Dads of Differently-Abled Kids

Are you a dad of a child with a disability and you are hurting for a sense of community with other dads like you who understand your daily life experience? Are you looking for help such as resources or just someone to talk with or ask questions? My guest is here to help.

David Hirsch is a podcast host, dad of 5 and the creator of a network for fathers raising kids with special needs called Special Fathers Network.

To take the assessment mentioned in this episode or to learn more about Special Fathers Network visit:https://21stcenturydads.org/

Email David Hirsch at: david@21stcenturydads.org

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dad-to-dad-podcast/id1373738974

Special thanks to Zencastr for sponsoring The Fatherhood Challenge. Use my special link https://zen.ai/CWHIjopqUnnp9xKhbWqscGp-61ATMClwZ1R8J5rm824WHQIJesasjKDm-vGxYtYJ to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.

Transcription - Dads of Differently-Abled Kids

---

Are you a dad of a child with a disability and you are hurting for a sense of community

with each other with other dads like you who understand your daily life experience?

Are you looking for help such as resources or just someone to talk to or ask questions?

My guest is here to help in just a moment so don't go anywhere.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere

to take great pride in their role and a challenge society to understand how important fathers

are to the stability and culture of their families environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone.

Thank you so much for joining me.

My guest is David Hirsch, a podcast host, a data five and a creator of a network for

fathers raising kids with special needs called Special Fathers Network.

David, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

Jonathan, thanks so much for the opportunity.

I really, really enjoy the work that you do.

One of my favorite questions is what is your favorite dad joke?

I don't know if it's my favorite one, but here's one.

Where do you learn to make banana splits?

Where do you learn Sunday school?

They're not see that one coming.

Well David, there has to be a story behind why you got involved with helping dads with special

needs children and why you started Special Fathers Network.

What is your story?

So I want to become a father for the first time at age 27 years ago.

I was looking for fatherhood resources and couldn't find what I was looking for, but stumbled

across some statistics.

24 million kids growing up in father apps and homes, four out of every 10 in America.

The perception that it's those poor inner city black kids and it's really bad in the black

community.

Maybe seven or eight out of 10 are growing up in father apps and homes, but in absolute

numbers, there are two times number of white versus black children in America growing

up without their dads.

So it's not somebody else's problem.

Not led to helping start the Illinois fatherhood initiative.

One of the countries first statewide, not for profit, fatherhood organizations, the signature

program of which is the annual father of the year essay program, which is attracted, no

exaggeration, more than 425,000 Illinois youth K through 12 who write essays to the theme,

what my father means to me, fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers, father figures for that matter.

And that organization still exists in the mission of that Illinois fathered an initiative as

to actively engage fathers in the education of children about seven years ago when my

baby went off to college.

I felt like I was talking to me and he said, what I thought I heard was you should do a

cross country bicycle ride and I said, well, you obviously have the wrong person.

I don't own a bike you could ride across the country and I'm not an endurance bike rider,

but I couldn't shake the idea, talk to some friends who were known endurance bike riders,

bought a bike, started training, put a crew together, put a plan together, flew out to

LA, peddled back from Santa Monica to Chicago, 21 days, 2,325 miles.

And I lived to tell the story.

I was then 54 years old, didn't know that I had something like that in me and it was

a transformative experience on a lot of different levels.

And I felt like I found my voice.

I had been talking about the importance of father involvement, but with all the media print

radio TV media that we were doing across the country, that led to giving a TEDx talk in

October of 2015, entitled Why We Need to Break the Cyclothother Absence, beginning of 2016,

I ended up writing a book, my first book entitled A Father's Journey to Break the Cyclothother

Absence, which is a little bit about the bicycle ride, more about the advocacy, and a little

bit, I started talking then about the relationship or a lack of a relationship that I have with

my dad.

So that was the beginning of the 21st Century Dads Foundation and a couple of three years

into it, it wasn't meeting one of our objectives.

What I mean by that is that we anticipated that we would be able to get the fatherhood

programs, school based, workplace programs to work together, and we couldn't.

So we thought about closing the 21st Century Dads Foundation down, but before we did that,

we thought we would identify the four most challenging areas for fathers that we could identify.

The first was raising kids in high poverty areas, like urban areas.

The second was working within incarcerated dads, and then it had been removed not only

from their family, but from society at large.

