A Dads Guide to Raising Strong Kids

Have you ever wondered what the secret is to raising confident resilient kids who are achievers? How would you create a parenting plan to accomplish this? I have an expert here in this episode who has written a book on this topic and he will share some tips with us.

My guest is the author of 4 books including the one we are here to talk about: Four Lessons from My Three Sons, How You Can Raise Resilient Kids. Jeff Nelligan explains how his parenting techniques helped propel his sons to the U.S. Naval Academy, Williams College and West Point and beyond.

To get Jeff Nelligan's books, learn more or connect visit:

Web: https://www.nelliganbooks.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeffNelliganBooks

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ResilientSons

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nelligan_books/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-nelligan-8277654/

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.

Transcript - A Dad's Guide to Raising Strong Kids

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Have you ever wondered what the secret is to raising confident resilient kids who are

achievers?

How would you create a parenting plan to accomplish this?

I have an expert here with me who has written a book on this topic and he will share some

tips with us 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 family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone.

Thank you so much for joining me.

My guest is an author of four books, including the one that we're here to talk about, four

lessons from my three sons, how you can raise resilient kids.

This book explains how the author's parenting techniques helped to propel his sons into

the US Naval Academy, Williams College and West Point and beyond.

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

Hey Jonathan, it's a privilege to be with you, my friend.

I have to know what is your favorite dad joke?

My five year old kid is checking in at a lacrosse camp.

He's in a line with kids and he gets to the front.

They're getting the vital information for each kid.

The guy says, what's your address and then he says, when is your birthday?

And my kid looks at him and he says, every year.

That is awesome.

Thank you my man.

Well let's jump right into it.

There is a lot of information in your book.

I also know that you've had an amazing career with adventures that many could only dream

of.

How did this journey happen?

Well Jonathan, you know, every, every dad and they're all listening to this, you know,

they see the progression of their kids from the time three hours after they're born and

they're holding them all the way to two to four to six to sixteen.

And I was on that progression.

And when the last kid left for college, the last kid went to West Point and I dropped them

off at West Point and I had driven home and I was sitting outside in my backyard and my

first thought was, now what am I going to do?

Because here to four, I'd had all these days and weekends full of things to do with my

sons, athletic events, school events, just horse and around and suddenly there was nobody.

And so I'm sitting out there, I thought, well, you know, these guys have kind of performed,

you know, pretty well.

The eldest went to Williams College and then went to the Navy, Officer Canada School, middle

kid, had just finished at the Naval Academy and then this kid was up there at West Point

for a summer of getting beat down.

And I thought, now what can I, what are the lessons to be learned from this?

Literally the lessons and I thought, I have four lessons here on how these kids were raised

and I'm going to put them in book form and it's going to be short and hard and fast and

funny.

And that's how the book evolved and eventually, you know, was published and came out and it's

40 minutes, a 40 minute read, it's not some coffee table anchor, you know, 350 pages of gibberish.

But the genesis was, I've got these kids, they're all gone now.

What did I learn?

What did we learn?

As a dad, what are some of your biggest wins or successes with your kids?

And what are you the most proud of?

Oh, great question again, you know, all dads have that question at some point.

The biggest success is that today they're all satisfied and yesterday they were all satisfied

and when they were 14, they were satisfied.

These were kids who there wasn't a lot of anxiety or worry.

They undertook things pretty diligently and mostly succeeded and that's the long game

in parenting, you know, a kid that along the stage of his life is satisfied, is joyful,

you know, spiritually happy, accomplished.

So it's the success is having that kid who over that long game, that long period of time

is a pretty good, natured, confident, easygoing child.

And then of course, adolescent and then young man or young woman.

The kid has a sense of his place or her place in the world that there's just a rock solid

presence that they maintain, whether they're around their peers, their parents, strangers,

adults, whomever, and it goes to the confidence angle as well too.

That life seems to flow along for that kid in that, you know, very easygoing fashion and

that ups and downs and everyone hits a wall in life, all kids hit it, some kids hit it more

frequently than others.

But that whatever adversity or obstacle comes that they can get over it or get around

it and absorb it, I used to have, I had this drill sergeant when I was in the army, big,

just a tough guy, from whom I learned a ton about life.

And he would always say to us, wherever we were on our infantry training, he would say,

assess, adapt, advance.

And so we learned that.

It became part of a reflex action for all of us soldiers.

That's the mindset I tried to build in.

I worked on building into the kids so that they had that presence of mind that they could

meet any challenge.

And even if they got 90% down the field, 90 yard down the field, felt calm and confident

in addressing it.

There are two components to every man that makes a man stable.

One is knowing his identity and the other one is knowing his purpose and the identity is

broken up into two components.

One is a generational component, knowing who you are from a standpoint of where you come

from, like your dad, your grandfather, your great grandfather, what were their struggles?

