Speaker 1** ((00:00:00)) - - Yo, yo, what is going on, my man? It's Sathiya Sam here. Welcome to at the Man Within. I'm so glad you're here today. I'm about to sit down with Jim Ramos of Men in the arena. He has been on the show before and we brought him back. I brought him back for a very particular reason. That's a little bit selfish, but I have become a father recently, and Jim has some really good content for dads out there. And so I brought him in and I said, Jim, let's do it, man. Let's do a full episode about fatherhood. And I didn't know that he actually had a four phase framework, the four Phases of fatherhood, that is really brilliant. And so I was pleasantly surprised, pleasantly surprised to find that out. And then we decided to just do a deep dive on it. So that's literally what this whole episode is about today. It's about fatherhood. And if you're not a father, I mean, I did this interview before Judah was born, so you certainly will benefit from it.
Speaker 1** ((00:00:56)) - - But those of you that are fathers and you're further ahead than me, even if your kids are already moved out in independent, we cover all four phases and the four phases, you know, cover you from beginning of fatherhood to the absolute end. So you're going to get a lot of value from this. Jim is amazing. He tells it straight. He's a straight shooter. And you know what? He actually opened up. He was really vulnerable on the podcast, and I've followed Jim enough to know that he doesn't always do that unless he trusts the audience and and feel safe enough to do so. So this is a really special interview. Without further ado, here's Jim Ramos. So here's the million dollar question. How are men like us who work hard, have good motives and a God given purpose supposed to fulfill the calling on our lives and the dreams in our hearts, all while establishing sexual integrity, thriving relationships, and a meaningful connection with God? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers.
Speaker 1** ((00:01:49)) - - My name is Sathiya Sam. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. All right. Well, I'm here with my good friend Jim Ramos, and I did. We had a great podcast probably about a year and a half ago, right around the time my book came out. And I feel like I'm talking to a mini celebrity here. Man, the way you're blowing up on social media since we last spoke. Congratulations on your success. Hey. Thank you.
Speaker 2** ((00:02:15)) - - And look who's talking. I went, I went and looked at you and I'm like, wow, he's got like 25,000 followers more. And last time I saw him, I'm like, what's going on? So it's cool to watch. God bless your ministry. And there's a massive, massive need for it. So it's just fun to kind of we're kind of paralleling each other. Yeah. Pretty fun.
Speaker 1** ((00:02:33)) - - Oh it's fun. I'm learning a lot from you online, so it's been cool to see. I wanted to ask you just you just had a video go viral about who should be on your lock screen.
Speaker 1** ((00:02:42)) - - Tell us a little bit about that one. I thought it was so interesting.
Speaker 2** ((00:02:45)) - - Well, you know, it's really interesting. As I meet with guys and talk to guys, I noticed something a little bit alarming that a lot of these dudes that are really struggling in their marriages, you know, because their phones always in front of them. And I'd look down at their phone and a picture of their kids. It's a picture of a, a big fish, they cod or their buddies on the golf course. And I noticed that these guys that were struggling didn't have their wife as their lock screen or home screen picture. And a couple guys, I asked him, hey, show me a picture. Your wife. And they're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. They have a hard time finding a picture of their wife. I just had to confront a guy on a hunting trip about three months ago about the same thing. I'm like, bro, you've got tons of pictures of dead things, but you're living wife at home is not one of them.
Speaker 2** ((00:03:28)) - - And so, you know, and so what I've realized is when your wife looks at your phone, which she will just just the way it works, what does she see on there? And what she sees will tell her a lot about the state of the marriage and a lot about how you feel about her. And it's, it's a it's really basically it is low hanging fruit. For guys to just take one more step deeper into their marriage. I mean, I'm, I'm handing these guys low hanging fruit and you cannot believe we have like, you know, it's like a total of almost 9 million views right now. But you can't believe the pushback from some of these guys. I'm like, why is there pushback here? And then we have a lot of women posting pictures of their husbands who are deceased. And the phones were they had her on the lock screen. And these guys are now deceased, and they're using this as a monument to their marriage and a legacy. It's it's very, very heavy and deep.
Speaker 2** ((00:04:24)) - - And so man, guys. Make your wife your lockscreen. Make her your home. Screen your phone. I'm telling you, you're going to thank me down the road for it. And it's a it's low hanging fruit. Yeah.
Speaker 1** ((00:04:34)) - - Well, and it doesn't just build the merit. I feel like even for a fair prevention in that kind of stuff, that's actually pretty important to, you know, you're out with a colleague and if she doesn't see the wife on the phone screen, like there's just some subliminal messaging that happens there. And I know guys probably think that sounds right. It probably sounds a bit ridiculous or a bit overkill, but I started lifting weights about two years ago. I had like a nice titanium ring and the way the barbell is scratching it up, so I start. I took it off and then I had a couple interactions with girls at the gym. I just thought that was weird. They were just it was just too friendly, you know? And I didn't think I was really doing anything.
Speaker 1** ((00:05:08)) - - And it's like, well, yeah, duh, dummy, you're not wearing your wedding band. So I went on and got a silicone thing from Amazon for like ten bucks or whatever it was. And. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You got one tooth. There it is. Yeah. So, you know, and problem, problems solved. But those little things, like those little signals you send out are actually pretty important.
Speaker 2** ((00:05:24)) - - Yeah, it acts as a guardrail against others. And also when you open that home screen there's a lot of evil that can happen behind that home screen. Right. Maybe your wife will act as a mnemonic device to not, you know, hurt the one you love. So there's a lot of benefit. And then your kids see it, you know, because, you know, I tell men your wife is more important than your kids. And biblically, it's it's just it's biblically true. And so when the kids see mom on their, you know, maybe it's a family picture, that's fine too.
Speaker 2** ((00:05:53)) - - But maybe they see mom, they go, wow, mom is more important. He takes priority in the family unit.
Speaker 1** ((00:05:59)) - - Yeah. That's so good, man. That's so good. That actually really ties into something that I feel like God's been speaking to me about in this season, trying to get ready for fatherhood. And obviously you can only do so much to get ready. But the one thing that the Holy Spirit's just been telling me again and again is to just focus on your marriage. That's literally the best gift you can give your kids is a healthy marriage. And that will continue to be the plumb line, no matter how many kids are in the mix. And so it's been really good. And I know you and I today are going to talk about a framework. You have the four phases of fatherhood. So I'm excited. You know, I'm brand new. I'm literally going to be taking notes for myself. And hopefully some of them will be a little bit helpful for the other guys as well.
