was very much, you know, six years ago—my oldest was six at the time—and there was just no vision. No vision whatsoever. I mean, maybe there was an arbitrary vision of "I want my kids to become Christians." That was probably it. But when I really got into it—and that's cool, the fact that my oldest was six, and since then I was able to really dial in on vision—I was afraid I kind of wasted six years, right? But I think what's cool is God was able to use these last six years and get us on a vision.

    So yeah, we definitely started having our yearly family summit, what we call it. And we take that very seriously. We go out for two or three days. Now it's a big deal. We bring our kids when they're seven and up—they can join, and they love it. We get a place, usually an Airbnb with something like a pool table. It always has to have a hot tub. And so we just have a time for three days with them, and we speak into them what we're trying to do for the next year.

    Small things, even like, "All right, we want to be more healthy." This was like three years ago. We want to have healthy breakfast, and we want to have breakfast together. We weren't having—kids would come downstairs, eat cereal, and that was it. But then in our family summit, we said, "All right, we're gonna have breakfast together, and it's gonna be healthy, and that's where dad's gonna have a devotional with you right there, all at the same time." That was three years ago, and literally every day now—we have one day where they can have cereal, the other six days we're together having breakfast. My son, for like ten years of his life, would eat cereal or those big Eggo waffles. That was what he ate for his first ten years of his life, basically. And so now it's different.

    Those are the kinds of things we talk about, and we just reinforce it on a weekly basis when we do our family meetings. But yeah, vision is huge. It's really helped us say no—say no to the things that we used to just say yes to, just because we were going along with whatever the culture was telling us.

    JEFF ZAUGG: Just to dive in on that—so you take time away, rent an Airbnb with a hot tub, take the older kids with you. This is not you and your wife going on a mountain and coming back with your faces glowing with the vision for the family. You're bringing the older kids. And then it's tactical, like, "We want to make this calibration, and we're going to execute it six out of the seven days—healthy breakfast as a family with bringing God's word." That's very tactical.

    And then you mentioned real quick, you said, "And then in our weekly meeting, we make sure we're still headed in the right direction." So two things: What's another example? That was an example three years ago that you're still doing. What's another example of a discovery at the yearly vision summit that has been added to your family's priorities?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, and I know—I'm sure you've talked to other guests about this—it's just like, what are the pain points? What are the things that are not working? I think you were just on a couple episodes ago with Chris Cerello about getting into the car, that kind of stuff. But like, the after-dinner madness is real, right? It's like the before and after. So we always have to figure out what we can do.

    Our vision is we want to be a close family. We want to be a family. So what can we do to continue to foster connection and make sure we're not—now that my kids are getting older, it's very easy for them to just kind of go into their rooms and hide. So how do we foster closeness even in these older years and keep our family together? Because everything around us is trying to just disintegrate us.

    So even after dinner, we do a whole cleanup. We turn on Frank Sinatra—we blast it, we clean—and then immediately, if it's warm outside, we always go on our family walk together. And that's like a thirty-minute time where we're together. And they're not allowed to do scooters, because we learned that doesn't really keep us together. So we have to—"Can we do scooters?" And we always have that one time a week where we can do scooters.

    And then in the colder months, we shift into "Let's read together on the couch." So we literally—I have videos of us, all of us, even the two-year-old just looking at a book upside down—but we're all together and we're reading. And again, that's like ten, fifteen, twenty minutes maybe, but it's just that kind of stuff. That idea was starting to get figured out at our yearly summits. So it's just things like that—how are we doing? And then we talk through it, and we just come up with some practical plans. Some stick, some don't.

    JEFF ZAUGG: Yeah. So you use the word closeness—close. It's part of your vision. What are some other words, or maybe that's the leading one? Give us a little more texture around where you're headed.

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah. Man. So each of our kids have names that are tied to our vision. Our son Levi—Levi means "attached." It literally means "joined together." And so that idea of closeness comes from his name. So every time we pray—if I'm praying with Levi or I'm praying over him on our Shabbat dinners—I'm saying, "God, thank you that Levi reminds us that we are a close, tight-knit family." And so he has that; it's like his thing.

    And it's funny—when you start to speak into your kids, you obviously hope that they start living and leaning into those things. I would say the person that does it the most is my second kid, my daughter. Her name is my wife's maiden name, so we passed on to her a generational name. Her middle name is my wife's mom's maiden name. So she's got this multi-generational passing on. She represents that. And it's this idea of, "How can we pass on things generationally?"

    Even during Christmas, I can see her really living in it because she wants to make Christmas special. She does it, and she's picked up on it. She's like, "I do this so that this can get passed on generationally." So it's what we can pass on, and also upstream—what can we take with us from the previous generations? She's all into that.