The third was working with teen fathers, men who become fathers in most cases inadvertently

as teenagers.

And then the fourth area is working with fathers raising children with special needs.

Those are the four areas that we found to be the most challenging, our board, the not-for-profit

board, narrowed it down to the last two categories, teen fathering, dad raising kids with special

needs, and that was the beginning of the special fathers network, this dad-to-dad mentoring

program for fathers raising children with special needs.

In our simple notions of a year ago was that we would recruit a small army of seasoned

dads, dads who have ten or more years of experience raising a child or in some cases,

children with special needs, and match them to the dads who are close to the beginning

of their journey raising a child with a similar or special need.

So that's the short story.

So basically you have dads older or more experienced dads mentoring newer dads.

That's exactly it.

So that's how it started.

And then with storytelling, like I was making reference to the youth writing stories about

their dads, somebody says to me one day, "Hey, Hirsch, what do you think about podcasting?"

And I thought the question was, "What do I like about listening to podcasts?"

I said that they're entertaining, they're informative, some of them are inspirational.

So now what do you think about listening to podcasts?

What do you think about hosting a podcast?

I said, "Well, that's pretty comical.

I'm an investment advisor.

That's what I do, occupationally.

I have no experience with interviewing, no radio experience, no editing production experience.

That's a funny thing."

And so, you should think about it.

You'd be sincere.

I think you'd do a good job.

So those were the seeds that were planted that germinated very quickly into what we know

today as the Special Fathers Network or SFN Dad-A-Dad podcast, which just recently produced

its 300th episode.

So it's mostly dads, dad's, dad's, dad's, father figures telling the story about raising

a child or children with special needs.

But I'm also interviewed dozens of women now and other healthcare providers and just

interesting individuals who have something to add about this important relationship that

kids have with their dads.

But in most cases, it has to do with dads raising kids with special needs.

And so we're on the same page, John.

We're talking about autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, rare disease, missing a limb, missing

limbs, deaf, blind.

There's no disability that's out of bounds.

And it's very profound, right, to see the amazing things that these families are doing.

I was laughing earlier at the part of your story where you were telling that somebody was

suggesting that you started a podcast and you heard something about listening to podcast

and reminded me my own experience.

I had absolutely no desire or interest in doing a podcast at all.

Really did not like to do it.

I loved listening to them and I listened to a lot of podcasts.

But yeah, just did not want to start one.

I've wipe brought it up and it was a very unusual thing for her to say.

I mean, it wasn't until I was driving by myself and I kind of let my thoughts wander on

that topic.

And I let my mind finally go to the idea that it was probably not specifically my wife,

but that God was trying to call me and was using my wife to do that.

And every hair on my body stood up and I started to shake and I felt like God was right there

looking at me and I realized, whoa, this is not, this is serious.

This is actually a calling.

This is not a joke.

And so I went into a prayer about it and I voiced my objections to God.

And you know, well, I figured, be honest with them.

It's not like he doesn't already know my thoughts anyways.

So I was very blunt with him about how I felt about it, but I told him, you know what?

I know who you are.

I shouldn't be here.

I've been broken and you gave me my family back.

You gave me back.

I mean, you restored me.

You did so much for me.

And now you're trying to become my friend and now you're asking me to do this.

So I'm not about to say no.

I'm just saying, I'm going to say yes because it's you and I know who you are.

But as far as me, this is very uncomfortable.

So I'll make a deal.

You open up the doors.

You take ownership of it.

You set the agenda.

You run things and I'll be your human grunt.

But I can tell you, you know, to this very day, it shares you and I are speaking.

He's kept his end of the deal, which tells me everything that I need and everybody else

needs to know about how he feels about fathers, how he feels about fatherless children,

and how much, just how much he loves each and every one of us.

Thank you for sharing.

Yeah.

So on the next question, I'm a dad of a son who is diagnosed with type one diabetes at age

three.

Do you know very many dads with that experience?

And how are they benefiting from being connected socially?

There are some dads in our network that have children with diabetes.

That's 100% for sure.

But admittedly, that's not the main focus as far as the number of interviews I've done.

To give you a sense, I've probably done 75 to 80 interviews on autism, 40 something

on Down syndrome, maybe as many unsurpassable palsy, maybe as many are more on rare disease

because there's like six or seven thousand different rare diseases.