Speaker 1** ((00:06:38)) - - But but how do you want to kick this thing off, man? Where should we start? Do you want to preface this a little bit?
Speaker 2** ((00:06:44)) - - Well, one of the yeah, sure. You know, at Iron Sharpens Iron men's conferences. They've been doing those for about 20 years now. They've had almost a million men go through their conferences. These are real live humans on live conferences. Not you know, what, we do a lot of virtual stuff. These are men in the building. And the number one topic that men request to attend these conferences is information on fathering and fatherhood. The problem, you know, and the reason behind that one is a lot of guys nowadays are raised by step dads or single moms, and so they don't even know how to do it. You know, they're Christians now. They want to do it right. They don't know how, you know. And the other thing is. Maybe they had a bad father figure. Maybe, you know, who knows the dynamics there.
Speaker 2** ((00:07:30)) - - But for me, I had I have a good dad. I mean, he was a he's a great dad, but he wasn't a Christian dad. So for me, I'm going, what does it look like to be a Christian dad? So I think there's some a lot of questions that men have. And I'm sitting on 57 years of life, and all my kids are in their 20s now. And so I'm looking back at what I did. I did some things really, really well. I did some things poorly too, and so I'm learning from both of those things. And then looking forward, kind of launching forward beyond my current scope of reference. You know, I'm looking at people who've done it right in their in their 70s, 80s and what are they reaping. And so I've kind of put together this thing called for phase of fatherhood. It's not in a book. It's just I've done a couple podcasts at the end of podcast and written some blogs, but more and more men, when they hear this are saying, hey, this is really impacted me.
Speaker 2** ((00:08:24)) - - So there's something to this that I think could become a book someday. But the main thing is that dads have questions. And if they realized what the next phase was. From the wisdom and experience of a guy who's older than them, and I'm probably older than a lot of your audience. I can help these guys along that journey of fatherhood.
Speaker 1** ((00:08:44)) - - Yeah, yeah, I love it. And I think this is going to be supremely helpful, obviously, for a new father myself. But even for the guys who are further along the way, I wanted to ask maybe a couple of questions to set this thing up. So first thing, you made an interesting point. So you grew up with a good father, but not a Christian father. Yeah. And one of the things that I'm sure you're observing in the young men of today is, you know, we've we've kind of, like, really drawn the connection between how our past shapes are present. And you'll hear a lot of people talk about their trauma and the things they went through.
Speaker 1** ((00:09:16)) - - And my dad wasn't this or my mom did that or that kind of thing. And there's there's value for it. But I do worry that we've actually really swung the pendulum too far. And we blame all of our shortcomings, all of our insecurities on basically someone else, our parents or our childhood or whatever. And we're becoming victims a little bit in the process. What what can you what can you say to somebody who who is maybe like, okay, I want to be a great father. For whatever reason, they don't have the role model or the example to lean on. How do you bridge that gap, becoming a father yourself?
Speaker 2** ((00:09:51)) - - I'll say this, and I know that in in sex addictions stuff because I have sex addiction guys on the podcast pretty regularly, you know, and I just had the pure desire executive guy anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's who I had on there. But a lot of these guys are going back to your father wound, and it used to be a father wound in the 90s, in the 2000.
Speaker 2** ((00:10:11)) - - Now it's father trauma. You know, everybody wants to blame somebody. And now it's post-traumatic stress disorder. Because the dad told you that you were a, you know, a wimp when you were 12. So I think that we've way swung the pendulum the wrong way. So I'm going to I'm going to tell you a story about a guy who I'm distant. He's a distant relative of mine. He's a guy named Abraham Lincoln. He was the 16th president of the United States of America. When he was building his cabinet, a man's name kept coming up over and over again, and Lincoln kept rejected him. Now, you need to realize Abraham Lincoln is historically known as the ugliest man to ever hold high. I know you're from Canada, but in America, he's known as the ugliest president the United States has ever produced. So what a great, you know, right? He is, you know, so here's this guy. He's he's he's famously known or notoriously known as the ugliest president to ever hold a high political office in the United States.
Speaker 2** ((00:11:05)) - - And he keeps rejecting this one cabinet guy and and his chief of staff, said President Lincoln, this is the most qualified guy that you can have. You keep rejecting him. Why? And Lincoln said the ugliest president to ever hold office said, I don't like his face.
Speaker 1** ((00:11:23)) - - And.
Speaker 2** ((00:11:23)) - - His cabinet, his chief of staff said, President Lincoln, you can't he can't help the face that he was born with. And Lincoln said something very profound. He said, after 40 years old, every man is responsible for his face. And so what I would say to guys is at some point you've got to stop blaming everybody else, because at 40 years old, 35 years old, you've got a wife, you've got kids. And listen, your daddy is not raising them. You are. And so you've got to work through your stuff. No parent is perfect. We've all done some things we regret as parents, but at some point you have got to be the patriarch of your household, of the mantle that God has placed over you.
Speaker 2** ((00:12:03)) - - So that's what I would tell guys, man. I mean, get help, you know, if you've got something that's, you know, you know. Yeah, my my dad's a good dad, but our, my parents, my 13th birthday gave me the. It's not your fault we're getting a divorce speech because my dad was fooling around with other women, you know? And so I say he was a good dad. But when I was a younger guy, it was. It was pretty brutal going through a divorce and seeing your parents dating other people and remarrying. And now you have a whole two different families, you know, made for more presents at Christmas. But, you know, other than that, it was rough. And so but I had to work through that. And hey, man, you know, I need to forgive my dad. I need to work forward and build a relationship. And then, of course, my dad the same way. We've got a great relationship. We talk 2 or 3 times a week now, so, so.
Speaker 2** ((00:12:46)) - - And then, ironically, he's given his life the Lord. He's attending church regularly. So, you know, you're playing long ball. So what I'm saying is, I think the pendulum does need to swing back to accept responsibility for your actions.
Speaker 1** ((00:12:57)) - - Yeah, 100%. What did you do to find like an or to create a concept of what it means to be a Christian father when you didn't have that example where you reading books, spiritual mentors or people around you, like how did you figure that out?
Speaker 2** ((00:13:11)) - - Yeah, I like you. I was in youth ministry at the time, so I wasn't a men's ministry guy, and I immersed myself in the word of God. I copied the heck out of the guys around me that I thought were good dads. Yeah, you know who are the good dads? Oh, that's what they do. That's what they do. That's what they do. And then I read. I read books on the subject, so I just immersed myself in that culture of good fathering, and it's all over the place.