    Our third child, her middle name is Lane. And so it's a path. We always talk about this path of righteousness. Our family is a family of faith.

    Our fourth child, her name means "a light." And so we want to be a light to our community around our table. Hospitality is a big thing.

    And then our last child, her name means "stewardship." And it's funny, she's our two-year-old. Every time we pray, I say, "God, everything belongs to you. We are—" and we shout the word "stewards!" And my two-year-old, if I were just to say "We are..." she just yells, "Stewards!"

    JEFF ZAUGG: Powerful. So you've anchored these things that matter most to you—you've tied them to each of your kids. Each of your kids represents a bit of a beacon of that value.

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, 100%. Our names are obviously the things that are tied to us for the rest of our whole entire lives. It's the first thing we tell people when we meet them. Our names carry a lot of identity in them. So why not make it even more than just our name and what you call us? And that's a biblical thing.

    JEFF ZAUGG: And what you shared is, in some ways, the "where is your family headed?" You shared that in that answer. In some ways you shared the "how"—how you're headed that direction. So if you're talking to a dad who feels like there's a void, like, "Man, I want to have more vision for my family. I want to do this first year. I want to rent an Airbnb with a hot tub." What would you say as a starting point? I'm gonna ask for the high, high level because we have limited time. What are some principles you'd say—"Hey, bring this along as ways to think about setting a course for your family"?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, I mean, the framework—I think getting just time away is one big thing. That in and of itself, even in our chaos right now—we're moving, we're launching things, we have our thing on Sunday—just getting away allows us that space. So I think that's step one: creating space. Most people are so busy they don't have the space to step out of something and think. So I think that's number one.

    The framework we use—and we've adopted this, it's definitely not something we came up with—is the five capitals. We talk about relational capital, spiritual capital, physical capital, intellectual capital, and financial. That's what we go into, and everything is framed around that.

    So we ask: How did all those five things happen this past year? And then, how can we either level up, sustain, or remove things for the next year? It's easy because sometimes people are like, "I don't understand how to even start thinking about a vision." But as soon as I say those five things, it starts to get them to, "Okay, I can take that now. What's my relational capital? How are my relationships right now?"

    And then you just name all your relationships. My wife and my kids—that's circle number one. What's circle number two outside of that? Your extended family or maybe your community, your friends, your church. And you start working out. And at that point you're like, "Okay, I think I can—relationally, my wife and I—how can we build on that?" I don't want to get too deep in it, but that's kind of what we've done.

    JEFF ZAUGG: Yeah. I also feel a lowering of the bar, like, you don't have to enter this time away thinking, "We have to come away with a tablet engraved with my perfect phrase of a family vision." Instead, you're giving examples of almost the classic Post-it Note exercise—let's stop doing this, let's do this better, let's start doing this—and truly, stacking hands together, praying together. Now let's actually move into some concrete steps in the month of January, then February.

    And just not to miss this—you have a mechanism, which is a weekly meeting of some sort to check in. What does that look like for your family?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, so every day at dinner we have a different theme. Monday is "Monday Meeting." And so it's the time where we just talk through—are we aligned with the things that we're doing? This is, what is it, James Clear, Atomic Habits—cascading and keystone habits? You're already there; build off of these things. I wish people had told me that. I just read his book two years ago and I was like, "Oh my goodness, I just take what I'm already doing and try to find other habits that I can cascade off of them."

    So we do Monday Meetings. At dinner, while people are eating, we just talk through things. We don't try to overwhelm; we try to hit one or two things. We go through the schedule, and then we talk about one or two things—mostly one thing that we feel like we need to really sharpen for that week.

    And again, just like you said, every time we get together for our yearly thing, there are things where we're like, "Okay, this hasn't really worked. We gotta tweak this." And so going into this next one for us, there's still things that—and I don't go into them like there's not grace. Like I said, I didn't start until my oldest was six. And so to see just where things are now—even just the idea of building financially, having multiple homes. I started with one. I didn't start with three homes. I started with one home.

    JEFF ZAUGG: I have to ask—is Monday the only one that has a theme, or do you have every day of the week with a theme?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Every day is a theme. Yeah.

    Tuesday is "Throwback Tuesday." My parents live with us, so what we do is the kids go around, and I say, "Just say one random word, any word." And they'll come up with something. This past Tuesday, it was like "rain" was one of the words, "sneaking out" was another word. My kids are just—I'm like, "Sneaking out, okay, don't talk about that." But my parents are there, and I say, "Okay, out of all the words that you just heard—there's four or five words—which word got something moving in your head about a memory?" And then my parents will just tell us stories. So it's called Throwback Tuesday.

    Wednesday is "High-Low Wednesday." We do high-low-buffalo.

    Thursdays are "Thankful Thursday." We start out with somebody—they have to thank somebody—and then they thank somebody who hasn't been thanked.