And then there's a more limited number of disabilities that relate to physical disabilities

as opposed to intellectual disabilities.

So diabetes is real, right?

So life altering can be a life ending experience if not treated.

So I think we need to be super focused on addressing that.

And diabetes can be managed, right?

In some cases, rather successfully over a very long period of time.

Certainly, if it's gotten properly diagnosed and it's treated correctly.

So I don't want to differentiate between, well, what does it like to be a father or

the child with diabetes versus fill in the blank, right?

We have some common fears and concerns, right?

You know, how is this going to affect my child's ability, right, to learn or physically

develop?

What's their future going to be like?

What's my relationship with my child going to be like because of that?

So these are all common experiences and fears that we have.

And I think it's important to not say, oh, I only want to associate with other dads

who have children with diabetes, right?

That might be helpful at least initially because you have something in common.

But I think that when you take a step back, when you widen your aperture and you understand

that there's basic human concerns that we have, we found with the groups of dads that

we get together within the special father's network, but it's less diagnosis specific.

And it's more important to be in contact with like-minded dads, right?

Yes.

Yes.

You know, not all of us are wired the same way, right?

You know, some of us see our primary role as being the provider, a more traditional experience,

right?

You know, I'm going to work.

I'm going to provide for my family, you know, let my wife handle all things, medical,

all things educational.

And I'm not here to judge, right?

If that's what works for your family, God bless you.

But you know, I think more is expected of dads today than ever before, which is a good thing.

You want dads to lean in, being a dad doesn't mean one thing, but you know, we've broken

fatherhood into four different categories to help dads get, you know, a little bit more engaged,

be present, physically, emotionally, and spiritually in their kids' lives.

So obviously there's a financial commitment, right?

Dads are expected to be providers, but how do we be present physically, right?

Especially for non-custodial dads to be present physically is a challenge.

But third is to be present emotionally.

I'm not an emotional creature, right?

Nobody wants an emotional financial advisor.

I'm pretty sure of that.

That's what I do.

Right?

Nobody wants an emotional like air travel, you know, you know, you want somebody who's going

to be steady, right?

Somebody who's, you know, going to be able to focus and stay, you know, on task.

And you know, so it's difficult for me.

And I think a lot of other guys to express their emotions, be empathetic, be sympathetic

to others.

You know, you hear the phrase, hey, you know, why don't you just put your big boy pants

on or, you know, suck it up.

And I think that, you know, there's a place for that, but, you know, I don't think that,

you know, that's what our family needs, right?

I think we need to be a little bit more engaged, you know, from an emotional standpoint.

And then the fourth aspect of fathering quadrant that we talk about is being spiritually

present.

And who's the spiritual leader in your family?

Sometimes it's both parents, sometimes it's the mom, sometimes it's the dad, sometimes

it's nobody.

And, you know, maybe you didn't grow up in a spiritual home, but, you know, it's something

to think about, right?

So we have a self-assessment tool that we created for dads to get some immediate feedback

on their fathering and it addresses each of those four areas.

Towards the end, I would like to cover how are those, how dads listening in our audience

can access that tool.

And I wanted to go on to the next thing.

I was wanting to really get into paternal postpartum depression, but the interesting thing about

that is that takes me back to the time when I was sitting in the doctor's office and my

son was being diagnosed with type one diabetes.

And the thoughts I went through that started to spiral and they said it could also be leukemia

and I kept thinking, you know, well, I sure hope it's leukemia.

Well, that's easy because if it's leukemia, well, you just, it's simple.

You just get a bone marrow transplant and that's it.

That's over with and everything's good and life is normal.

And then waiting in the doctor coming back in and confirming it was type one and my heart

sinking, spiraling emotionally, feeling very, very much disconnected, feeling alone.

And the one thing that I was hurting for the most would have been something like what

you're offering now.

A network of dads that I could connect with that I could talk to, not specifically just

type one dads, but dads who were dealing with other things as well, some of them harder

than what I was about to deal with.

That really would have done a lot to, for my own mental health, helping me to be able

to move on and see life past what I was facing.

The next question I have is how can a special needs child impact the dynamics of a marriage

and how can dads be prepared to handle it?

That's a great question, thanks, John.