Speaker 2** ((00:13:37)) - - There are great fathers and they're not necessarily Christian fathers. I know some phenomenal dads that aren't Christians. I know some horrible dads that are. So I just looked at I didn't I wasn't discriminating on faith. I just looked around and said, who are the great dads, you know? And then where did my dad fail me and where did my dad do a great job? My dad is a phenomenal parent when it comes to engaging his kids. Phenomenal. You know, so I copied that. So I think for us, you know, the art of originality Sophia is not revealing your sources. Right. So just just find as many guys to help as possible. And we live in a world where they're out there. Yeah. In spades.
Speaker 1** ((00:14:13)) - - Yeah, yeah. It's true. Yeah. If you look for them, you really will find them. Okay, one more question then we'll dive into the four phases here. What what do you say to fathers. So I think this is happening in our generation I don't know if you've observed this.
Speaker 1** ((00:14:27)) - - And I've asked a couple of different people on this podcast about this. I think in, in I'm carrying on the thing we've talked about earlier. So, you know, you acknowledge, okay, you know, my dad did this to me. It hurt. It caught me deep. This is how it impacted me. And I think what exists in my generation, and certainly in some of my my friends circles, is this fear as a parent, because we become very sensitive to how, you know, shortcomings of our parents affected us, then these people are becoming parents and they're really afraid to make a mistake to whatever, because they don't want to cause trauma to their own kids. And I'm curious what you would say about that, because it sounds like you really actually changed your lineage, like you became a Christian. Yeah. You didn't have Christianity, and then now your dad has come around. That's an incredible story in of itself. How did you do that and how did you not not repeat the sins of your father, so to speak? And really chart something new?
Speaker 2** ((00:15:23)) - - Well, the sins of my father concept.
Speaker 2** ((00:15:26)) - - I just vowed to be faithful to Shanna forever. I mean, yeah, I think that keeping your pants on around other women. I think that's pretty easy to do. Now, in front of the computer screen is a little bit different, but to me, I just vowed I would never do that. Um. I'm trying to. I just lost my train of thought. I'm so.
Speaker 1** ((00:15:48)) - - Sorry. No. That's okay. We can edit this out.
Speaker 2** ((00:15:50)) - - Tell me the question again.
Speaker 1** ((00:15:51)) - - Just about the sins of your father, how you change trajectories, and how do you not get paranoid about creating that trauma? Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:15:57)) - - Yeah. You know, I at a church I was at when I was working at a church in the 90s, my children were little, two, four, six. I mean, they were little, little, little kids. And there was a guy in our church. He was a good father. He was an Ecuadorian American. He was a counselor, and he had a parenting class.
Speaker 2** ((00:16:17)) - - And he said something in the class that was deeply profound to me, and it was so freeing to me. He said, listen, you're going to make mistakes as a parent. He said, you don't have to be the perfect parent, and you never will be the perfect parent. You just have to be good enough. And so that that just released me to parent, because in sports, in life, in anything you're doing, if you focus on a negative component, if you focus on not becoming that, that's what you become.
Speaker 1** ((00:16:47)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:16:48)) - - You are you become what you focus your energy on. And so for the guys of your generation, who are the guys living in this stress bubble of life, we can't focus on being a bad parent because that's exactly what will become will become some a scared, gutless parent who's not he's not willing to let his kids. I just had a guy tell me other day, well, I'm not letting my kid play football. That's a dangerous sport. I go, let me tell you something, bro.
Speaker 2** ((00:17:13)) - - Life is a dangerous sport. None of us are getting out of this alive. So when we over protect because of fear, if fear is ever a motivator, that is negative. So we need to have faith. Be a motivator. Like I want my kids to be Jesus followers want my kids to be courageous. I want my daughters to be warrior queens. I want my sons to be warriors. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1** ((00:17:36)) - - Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:17:37)) - - Train them up to be that and focus on that. Now. We can't be perfect in that, but we can be good enough. So you just never, as parents, focus on the what ifs. That is a recipe for disaster. We have to focus on, hey, that little that little baby that your wife is having. Is it a boy or a girl?
Speaker 1** ((00:17:57)) - - Oh, boy.
Speaker 2** ((00:17:58)) - - Oh, little boy, little Sathiya.
Speaker 1** ((00:18:01)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:18:01)) - - I mean, you know, this little boy comes, you're going to look at him and go, do I want to just protect this guy from every little thing, or do I want to change him into turn him into a warrior like I am? And the thing about the little kids, when I held my first son for the first time, I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to break him, man, you can't break those little guys.
Speaker 2** ((00:18:18)) - - They're tough.
Speaker 1** ((00:18:18)) - - Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:18:19)) - - I can't believe how tough those kids are. So yeah, so, so mold them into what you believe God wants them to become. And and don't worry about the fear part. God will take care of that.
Speaker 1** ((00:18:30)) - - Yeah, that's good man. That's good. Okay, let's jump into the four phases of fatherhood. What is phase one?
Speaker 2** ((00:18:37)) - - Yeah. So so this again this is going from personal experience life experience and what I've seen. And so I realize that in when. So you're going to enter phase one very very shortly. Yeah. Phase one you're going to hold this little boy in your hands. And everything changed when I had my first son. Everything that I remembered from being single, from being no, not having children, everything changed in that moment. And I was a dad and I was a dad forever. And so I went into this phase of just total exhaustion. Because now after the first one comes a second, after the second comes the third, and so on, so forth.
Speaker 2** ((00:19:11)) - - And what happens is you, you enter the stress bubble. Okay. And so this is a phase I call Father Fidelis. Fidelis is Latin for faithful. And so in this phase, your kids are between birth and about 1011 years old. And your job is to show up, go up until it's boring that you show up so much. Tell them you love them until it's boring you. Your your identity is wrapped up in being the most boring parent on the planet because you're just always around, you know, in John chapter four, we see a picture of Jesus going through. He's going from Judea to Galilee. He goes through some area. He stops at this well in Cheshire. He interacts with this woman at the well. But it's really interesting in verses. I think it's well, the first eight verses of John chapter four, it says Jesus, you know, sat down at the well. His disciples went into town to get food. The woman and he was sat down because he's weary from his journey.
Speaker 2** ((00:20:12)) - - The woman came to him and he asked her for a drink. Those sound like very simple statements, but if you break them down, you realize that Jesus had just got done walking 20 miles in Birkenstocks or flip flops. You know he was tired, the Bible says, wearied. He was hungry because he sent the disciples to get food, and he was thirsty because he asked for a drink. So think about this. He was tired, hungry and thirsty. But he showed up to minister to this woman. And that's what this Father Fidelis phase is. It is you just show up, man. You show up for your family between 5 and 8:00 at night when you get home from work and you're tired, you show up for your kid's little soccer games or or whatever they're playing. When they're little kids. You show up at their school events. You know, you just, you know, I used to play football after school with my little children. In elementary school. I'd ride them to school on their bikes.