Is there alcoholism in the family?

Generationally.

And is that what you're up against?

Knowing things like that, having information like that that is part of your identity.

Because if you know this information and you know it's potentially, it could be potentially

in front of you, maybe immediately in front of you or maybe at some point, you are prepared.

You can prepare yourself and do something about it before it becomes a problem.

The other side of you is your spiritual identity.

And that is a huge part of your makeup of what makes you who you are.

So that's why I found your point in the very beginning about knowing themselves spiritually

why that was so important.

Yes.

And I add to that Jonathan, one of your earlier podcasts, you made this great point and you

just made it again.

You were talking about a train and the generational identity and you're in the engine and the

rest of your generations behind you and those trains that are, that you're dragging along

with you.

That generational identity is so key because you do learn things intuitively and materially

from your fathers, your moms, your grandmothers, your grandfathers.

You know, I'm always perplexed today about hearing about kids who are, you know, stressed

out or who are uncertain and anxious, you know, my dad at 15 years of age was working in a

vanadium mine, a mile beneath the surface of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

At 18, he participated in the invasion of Okinawa, one of the biggest battles of World War

2.

At 19, he was patrolling the streets of Tokyo as part of the occupation force.

He came home in 1946, having not seen his family in a year and had to take care of his parents

for four years and ultimately made it to Los Angeles and was the oldest member of his graduating

class at UCLA.

His father never made it past seventh grade.

So we're talking about strong, strong men here and my mom's experience was pretty much the

same.

There's a whole generation of people like that and my dad's story is hardly remarkable for

that fact.

But that's that train, that's in that car that's right behind me, what my dad did and my

mom did.

So knowing that, you know, you're able to kind of coalesce around the things that made them

strong and then you try to instill it in your kids.

This gets into something we're going to talk about a little bit later on in this conversation,

which is leaving a lasting legacy.

I think that's powerful, but you just dropped a really big hint to that.

So the next question can be a very uncomfortable one, but I would encourage dads listening to

answer this question for yourself and not to be scared of it because if you dive head

first into this next question, it will make you a stronger, powerful dad.

Now, question is, what are some of your biggest regrets or mistakes that you've made as a dad?

And what did you learn from them and how did they help you grow?

Certainly.

And you know, you got to acknowledge, you know, you got to good and bad.

I said it earlier, no one gets a free ride.

You know, I was never a perfect dad.

There's no such thing as a perfect dad, just like there's no such thing as a perfect

kid.

My biggest mistake, and maybe it's universal in fatherhood is that I thought that I knew

my kids pretty well, but there were times that I did not.

And in fact, in the book, four lessons from my three sons, there are at least five or six

examples self-deprecating of when I made a mistake with my kids.

And I was ashamed or humiliated.

And it was the kid that was set me right.

I mean, one of the stories is I was riding this kid, the eldest kid, to run for the student

body position at his school.

And I kept riding him and riding him.

And he's, you know, finally one night when I was still nagging him, he turns to me and he says,

"Dad, I know what I'm doing here."

And it was a shock.

And I said, "How?"

You know, you do.

Because you just came back at me pretty hard.

And that's the way it's got to be sometimes.

The dad's got to take that correction and the humiliation, I guess, that goes along with

it.

And say, "Wow, the kid is right.

I don't know at all."

And, you know, anyone who's vain enough to write a book about, you know, his parenting techniques

is also got to be strong enough to take the heat when he's wrong.

Were you a little bit proud of his answer, even a little bit?

No, not really at the time.

I just shut up.

I thought, "Well, you know, you're making a big mistake here because the kid was, you know,

good on his feet.

He's a popular kid at school.

He was an athlete.

He was, you know, a pretty sharp kid."

Now, I thought, "Man, you're blowing this opportunity."

But, you know, if you're, you know, any adults got to know when to say, "Hey, you know, I'm

in the wrong here."

And it probably an hour later, I was thinking, "Okay, you know, I got a back off on this because

the kid knows what he's doing."

And there's, like in the last sections of the book, I'm taking, you know, we're, where

we live in Washington, D.C. and in Bethesda, there are massive office buildings all over the

place in D.C.

You know, and then right across the river in Virginia throughout Montgomery County, where

we lived, you know, office park, sometimes just five or six stories, D.C., 13 stories all

over the place.

We've been in New York, et cetera.

And, you know, these big monster buildings and their full of steel and glass and they're

just absolutely soulless.

And I wanted to make a point to them and I said, "Hey, man, hey guys, you know, we're driving

around past all these office buildings.

Let me tell you about them."

I said, "And every one of them, there's a guy sitting in an office and on the wall, he's

got a picture of his family and on his desk, he's got a mug like you made me in second grade."

And he's staring at a computer screen because this guy sitting there was going to be, he was

going to be somebody, he was going to be a jet pilot or he was going to be in real estate,

he was going to own his own business, he was going to sail around the world.