So you're focused on the marriage and something that I've tried to drill down on with each

of the interviews that I do very similarly is to ask what impact has the child with disability

had on his or her siblings, if there are siblings, your marriage and the extended family,

like grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.

Because it has an impact on all three of those.

It's various, right?

It impacts different families differently.

So I'll start by answering your question, not about marriage, but about the siblings, right?

Birth order has something to do with it.

And the trap that parents need to try to avoid is that the child with the disability is

going to, by definition, require more time and resources, right?

than the other children, just because of their situation.

And you don't want to wake up a year, a decade or longer down the road with the aha that,

oh my gosh, I didn't give my other child or children the attention that they deserved, right?

Because I was so focused on the child with special needs.

So that's one thing to be aware of.

And there are great resources, sibling resources in the marketplace.

The second part is you asked about marriage.

If you started with a strong marriage, hopefully it just strengthens your marriage.

If you're in a weak situation before the diagnosis, it's almost anybody's bad as to where that's

going to go.

So it has the ability to strengthen, get mom and dad on the same page and working together,

you know, against the disability and overcoming the challenges.

And you know, some of the challenges exist that both parents aren't knowledgeable and accepting

of the diagnosis.

And I think the messages you need to give your partner grace, right?

When they're not at the same level that you are.

And that's not always saying the mom is ahead of the dad or the dad is always ahead of

the mom.

It just has an impact, right?

Because we're not all dealing with the challenge in the same way at the same time.

So that's the thought that comes to mind as it relates to the impact on marriage.

I've seen it go both ways and strengthen some minutes weaken them.

And the third part of the question, at least the way I framed it is, what impact has the

disability had on the extended family?

And depending on the disability and the family structure and how close they are proximity

geographically, it's a lot easier for families when there's extended family in the neighborhood,

right?

That they can help out, right?

They can take some of the burden off of mom and dad to be doing everything so that they

can, you know, have a little bit more balance in their lives.

But not everybody has family members close by geographically.

And it's often that parents would report, dads would report that, you know, grandma and

grandpa don't get it, right?

They don't understand, you know, the challenge because they didn't have a child with a similar

special need when they were parenting.

So it takes little grace there to say, you know, it is really hard for our extended family

to appreciate, you know, what the day to day is.

And, you know, hopefully they can be supportive and be involved, but if they can't or won't,

you know, just accept that they might not fully appreciate or understand, you know, what's

going on and just consider yourself fortunate that, you know, if you do have an extended family

and they can play a role that they're able to be involved.

We love stories on this program.

Please share some success stories of dads you've helped through the Special Fathers Network.

You know, like I said, with 300 plus episodes, many of the dads would say, doing an interview,

talking about their situation, shining some light on it has been cathartic, right?

Just getting, you know, open about it, right?

Transparent about it.

And, you know, we've always thought and taught that, you know, when you show vulnerability,

it's a weakness, right?

You don't want to show weaknesses, right?

So we tend to hold those things and hold them pretty close.

So that's the general benefit, I think, that goes along with it.

We have had some guys join our mastermind groups.

These are the weekly meetup groups.

We've been piloting these for the last three years on Wednesday nights, two years on Tuesday

nights.

Now we're setting a goal to recruit 100 new men into the mastermind group concept.

These are virtual meetings on a weekly basis, and then we have an annual weekend retreat

where we get all the dads together.

The retreats have been in Nashville, St. Louis, in Chicago.

We're trying to keep them in the Midwest to make it as easy as possible for people to get

to and from and travel the shortest distance on average.

And during these weekly meetings, we talk about wins.

We review books, six books a year, so about two months per book, and then we have Zoom calls

with the authors.

These are all people within the network, by the way.

We have not had to reach outside our network for interesting and meaningful books.

And then the most meaningful aspect of this is the dad in the middle.

We have two dads in the middle, about 15 minutes each per week.

And dad gets to share a challenge or something that is going on.

And it could have to do with the child with special needs, could have to do with his marriage,

could have to do with something going on at work, it could have to do with his own health.

Anything, right?

And it's private.

The guys all listen and then they chime in.

You know, what about this?

What about that?

So we're getting to know each other on a really deep level.

And then we end the meetings, these 75 minute meetings, with what are we looking forward

to?

So the point is, we want to start on a positive note.

What was the win?

Smaller, large from the past week?