Speaker 2** ((00:21:02)) - - I mean, you just show up for them. You're just there. You're a figure. You're a faithful, a faithful father in their lives that is just constantly there. And that that phase from about birth, about ten years old, that phase is deeply, deeply impactful in the lives of your children.
Speaker 1** ((00:21:20)) - - Yeah. Well, and there's good research to back that. Like those first, I think seven years in particular. They say, like, you do not have to have a much figured out. You just have to be around, like just be there. So that's that's really interesting. Let me ask you this, because you and I come from like more traditional ministry backgrounds, you know, working in churches. The church that I worked for was fairly international. They were quite prominent in the 90s, in the early 2000, and their model was a lot of itinerant. So they they would raise up and train up a lot of leaders and preachers and speakers who kind of got the message, got the DNA, and then they would spread that to all around the world.
Speaker 1** ((00:21:59)) - - And that's a very glamorous kind of view of ministry. You know, we think of the people that we see traveling and wow, so amazing and, and all this stuff. And then, you know, you see maybe ten, 15 years later, they end up spending most of their time getting their kids out of rehab centers, walking their kids through divorces. Like a lot of dysfunction happens later and again, like it's so easy to be at a distance and just throw stones and cast your judgment. And I'm not trying to do that, but I think there is something to be said about being around. And sometimes I think the things that we chase and especially we are prone to this, you know, being very career driven and, you know, you get more promotions and opportunities to travel and whatever. And I know for my wife and I, like we just decided we were going to build this ministry online. We say no to great opportunities to travel and stuff like that, because we're trying to build something that that gives us the opportunity to just be around.
Speaker 1** ((00:22:53)) - - And for me in particular right now, just to be present, I don't know. Have you is that in any way part of your philosophy in how you build things as well?
Speaker 2** ((00:23:01)) - - You are such a good interviewer, man. I'm serious. I love how you ask questions. So. So you are taking a chance. You're asking me? You have no idea what I'm going to answer. So you took this is a gutsy question, but I wholeheartedly, emphatically exclamation mark agree with you in Job chapter 29. Early on in job 29, he's reflecting back to when his kids were alive and he said, hey, I had deep roots in my community and my kids were close. And so the and so when we went into ministry, we spent the first 14 years in youth ministry in the same town, and then we moved to Oregon, and we spent the last ten years in the same town, and we launched our ministry, and we stayed in that same town and we sunk deep roots. I have very, very deep roots in both those communities.
Speaker 2** ((00:23:47)) - - And that's 35 years of ministry in two communities. And so I believe and I just had this conversation with a man yesterday. You know, I believe that the man of God sinks deep roots. And I think there is something systematically broken in ministries where they call people to pick up their roots and leave every three years, because what you're doing in that church is you're teaching your men to not sink. I just watched the Netflix video Call the Prime. It's on Deion Sanders. Who's a neat Christian guy. God's really using him. But he went to Jackson State and he just. He built this program, built this program, built this program. He's teaching these kids all these deep values and deep things. And after two years, he resigns before the season's over for a bigger job. And I thought, man, that is sending a wrong message. Yeah, that sends a wrong message. And so I love what he's doing and I bless it I just but that's our world right? Go to the next thing that blesses you.
Speaker 2** ((00:24:40)) - - And I think you need to settle in in your area. You know, our children are within an hour from us right now and they're in their 20s, and we would never even think of leaving this area unless one of our kids moved away. Then we might move to be closer to them. But we I'm firmly I believe in fact, I've got I've got a book of men's ministry meetings, and one of them is a nine Traits of Manhood from job 29. And one of those traits is sinking deep roots. And so I in fact, Sathiya, I applaud your generation. So my generation is always badmouth and you know, the millennials I'm like you guys they're learning from us. And one of the things the millennial generation has learned is we're going to sink deep roots. We're going to place family over career. We're going to take our vacation time. We're going to spend it with people we love. And I'm like, oh man, I wish my generation, you know, did that better. So your generation has really taken what you've learned from the the faults of our generation, and you've really made them better.
Speaker 2** ((00:25:39)) - - Now there's some things that aren't better, but those things I really admire. And so I do believe that we got to stop this transient stuff, and we have to sink deep roots so that we can raise children, that that part of this Father Fidelis phase is stability, security. You know, in the Bible it says the man of God manages his household. Well, that Greek word is precious to me, and it literally is a word picture of three things. It's a picture of a man who protects those around him. So he's a wall. It's a it's a picture of a man who presides over which is the roof. And it's a picture of a man who provides within. And those are the rooms. So he's building this structure that is immovable, and that's what it means to manage. And so this whole moving Jesus never moved more than 100 miles, you know. And so we need to sink deep roots, go where God has called us and stay there. I firmly believe what you're saying, man.
Speaker 2** ((00:26:34)) - - Firmly.
Speaker 1** ((00:26:34)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:26:35)) - - Aren't you glad you asked that? You're like, dang, I got a good one.
Speaker 1** ((00:26:38)) - - Yeah, legit, I know, I didn't know what you were going to say, so that's perfect. That's great. So phase one, Father Fidelis, you said till about 10 or 11 years old, and then I'm guessing that next shift happens when the kid hits puberty.
Speaker 2** ((00:26:54)) - - Yeah, because what happens in puberty? So they realize when your kids are in your home, they they obey you because I said so. I mean, they don't, especially when they're little children, right? They're physically smaller. You know, we can discipline them, you know, just because we're bigger than them. You know, we have we have power, physical power over them, you know, and moms are a little five foot like your little tiny little wife. What is he, five four or something? You know, they're little. They're still bigger than their kids. So there's like this. Hey, I'm your mom.
Speaker 2** ((00:27:21)) - - I'm your dad. But when they start hitting puberty, a couple things start to happen. Their bodies change. So they now are developing. So now they become taller than mom pretty fast. They are looking to establish their own identity. But what they're also doing is they're looking at the world around them and they're saying, hm, is is this the truth? Are these things I've been taught by my parents true. And they determine whether or not they they're true by how you live your life. They watch you. So phase two, I'm going to say between 12. This is 12 to 22 years old. This is right in that puberty young adult I call this father figure. So we go from Father Fidelis to father figure. And by figure I mean role model. I'm using a lot of F words, so it's easy to remember. But are you a father figure that they can model their lives after? So this is where. We as parents really need to lock in how we are. Uh, loving our wives.