    Friday is "Forgiveness Friday." We go around, and everybody has to say, "Hey, I'm sorry, I did this. Do you forgive me?" And then the other person says, "Yes, I forgive you."

    Saturdays are "Scenario Saturdays." This is where we kind of talk through training. Like, "All right, here's a scenario. I want to know what you guys would do in this situation. Let's role-play this."

    Sunday is our "Shabbat Sunday." So it's more of a special prayer time celebration.

    So yeah, that's it.

    JEFF ZAUGG: I have not heard—I've chatted with a lot of dads, Michael—the delight that you bring to that and the intentionality. And of course you might miss one of those because of a trip or this or that, but that's okay because you have it four times a month. You get to come around to these. So I'm so grateful for the really tangible example that we can borrow from.

    Now I have to turn the conversation a little bit because I knew this four years ago when we were biking those hundred miles together. I knew that you're passionate about helping dads. You're an intentional dad. But you've moved over these past years beyond just a local small group to equipping, counseling, building a whole platform and a coaching resource. You're helping churches in the country of Brazil because your parents are from Brazil. You're helping globally on the area of fatherhood and parenting.

    And we want to celebrate your book launch, The Parenthood Primer, a book focused on—you're expecting your first baby, and you're helping these parents, these dads, these moms have a game plan going into holding their baby for the first time. And then the project you also launched that's even broader than that, The Parenthood Project.

    I would love to know first—well, I want to congratulate you on launching this and this niche. I just haven't heard this niche being served. So grateful for you and your wife. Give us a flyover—why and how. I'd love to know the why and a little bit of what you're doing with the how.

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah. Thank you. So my wife and I were on a church staff, a traditional church role, working a lot of times with youth. For a long time—eleven years—deep into college ministry, and then four years really more specific toward high school ministry.

    The reason why we came from college to high school was because I was just like, "What is going on? These kids who grew up in the faith—the stats are staggering. Like twenty percent of kids after they graduate high school..." I saw that firsthand for eleven years. I was like, "What if I can get to these kids actually before they get to college?" And I thought, "High school."

    But then when I got to high school, I was like, "I'm still getting to these kids too late."

    And then I started thinking, "What if I got to them as a middle schooler?" And then, beyond middle school, if you keep going younger, it's kind of weird to be directly involved in these kids' lives on a regular basis. But then I thought, "Well, we have to get with the parents. They're with the parents more than they are with me."

    So I was like, "What if we actually shifted and started getting with the parents a lot sooner, earlier on?" And maybe you get with the parents less as they get older, but then you start getting more in with the kids later on in life.

    Anyways, I just started to think through—what if we got to them even younger? And then it's like, wait a second, we don't really do much with parents in general. From a church context, I've interviewed and spoken to many churches. There's just not a lot of parenting ministries in general, and there's not a lot that is offered for young parents.

    And so then I started to think, "Well, what if we got to people before they even became parents?" Before they even hold the baby. Before they even change their first diaper.

    Here's the deal: when my kid was two and a half, somebody came alongside me and tried to get my face focused on parenting. Someone tried. There was a couple that were just so awesome, and they were like, "Hey Michael, you should..." But I was so busy, and there was just too much going on. Eventually God opened up my heart, and I started to get it. But this was four years after that.

    And then I started to become like, "Okay, I gotta get all my friends to do this too." But they too—I'm trying to get them, and they just couldn't step out of it. They had a hard time. All these dads. I started a dad's group almost six years ago, and I've seen them slowly start to get it. But this paradigm shift moment was harder to do once you're already in the middle of it.

    And so I was like, "What if you can get to people before they get into all this?" In a moment where they're probably more open—because there's not a lot of chaos going on—but also there's a felt need.

    Most dads, when you find out you're having a baby—moms are a lot of times very excited. When I found out I was having a baby, I remember sitting down on my couch, and no joke, for almost three hours in this blank stare of... "What?" I wasn't ready for this. I didn't even prepare for it.

    And so I remember having actually a hard time, and I didn't want to tell anybody that we were pregnant because I was just like, "I'm not even happy with this." Obviously as I started telling people, I started becoming more happy, and the arrival of my son was awesome.

    But I was like, "What if I can get to dads earlier?" And really dads too, because moms are the ones usually reading all the books. I thought, "Man, if we can get to dads earlier, and moms, doing pre-parental counseling before they even have kids, I think that would help them start to really take on a lot of these principles that are very important."

    It's not about diaper changing or sleep training. There's a lot of books on that already. This is about mom and dad getting on the same page about the kind of family that they want to build and how their marriage can stay intact through that journey.