He was, you know, going to fix cars and be a, you know, a star at that.

Instead, he's sitting there staring at a computer saying, "What the hell am I doing here?"

And I said, "Guys, you don't want to be like that guy because that guy's your dad."

And you have got to get farther than your old man did.

They were kind of shocked and I said, "Hey, it's the truth, man."

You know, you've got to get farther than that.

Staring at a screen, you know, sending emails, getting on Zoom calls, you know, all of that

jive, you have got to have the, the, the, the farthest landscape in a rise and you can possibly

dream of.

But I want to come back to that question that I was hinting at earlier.

Every dad I know wants to leave a positive legacy behind that will last for generations.

What is the secret to making that happen?

I think you've got to build kids, you know, just like the, the themes in the book.

I think, you know, the most important trait a kid can have is that confidence in being

in the real world.

And that let that confidence leads to accomplishments because a kid that can walk through the world and

and take the pain and achieve the successes, that becomes a habit.

It becomes a reflex for every aspect of their life.

And as they grow older, you know, the accomplishments, the achievements just grow in size and in

magnitude.

A kid can have a good lacrosse game in age six.

And then he's in college and he has the same kind of game.

And he says, I know where this started.

It started when I was six years old.

So that's, that's a legacy, even for a kid over the course of 15 years.

When I think what you're talking about is a dad who is holding that kid, you know, at three

hours and says, what is this kid going to be?

You know, a dad.

Yeah.

He holds that kid and then and that's part of the, that's the central theme of the book

really is holding that kid at three hours old and saying, I've got a strategy to make this

kid realize the potential that he has because I'm old fashioned.

Every kid has potential in one thing, maybe several.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's absolutely true.

Whenever I am my parenting journey, I'm always aware that the things that I'm teaching

them, regardless of what age they happen to be, those lessons are going to last and are

supposed to last long after I'm gone.

Oh, yeah.

You are programming genetics in the way you raise them.

So that is, there's multiple components to leaving a legacy.

But it just when you have that on your, on the front of your mind, it makes you very mindful

about the decisions that you make with your kids, what you're teaching them, the values,

the values you live yourself by your examples sometimes are the most powerful teacher to

your kids.

Correct.

Again, why is Jonathan, they are values are essential because they affect every aspect

of your life.

Now, let's really get to the pinpoint of your book and that is resiliency.

How do you teach your kids to be resilient in the face of failure?

That's where the strategy comes in.

They kind of bounces back to your earlier question, Jonathan, when you're talking about legacy

because in kids, you know, long, you, and you use the words long after you're gone.

Most kids and most parents don't know this, but by 12 and a half to 13 years of age, that

parent has spent the bulk of the time.

They're going to spend with their child in their life.

Because after that, the kid moves on and has many more actions with peers and, and strangers

and the institutions in which they find themselves.

So my, my shot at teaching resilience began really early and the best way to build resilience

is to put them in situations in that real world where after 13 years old, they're going

to spend the bulk of their life without you.

And if the, putting them in that real world, and I mean the, the world that's outside the

front door, you know, the, the school, the malls, the athletic fields, the hardware store,

you know, different kinds of places in the community in the neighborhood.

I gave them tests.

Probably the first one was we were in an indoor mall.

Eldest kid was seven, the youngest kid was about four and a half and I pulled out of my wallet,

three, five dollar bills and I said, hey guys, I gave five to each kid and I said, go get

the old man change.

This is not a race.

You can go wherever you want.

I'll keep an eye on you, but you got to get changed.

And I'll see you back here.

And so off they went, they were kind of, they were kind of fired up because it was a task.

It was kind of something exciting.

And you know, two, two of the kids struck out at the first place they went and then they

all came, one kid came back with 20 quarters and, but the idea was they had to go on their

own and mix it up with whoever stranger was at a cash register to get the change.

And we did this a lot in all different kinds of places.

And then of course the tasks began to accelerate and graduate into tougher instances.

Hey kid, you know, here's a $20 bill, go into that sketchy 7/11 over there and get me

gatorade and Doritos and donuts and bring them back to the car.

And then it is, we're at a restaurant and I point at one kid who's, you know, six years

old and I say, you memorize the old man.

The order we're going to, of what we want and you tell the waiter or the waitress everything

for all of us that are sitting here.

And then it's, here's my ATM card, go get the old man, $300, here's my passcode.

And then we're at an airport and I say, here's the material, go get us boarding passes.

So every challenge, you know, increased in kind of volume and intensity.

So that by the time these guys are eight or nine years old, they're fine in the real world.

They'll go off on their own and get what needs to be done.

But it also helps just in their regular interactions at school and after school, they have the confidence

to undertake anything.

And I think that's the beginning of building that resilience because they become accustomed

to doing things that no other kid at age seven is ever going to do.