Speaker 2** ((00:28:25)) - - How we are living for Christ. You know, there's a real movement right now that I totally disagree with. It's a movement out of the church, and it's a movement that's happening with my generation all the way down through your generation. And I think that that gives our children a wrong picture of what the Bible teaches regarding fellowship and regarding Christian community, because a lot of these guys I interact with aren't involved in any kind of community. And I'm like, let's take the church ward off, because I know you don't like the word church. You know, not you, but guys don't like it. Let's remove the word church. Let's talk about Christian community. Let's community. Let's talk about fellowship. Let's talk about Jesus last words in John 13 where he said, this is how they, the world will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another. Let's talk about Hebrews chapter ten, where it says, let us not forsake the gathering together somewhere in the habit of doing. And so there are some really critical passages there that point us to Christian community.
Speaker 2** ((00:29:20)) - - And so all of these things are children are watching, they're watching. And so we need to model, you know, I failed and I talk about this a lot because it's the biggest failure of my life. I failed to frame my wife. Positively with my children, with my boys. I often framed her as well to me. And you boys against mom. She's crazy, you know. She cares about cleaning up the house way too much. You know, I tend to frame her negatively. And so I've had to go back and repent for my wife. We had a whole podcast on it. I had I had to go back and repent to my children and really work hard on framing Shanna the way she deserves to be framed. And and I failed my kids there. And so one of my sons with his wife, man, he frames her. Almost to a fault. Positively like almost to a fault. My other son frames his wife, and I see him doing some of the things I did because he was just doing what dad did right.
Speaker 2** ((00:30:18)) - - And so.
Speaker 1** ((00:30:18)) - - I.
Speaker 2** ((00:30:19)) - - Don't do that. I failed you there.
Speaker 1** ((00:30:21)) - - Yeah. So.
Speaker 2** ((00:30:22)) - - So what I'm saying is, father figure phase, our children are going to emulate us positively or negatively. So we have to really be careful to walk the walk. You know, I was reading in Ecclesiastes five seven in the New Living Translation the other day, and in that Solomon says simply, talk is cheap. That's it. Talk is cheap. So we as dads need to step up to the plate. And really, you can you can in the Father Fidelis phase, you can be a role model because showing up is what matters, right? Showing up is what matters. But once your kids begin to mature mentally and they start seeing, they start to see the world that they're living in and they see how you really are. And that really, I think a lot of these wounds that guys carry, the trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever, it comes from that, this phase.
Speaker 1** ((00:31:16)) - - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1** ((00:31:20)) - - We were getting into a conversation about this. I think it was one of our expert calls. We had a guy named Matt Boudreaux who's who's big on, like, kind of reforming the education system. And men really like taking charge again in this area. And he he said something. This is my language. This has been my the way I remember it. But he said, for daughters, you as a father, you are the template that they'll marry. And for sons you're the template that they'll copy. And it sounds to me like, like you're hitting that phase right? Right here. Right. Like this is where they're looking to you to figure out what does it mean to be a man? And they're going to copy you, and you better have your act together. It sounds like.
Speaker 2** ((00:32:03)) - - Yeah, they're going to copy you or they're going to go the opposite.
Speaker 1** ((00:32:06)) - - They're going.
Speaker 2** ((00:32:07)) - - Right. This is so unhealthy. You know, my dad was like, for you, for example, you may be saying, I have no idea.
Speaker 2** ((00:32:13)) - - I'm just hypothetical here. My dad was a workaholic. He went from church to church every three years. I I'm one not going to work. I'm going to take a Sabbath. I'm off. I'm going to take another day off to get the house in order. And I am going to keep my roots deep and sink them in my community. I'm not moving. So you might have taken what you've learned from your dad, who was a godly man who loved the Jesus love. Jesus loved his wife, loved you. But you may take 1 or 2 things from that. His life that that you determine were negative and you change them.
Speaker 1** ((00:32:41)) - - Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2** ((00:32:42)) - - Yeah. So we're going to we're going to either imitate our dads or we're going to go the opposite way and build a life based on what we didn't see in that.
Speaker 1** ((00:32:52)) - - Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:32:54)) - - So the goal for you as a new dad is to is to raise children that will imitate everything you did and not look at your life and go, man, I can't do this because dad pops did it wrong.
Speaker 1** ((00:33:06)) - - Yeah, yeah. Wow. Really good. So, Father Fidelis, father figure. You said father figure is roughly from puberty until 22 years old. Like, early career ish, 2.
Speaker 2** ((00:33:17)) - - To 25, you know? Yeah. When the, you know, we have kids staying at home more. So it's when your kids are under that that when your children are under your household, they're under your leadership. And so that phase there okay.
Speaker 1** ((00:33:29)) - - Got it. And then what happens at phase three.
Speaker 2** ((00:33:32)) - - So phase three is the one I am in. It's called father friend. So here's the key thing I learned when my children were under my roof. They obeyed me. Why? Because I said so. Right. Because they have they had they they had to comply with my leadership because they were dependent upon our resources to survive. So. So I controlled the narrative. As a parent, I controlled the narrative. I controlled the relationship. I controlled the narrative completely. I had power, physical and fiscal power over my children right when my children left the home instantly.
Speaker 2** ((00:34:13)) - - And this is where guys fail instantly. They control the narrative now. Right. So now the narrative flips, the script flips. Right. So now the narrative is now on my children. So my children now get to choose whether or not they're going to have a relationship with dad. And I cannot tell you how many dads I run into who go by my kids won't talk to me anymore. I mean, this happens all the time. My kids don't talk to me anymore. Oh, they. I raised them in the church. I raise them this way, but they won't talk to me more. And I go back and I go, they don't talk to you anymore because you blew it so bad in this phase, unfortunately, that they don't want to be around you anymore. And so my dad flipped the script. He changed the narrative in his own life. And so we've been very engaged with him all of our lives. I've been very close to my dad all my life. My kids and I hunt together all the time, hang out together all the time, vacation all together all the time.
Speaker 2** ((00:35:06)) - - And let me, let me. So here's what happens in this phase. You will reap the fruit. Of what you did in the father fidelis and father figure phase, good or bad? Galatians six, verses seven and eight. You know you will reap what you sown. And so this really is a sowing phase, and I'm really fortunate. I mean, I look back on my father and I go, man, I did a good job overall because I've got kids that are highly engaged with their dad and they want to be engaged with their dad.