    JEFF ZAUGG: Michael, that was perfect. And there is also another layer that affects a young dad when they're raising a toddler or in this phase, which is shame. "I feel like I'm missing it and getting it wrong." So there's a hesitancy to go after learning, mentorship, community, brotherhood.

    And so you're beating that as well. Instead of "I'm discouraged, I'm exhausted, I feel the chaos, I don't have time"—all these things could apply to someone who's got a two-year-old or a five-year-old or a nine-year-old. But you're getting ahead of time, ahead of any of that. There's no lies being whispered of "You've messed it up" because in this case, it's pre.

    So I just want to celebrate. My wife and I—it was partially because I was saving for an engagement ring—but we did pre-engagement counseling. Before, instead of waiting until I put a ring on her finger and all the world pressure of "We have to move towards this wedding date," we did our counseling before we even got engaged, as a dating couple. And so that's what I'm hearing. You're providing something for—it can be anywhere in that window of time of anticipating that the next chapter is coming. You can enter. I know you guys provide a six-month journey through community. You have your book, you have content for small groups.

    And so we're going to send our dads to all your resources in the show notes. But also, we're all thinking of someone. I just walked through the last year of celebrating with my brother-in-law having their first baby. And I'm like, "Anything I can do to help—anything." I'm just so much joy in getting to welcome and now hold my little niece.

    So now we have a tactical resource—this podcast episode along with all of your ministry resources. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd want to share—just to give context to the dads—anything else you'd want to share before I ask you to pray for us?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, obviously I think this is something that whether you're thinking about getting pregnant, you're pregnant, or even in that first year—there's obviously a lot going on, a lot of sleep deprivation—but this is still a time. And yeah, like you said, you walk around, you see people pregnant all the time, and hopefully we'll see more and more people pregnant.

    I think this is definitely about getting ahead of it before it all comes. And so we're looking far ahead. Right now this is The Parenthood Primer, which is the pre-parental counseling. Then there's gonna be the Preschool Primer. Then there's a Pre-Teen Primer. We're really trying to get these first ten years where there's not a lot of "Hey, before you get into this next phase, be intentional about it."

    And the first chapter, honestly—when I wrote it, I wrote it for dads in mind—because it's like, you have to embrace parenthood. That's chapter one: Embracing. Because you're going to get all kinds of feedback in your job and all the other things that you do. You're gonna get accolades, recognition. You're not gonna get a lot of recognition as a father, and therefore you sometimes will end up placing a lot of your time and energy into the things that you get more out of.

    And that's what happened to me. I was so stuck into my career, and I didn't feel like I was getting a lot out of my parenting. So I poured a lot of time and attention into my career in those first six years. And man, I wish I did have somebody helping me in those first six years.

    So I'll leave it at that.

    JEFF ZAUGG: Yeah. Michael, thank you. We just celebrate. Anytime I discover another resource that helps, I'm just like, "Yes!" And discovering a dad who is literally moving attention away from a career that's going very well to focus and help other dads and parents—it's just not that common that someone's pivoting their career to help dads. So I just want to say one more time: thank you. Would you say a short prayer over me and over all the dads?

    MICHAEL DEAQUINO: Yeah, absolutely.

    Father God, you are the greatest dad that we have, and we look to you to try to be a good dad to our kids. And God, you were obviously intentional creating Adam and Eve and putting them in a garden and giving them direction. God, you had such intention in wanting them to be fruitful and multiply, and you gave them a vision. You were walking with them in the garden, and you still are walking with us, God, even despite our failures. God, we want to just emulate and be just like you.

    And I know right now there's a lot of dads that are listening, whether they're already dads years in—I do pray a special prayer for those dads who can start to look to the younger dads and maybe start to think, "How can I pass on something to them? How can I mentor them?" I do feel like the church needs more mentors—more older men, older dads to mentor the younger dads.

    I pray that this will be a blessing to them. I pray for all the new dads and the expecting dads to feel excited about this journey. Definitely more excited than I did.

    And God, that you will just bless them and their families. Thank you for Jeff and this time, and just his heart to want to bless dads and help dads be awesome. So God, please continue to bless Jeff and his ministry.

    In Jesus' name, amen.

    JEFF ZAUGG: Amen.

    ---

    END OF EPISODE 413

  • "I didn't start until my oldest was six. And to see just where things are now—there's a lot of grace." – Michael DeAquino

    "Our names carry a lot of identity in them. Why not make it even more than just what you call us?" – Michael DeAquino

    "You're going to get a lot of recognition in your career. You're not going to get a lot of recognition as a father—and that's where you'll end up placing your time." – Michael DeAquino

    "Everything around us is trying to disintegrate our family. So how do we foster closeness even as our kids get older?" – Michael DeAquino

    "What if we got to dads before they even hold the baby—before the chaos, before the shame sets in?" – Michael DeAquino

 

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