Now let's talk about negative influences.

How did you teach your kids to avoid negative influences from their peers?

Oh, that's easy.

I completely, almost cut my kids off from social media.

I think the most negative influence in this country today and it's been, it's been documented

by much smarter people than me.

Dr. Jonathan Haye, the NYU and Dr. Jean Twenge at San Diego State University.

I mean, we reached a point where school systems are saying you can't bring phones to school

or the TikTok or that even Facebook admits, Zuckerberg, the social media avalanche has had

a negative effect on kids.

I sought early on because it was easy to see a kid looking at a screen becomes a zombie.

And the actual, you know, statistical evidence is so there.

An average kid today spends eight hours and 49 minutes a day on a screen, a cell phone or

an iPad.

And that's outside of school work.

And an average boy between ages of 10 and 18, if you took them all and took all the time they

spent on video games, Minecraft, Call of Duty, cod is around two hours and 14 minutes.

There's no reasonable person that can tell me that nine hours or two and a half hours looking

at a screen is healthy, particularly with, you know, the sewage is on the interweb.

So we, you know, the negative influences come all from the screen.

My kids didn't get phones until they were at the end of 11th grade.

And then I had a bet with them.

I said, look, whoever brings home a phone with the least power used gets a couple bucks every

day.

Oh, that's awesome.

There was no use of screens except for homework.

And they were limited to one hour a day, one hour a week with video games and we, they

could only be on weekends.

And of course, they weren't even around on weekends.

They were constantly out about doing stuff, mostly athletic stuff.

So the negative influences, I think, pretty much come from just that addiction, that zombification

of, you know, social media in general.

And my kids today, you know, they don't even have Facebook pages.

You know, I mean, they're just not on.

They don't, they don't have any of the apps or anything like that.

How can dads listening connect with you?

How can they get your book or find out more about what you're doing?

Certainly.

My website is www.nelliganbooks.com.

That has the books on it.

The one you, we've been speaking of four lessons from my three sons as well.

It has a book that I wrote a year and a half ago called Your Kids Rebound from Pandemic Lockdowns,

a parent guide to restoring their family.

I wrote this book after the, you know, during or after COVID and it is massively cited, 250

sides to medical, psychological, national survey data on what lockdowns, isolation, confinement

and no school did to kids and it provides a way forward for how parents can reverse that

damage and get the kid back that they, that they want.

And I will say the first chapter of it is the screens, you know, the glowing rectangle

that focuses on all what happened with kids on screens, the acceleration of use of them.

And then the fourth chapter gives parents an idea of how that can be rectified.

And my Twitter handle is @ResilientSons.

My Instagram is "Nelligan_Books" and my Facebook is Jeff Nelligan Books.

I'm going to make it easier to find all of the links that Jeff just mentioned.

So if you go to thefatherhoodchallenge.com, that's thefatherhoodchallenge.com, go to this

episode and look right below the episode description.

I'm going to have all of the links posted there for your convenience.

Jeff, we close.

What is your challenge to dad's listening now?

Get that phone out of that kid's hand and say, "Hey, we're going to sit down and we're

going to regulate what you see."

And if it means, you know, taking the phone away from you for days on end, so be it.

If it means cutting off the routers in the house, so be it.

If it means blocking massive numbers of sites from the home computers and your phone, that's

what it's going to be.

So that's a piece of practical advice.

The second thing is, and this is what I did with all three of my sons, beginning when

they're about five years old.

I'm still doing it today.

Every Saturday, I take a kid down to the most peaceful place on the planet and it is the

high school bleachers on a Saturday morning.

And we sit in those bleachers and I'd say, "Okay, what's going on, bro?

Tell me what's hot, what's not, what happened this week, what's your challenges, what have

been your successes."

And this became a routine, again, the reflex.

We would sit there and we'd have half an hour hour talk about just what's going on.

And then we'd go home and begin the weekend chores, the weekend games, everything else.

I started this all three kids.

They knew on a Saturday, if it was their Saturday, "Hey, you've got to talk to the old man

here for an hour about what's going on."

And it still goes on.

My kids were home, all three of them were together for the first time in five years on Christmas.

And the reason being, because of military deployments all over the world, always interrupted

everyone being home at once.

And where does the middle kid and I go on a Saturday morning?

We go right down to the high school bleachers, it's 35 degrees outside, it's freezing.

And we just talked for about 45 minutes about what's been going on since we saw each other

last.

And that's my second piece of advice, again, practical advice to meet, as you say, that

Fatherhood Challenge.

Dads get the book.

We really did not come close to covering, probably even a quarter of what's in the book.

So get the book and read it cover to cover.

And Jeff, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge and sharing all of this

wisdom with us.

Hey, my pleasure and privilege, Jonathan.

Thanks, man.

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

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