Speaker 1** ((00:35:38)) - - Dang. That's cool.
Speaker 2** ((00:35:39)) - - I'm really blessed by that. And so for a guy like you, I would say, okay, Sathiya, in your audience, make sure that you guys are doing things in the Father Fidelis phase and father figure phase so that when your kids now control the narrative, that's key. They control the narrative. They control the relationship. When they have that control, they still want to be engaged in your life.
Speaker 1** ((00:36:02)) - - Mm hmm.
Speaker 1** ((00:36:02)) - - Wow. Powerful.
Speaker 2** ((00:36:04)) - - It's powerful.
Speaker 1** ((00:36:05)) - - Yeah. Really interesting. I like the distinction because it sounds like basically what you're saying is when your kids are under your roof, they're not your friend, right? You're not. You're you're not their friend. Maybe to be more accurate, but then once they're out because they control their own narrative and they have their own life, the nature of the relationship becomes more friend oriented. Can you can you maybe elaborate on what what does it mean for you to to be a father friend to your kids?
Speaker 2** ((00:36:29)) - - Yeah, that's really good. So when I, when my kids were in the house, I, I did not advise them. I commanded, I mean, there were principles that they were required to live under, to live by, under my roof. You know, we attended church. We we they did their chores. They had good grades. We made them play extracurricular activities all through school to stay busy. We we commanded them to do things. Basically, we said to live under this household.
Speaker 2** ((00:37:00)) - - Here are the standards that are required of you to live under this household. And if you will not live under this household, then you need to go live somewhere else.
Speaker 1** ((00:37:08)) - - Right?
Speaker 2** ((00:37:08)) - - Pretty much the narrative. Okay.
Speaker 1** ((00:37:10)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:37:10)) - - So so I did not I commanded them as a parent of a father. And I know it's a hard word, but it's a powerful word. But that's really what happens as a parent, right? You're you're controlling the narrative. When my kids became adults. I moved from a commander to a coach.
Speaker 1** ((00:37:31)) - - Or an.
Speaker 2** ((00:37:31)) - - Advisor. So now what I'm doing in this friend role is I don't boss my friends around. I don't command my friends to do things. My adult children are the same way with my adult children. I go, hey, do you think that was the wisest move? Or what do you think about this? Or they'll come to me and a couple of my kids will really? They ask a lot of questions. One of them just likes to have a lot of dialogue, but they are always coming to me, you know? And, you know, I just did the wedding for my oldest son and I did their premarital counseling.
Speaker 2** ((00:37:57)) - - I go, are you sure you want me to do this? Yeah, dad. Yeah. Yes we do.
Speaker 1** ((00:37:59)) - - Wow.
Speaker 2** ((00:38:00)) - - So they came to me and said we and we drove headlong into some issues that that you would that are in your expertise. Let's just say so. So so it's a real an honor phase because you are reaping this, this fruit now that your children are 20 something, 30 something adults and they're coming to you for advice, and you are you no longer go to them for a command. They come to you for coaching. And so that's that's really the difference. So you interact as father son, father daughter in a it's more of an even keel role where it's give and take. And then conversely, I've got my middle son is 26 years old. He owns two homes. He's starting another business. He's just very entrepreneurial, very, very smart with numbers. And I'm not good with money. And so I go to him regularly and I said, hey, son, I need your advice on money.
Speaker 2** ((00:38:53)) - - I mean, seriously, I do I do that all the time. My other son is a phenomenal salesman. Like he's a phenomenal and he's a phenomenal. He loves to celebrate. He just loves it like celebrate victories with people. And so I'll often go to him and go, hey man, I need some advice on this. Right. And so I just I do that on my kids all the time. And what it does is it opens the door for them man. Dads asking us for help.
Speaker 1** ((00:39:16)) - - Right.
Speaker 2** ((00:39:17)) - - And then we hunt together a lot. So now the hunting thing is switched. So now instead of me telling them where we're going, we're doing I'm letting them control the narrative. And I'm just coming along.
Speaker 1** ((00:39:27)) - - That is what I'm trying.
Speaker 2** ((00:39:28)) - - Yeah. And so I'm trying to teach them. Hey, my time is is diminishing and your time is, is increasing. So I'm going to willingly come under your mantle and then I'm going to help you along the way.
Speaker 1** ((00:39:42)) - - Wow. It's really cool.
Speaker 1** ((00:39:44)) - - It's funny you mentioned about the finances. We got into a conversation about my parents finances a few months ago, and they they legitimately like they reached out to me afterwards because it was a little bit of an emotionally charged conversation. But they reached out afterwards and they were like, hey, can we meet? Because I was giving them some ideas and I don't. I think they saw that there was some wisdom here, and I've done some things differently. And I was really my wife was my wife was like, your parents asked you for your, you know, like she was just so, so perturbed by it. But it was I think I think you're right. If you if you do that phase one and phase two, I can see that I feel like I'm on on the kids side of it. I'm experiencing that with my parents were like, yeah, they there's a relationship there, you know, and it's very much a give and take, which is, which is really cool. So two more questions about this phase before we get to phase four.
Speaker 1** ((00:40:31)) - - Yeah. In phase one you said, okay, the main thing is you show up in phase two, it's like, hey, set forth the example. Your kids are kind of watching your every move. What's the what's the big key for guys to focus on in phase three with their kids.
Speaker 2** ((00:40:47)) - - I would say. In phase three. The key to focus on is spending is finding those moments to spend leisure time with your adult children with no strings attached. So you're enjoying each other. It's it's really it's a season of enjoyment. You're you just want to connect with them relationally because you like each other. Like, I like my kids, I love my kids. I loved them growing up, and I like them now. And so I think you, you, because they control the narrative, they determine whether or not they like or like their dad or not.
Speaker 1** ((00:41:26)) - - Right.
Speaker 2** ((00:41:27)) - - We have this interaction now as friends. So we do things together because we like to be together. Now it's changed. The caveat there is I'm getting older so I can't keep up.
Speaker 2** ((00:41:38)) - - You know, I got they all ran marathons last year. I got two of them training for ultramarathons.
Speaker 1** ((00:41:42)) - - They're like, oh geez.
Speaker 2** ((00:41:43)) - - £175 guys, you know, £180 men. So I just can't keep up the way I used to keep up. So I realized that. And what's happened is they're like, they've got their friends. They go when they go hard, they get their friends, but they're always coming back to dad saying, hey, dad, let's go do this thing. And they know it's a thing I.