Because if we wanted to, we could all play the hardship of the Olympics and try to out

to each other, right, about how hard things have been the past week.

That's not the form that we've created.

And so a couple of dads come to mind.

I'm not going to mention them by name, but if they were to listen to this podcast, they

would know who they are.

But oftentimes the dad is going to come in.

He's in a lot of pain, right?

He's not where he wants to be with his spouse.

He's not where he wants to be psychologically with his relationship with his child or children.

And it's really painful.

He might be in therapy already, maybe, maybe not.

And he's looking for whether he realizes or not an opportunity to just be authentic, be

himself, and be in a company with like-minded dads.

And we've had a number of these dads.

By the way, they pay $50 to $200 a month to be involved.

Let me put another number to that.

That's $600 a 24-hundred dollars a year to be involved in the mastermind group, right?

This is not one of these charity hand-out things.

They're investing their time.

And as importantly, they've got some skin of the game financially.

That's why we have such a high attendance.

And many of them would say that they saved their marriage, right?

It saved their lives in some situations, like they were suicidal about their situation.

And what a reassuring experience that is when these dads share their testimony to one

another and that these were treats that we have.

So those are a couple of thoughts that come to mind.

If there's a stepdad or possible stepdad entering the life of a special needs child, what

should he expect and how should he prepare?

So we do have quite a few stepdads just by definition, a man who is married to a woman who

has a child or children with special needs.

So he's come in with both eyes open, right?

He's sort of being intentional about accepting the responsibility that goes along with being

a father.

And most of them would say, you know, we don't differentiate between our stepkids and our

biological kids to be a father to a young boy or a young girl, you know, with a disability.

So the advantage that that father has is that, you know, he's not taken by surprise, not

blindsided.

Most parents, John, don't ask for children with special needs, right?

Most of our dads would say, almost to a person, I would not have asked for a child with special

needs.

But many of them, I don't know if it's a majority, but certainly a plurality of our dads with

a decade or decades of experience will tell you, I would not have asked for a child with special

needs, but knowing everything I know today, I wouldn't change anything, right?

I'm the person I am today, our family is strong.

We have great friends, it's strengthened, you know, relationships all the way around.

They didn't say it was easy.

Some of them have a lot of hardship.

In some cases, one or more of their children dies, right?

I've done at least two dozen interviews of dads that have lost a child, either from the

time of birth as a newborn, as a toddler, as a teenager, or somebody in their 20s or 30s

for that matter.

You know, a lot of these kids are medically fragile, especially the ones with rare disease.

You know, their life expectancy can be quite short.

But I think that the advantage that the dads have, the stepfather, specifically, like you

were asking about is that they're coming in with both eyes open, right?

And, you know, I really, really admire those dads.

Similarly, to dads that are adopting kids with special needs, right?

These are amazing human beings.

As long as we're talking about this, one of the things that I've witnessed, John, is

that the parents, moms and dads who are raising kids with special needs, on average, are

more humble, less arrogant, and less selfish than the general population.

And the world need more humble, less arrogant, and less selfish people.

I am absolutely.

Absolutely.

Statement, but you could read between the lines.

Well, David, how can dads connect with you?

Listen to your podcast or learn more about special fathers network.

The easiest thing to do is go to the website, 21st century dads.org.

They can send me an email at David@21stcenturydads.org.

And the podcast is on all the popular podcast platforms.

It's known as the SFN Dad to Dad podcast.

You know, if you see it, it looks a little bit like a Superman logo.

You know, I would love to connect with any of your dads, whether they have a child with

special needs, a family member with special needs or disability, or they just have questions,

right?

Because they're compassionate about this.

And just to make things easier to, if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com, that's the

fatherhoodchallenge.com.

If you go to this episode, look right below the episode description.

And I will have the links that David just mentioned posted there.

One thing I always enjoy about these times is learning things.

And I definitely learned something from you, many things from you today, actually.

And I know our audience did too.

So thank you so much for being on the program.

Well, Jonathan, thank you for the opportunity.

Let's give a special shout out to our mutual friend, Reno Friedman Watts.

Yes.

That's a very podcast host from introducing us.

Thank you, Reno.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us, listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in

this program or find out more information about the Fatherhood Challenge.

Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

[MUSIC]

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/thefatherhoodchallengepodcast/donations