Speaker 1** ((00:41:59)) - - Can.
Speaker 2** ((00:41:59)) - - Do with them. So like, my son's doing an elk hunt next week with he's going hard with his buddies. But the week after that we're together. We're going to do three days like so, and we've scouted and we've done all that.
Speaker 1** ((00:42:10)) - - So yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:42:11)) - - That's I think that's the key in this, this phase is you like, you like your sons or daughters. You interact with them as a more of an advisory role. And they control the narrative. They control it all.
Speaker 1** ((00:42:26)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:42:27)) - - You know, you can't you can't because now they're the adults live in their own lives.
Speaker 1** ((00:42:32)) - - Wow. Cool. And when does this phase end? Like it sounds like it's basically from when they move out and they're living on their own or they're gaining that independence. When does this phase end and when does phase four begin?
Speaker 2** ((00:42:44)) - - So I think in my opinion, there's a transition obviously in all these phases. But the transition is when when my children start having children, that's the that's the line of demarcation when my kids start having kids. So when I move from Father Fidelis to father friend to father faithful, when my kids start to move into this next start to have their own families, right. So now they're now they become Father Fidelis, right? They're in this Father Fidelis phase. So now I phase four is what I call father forever. This is where I am enjoying legacy. I begin to pour into again. My children control the narrative. If my children let me, I pour into my grandchildren, which I have one grandchild right now.
Speaker 2** ((00:43:28)) - - So it's been super, super fun.
Speaker 1** ((00:43:30)) - - Hey, congrats man. I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:43:32)) - - So it's super fun. And so this and this is where we enjoy legacy. So like for example, your dad who was in ministry all of his life or whatever. So this phase he's going to look at you. And if you raise your children in the way that they should go, Proverbs 22 or Joshua 2415, you know, as for me, in my household, if he sees that happening, that is a legacy face for him. That is a forever thing for him, because now he he begins to see his children grow up into this eternal covenant, you know, and and it's really interesting because, you know, that we see in John ten, you know, the enemy comes to kill, steal and destroy. And we see the ancient kings when they would take over, oftentimes they would go into the previous king king's home and kill all of his children and grandchildren, wipe out his bloodline.
Speaker 2** ((00:44:19)) - - Right. So that's really the plan of the enemy, right? So knowing that plan. When we see that plan thwarted and we see this eternal plan manifest, that's a that's a tremendous blessing. And we get to reap again, reaping. There's a lot of reaping in those last two phases. Positive and negative.
Speaker 1** ((00:44:40)) - - Yeah, yeah. And is there a focus here? It sounds like it. It sounds like there's a lot more like it's not as rigid at this phase. Like it could look a lot of different ways. But is there something that that fathers can focus on in this season to make the most of it?
Speaker 2** ((00:44:56)) - - You know, it's really interesting because when you look at these phases, when you, you know, I envision this stress bubble. So in a man, if you look at a timeline of a man's life, he's cruising along in a household under the leadership of somebody else, under the responsibility, pressure and stress of of his father. And then when he leaves and starts a family like you, you know, getting married is not a huge stressor.
Speaker 2** ((00:45:17)) - - It's just you and your wife. But once you have your children, you enter this thing called the stress bubble, right? And so for the next 20, 25 years, you're in this bubble, your father Fidelis, your father faithful. And on the other end of that bubble, when your kids leave the house, you enter father friend phase. Highly enjoyable. It's your your advisory, your your a friend. You are no longer in charge of the narrative. And then when you get in the grandparent phase, it even drops off even more where you're reaping. And so for us, what we have learned in that father forever phase, we go out of our way to find those special moments, to enjoy that phase with the grandchildren. So now no longer becomes focusing on our children. We focus on their children. We're focusing on the legacy phase. So the focus becomes now my children are already my friends. That's already been established for the last ten, 15 years. Now I'm focusing on establishing an eternal covenant, eternal legacy with my grandchildren.
Speaker 2** ((00:46:16)) - - So that's the phase where you always see your parents going, it's so great. I just feed them a bunch of chocolate and send them on their way.
Speaker 1** ((00:46:22)) - - And so it.
Speaker 2** ((00:46:23)) - - Is, it is a lot more relaxed. And really, if you look at men through life, they charge, charge, charge, charge, charge, buying the bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger house, more and more and more toys. Sure, what happens is they end up with the same little dinky house they started in. Yeah, there's this, there's this, there's this arc, and it just is the way it is. I mean, Solomon talked about it. There's just this arc and so on this phase, it's, you know, we're offloading our stuff. We're we're, you know, paying money. You see a lot of grandparents paying a lot of money to get the whole family together to a vacation.
Speaker 1** ((00:46:54)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:46:55)) - - You see a lot of this in this phase because men are realizing I'm. I need to invest in what's going to happen after me now.
Speaker 2** ((00:47:03)) - - And that phase, that phase is really the majority. This is the scary part, Sathiya. This is really the majority of a man's life, right? So a man will go. A man will go. 20, 20, 20 years.
Speaker 1** ((00:47:16)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:47:17)) - - Let's say 25 years. 25 years. He gets married. He's now in the stress bubble. So he's a father Fidelis for ten years. So he's from 25 to 35. Father Fidelis from 35 to 55. He's father father figure or father figure from 55 to 60, let's say 65. He's father friend. And then from 65 to 85, he's father forever. So he spends the majority of his time as an adult man in that phase. So, so everything we do in those first three phases compounds over time to create this other thing.
Speaker 1** ((00:47:54)) - - Man, I love that.
Speaker 2** ((00:47:55)) - - That's the heavy part, right? It's it's a it has a compounding effect.
Speaker 1** ((00:47:59)) - - Yeah. Yeah. We we had a woman on here named Shannon Etheridge and she had this great phase.
Speaker 1** ((00:48:04)) - - I don't think she actually said this on the podcast. I think this was afterwards. But she said with kids, especially when you're in that stress bubble, the days are long, but the years are short. Yes. And it's kind of the opposite. Once they're out by the by the sounds of it. Right then then the days are, the days are short, the years are long. Like you got, you got time on your side. But it takes time before you kind of get there.
Speaker 2** ((00:48:26)) - - Yeah. And it's really it's, there's a, there's a deep it's deeply profound if you think about it. Yeah. And you know, we don't think about it when we're. How old are you man. Are you 32 or something like that.
Speaker 1** ((00:48:36)) - - Yeah 3333.
Speaker 2** ((00:48:38)) - - So you're 33. You don't think about like, life at 63. But laying out this phase of fatherhood, I've kind of done that so that men go, you know, I need to think about what I'm doing now. Like, if I come home and sit on the couch from 5 to 8, like, right.
Speaker 2** ((00:48:53)) - - So I'm working hard, working hard, working hard, and I come home and I grab a rest on the couch. So from 5 to 8. Five days a week. Let's say I just sit on a couch and I watch Netflix and I watch sports and I chill. I just hang out and do nothing, right? So what they don't realize is what's going to be written on our tombstone is going to be written based on what happened in those three hours. It's not going to be written based on what they did at work. So men have to realize that everything they know about fatherhood, everything they're going to be remembered for by their children is going to happen before school and after school.
Speaker 1** ((00:49:25)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:49:27)) - - In a very short window. Right?
Speaker 1** ((00:49:29)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:49:30)) - - You know, so it's really interesting. So.
Speaker 1** ((00:49:33)) - - Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2** ((00:49:34)) - - It's been very profound.
Speaker 1** ((00:49:35)) - - Yeah. Oh, no, this is really, really helpful. How are you doing for time? I have one more question, but if you got to go, I'll wrap it.
Speaker 2** ((00:49:42)) - - Yeah. Totally. Good. Yeah.
Speaker 1** ((00:49:44)) - - Okay. So. Well, how old are your kids, Jim? You mentioned you have how many how many kids do you have and how old are they?
Speaker 2** ((00:49:50)) - - Three sons. And they're 29 and 27 and 25.
Speaker 1** ((00:49:54)) - - Okay. Got it. And you mentioned one of them has a kid already.
Speaker 2** ((00:49:58)) - - So yes, he had a yes. He actually. So so this is really interesting. This goes on to our conversation. So that he's my oldest son. He's my namesake. So he's the fourth in the line of Jim Ramos who goes by James when he when he left for school College. He said, well, dad, I did it your way for the all all my life. Now I'm going to go and live for my way, okay. The next four years. So he did, man. He he started a fraternity. It got shut down because of underage drinking. He just he just lived the life. And in that period of time, he had a one night deal.
Speaker 2** ((00:50:33)) - - And he produced a granddaughter, a child that he didn't know existed until she was a year old. Wow. Even though she was existed. And so so he decided to at that point, he he stepped up, he became a, you know, said, I'm going to do this thing. We said, we're going to help you. We want to be engaged. So he's been he's been raising this little girl. He has her, you know, two weekends a month. He's just he's a great dad. He, he he just married a woman who, who also was a who was abandoned by her biological dad. So she's passionate about this. And so we've got this little granddaughter, and we've got a whole room in our house that's just for her. We call it the Unicorn Room. I mean, we're just all about her. I mean, I call my wife the Queen. I call her the princess. And man, she just milks that for all it's worth. Papa. What about the princess? Well, you said you would do anything for the princess.
Speaker 2** ((00:51:22)) - - And so? So. Yeah, so? So the moral of the story here is life is not perfect. Yeah, life gets messy, right? It gets messy. People make decisions that can be messy. You still have to work. We still are going through those phases. So now what happens? So what what my wife and I have done in this phase with this little one, she's now seven. We've she's just a completely different human than we met her and I because my son stepped up, his wife stepped up, and everybody around this little girl stepped up. I mean, we're going to Disneyland, man in February, and we're taking my wife, me, my son, his wife, his daughter, and then my daughter in law's parents are going, it's like this big thing, just one little seven year old. And so that's so, so that's. Yeah. So that's where we are with. And then I've got I think we're going to have a, I think in the next year we're going to have probably two more grandkids come into the picture.
Speaker 2** ((00:52:18)) - - I have a feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Have it a.
Speaker 3** ((00:52:20)) - - Feeling.
Speaker 1** ((00:52:22)) - - So that's cool. That's cool. And the reason I ask I didn't know that about about the story, but that actually ties in exactly to the question I want to ask you, which is. So that means that you found out about that little girl six years ago, that was your oldest, and then you would have had two sons who were like late teens, maybe one, maybe the middle ones, early 20s. So my question is, how do you navigate being in different phases with different kids based on where they are in development? We just we're house hacking right now, so that means we live upstairs. Then we have a unit downstairs that's rented out and a brother and sister just moved into our unit. There are two of ten. There's ten of them altogether, family of 12. And so that would be like a really great extreme example where those parents, at any given time in this stress bubble would have had kids in multiple phases.
Speaker 1** ((00:53:15)) - - And another common piece of advice that I've heard from fathers is you have to treat every kid differently, right? Like no two kids are the same. Yes. Um, it makes sense to me conceptually, but it sounds really challenging. In moment to moment. You're dealing with one kid and you have to be a certain way, and then the next second you have another kid, and it's almost like a different hat. On how many words of wisdom for for fathers who, for whatever reason, whether their kids are just spread apart a bit or they had ten kids and, you know, they happen to have a bunch of different phases, how do you wear all the different hats and kind of go in and out of these different phases of fatherhood with many kids?
Speaker 2** ((00:53:52)) - - Man, that's a tough one. I will I will go back to Proverbs 22 six. It says, train up a child in a way that they shall go. And when they. They will not depart from it. But if you look at the literal Hebrew of that, it literally means train up a child in the according to their bent.
Speaker 2** ((00:54:07)) - - And when they were older, they were not apart. So what we did as parents is, again, we weren't perfect parents, but we have had a script, right? We're going to raise our kids this way. So we start off with a baseline script. We're going to do this. And then we we learn through the failure of each children how to adjust according to their bent, like we were a family of five. And four of us are extroverts. And we have a real bold and obnoxious type of personality. And my middle son is my middle son is not only in the middle, but he's the only introvert. So for him, he just hated conflict. And to this day, he just hates conflict. He'll just go, hey, dad, if there's conflict, we'll see you next Easter. We're not going to be around for Christmas type of thing. I mean, it's like, wow, he will not engage in conflict. So we realized with that one if it's got to be an even keel conversation, period.
Speaker 3** ((00:54:58)) - - Yeah.
Speaker 2** ((00:54:59)) - - If my oldest son, he's a talker, he just wants to engage. So he and I will just engage instantly in whatever we want to talk about. My youngest son, Will, is an extrovert, but he's a he's a he holds his cards tight. So the way to pull him out is to just go hang out with him and never ask him a question. I just hang out with him. And in the midst of hanging out, he just dumps on me. But you can't ask him questions. He doesn't respond to questions.
Speaker 3** ((00:55:22)) - - Yeah, right.
Speaker 2** ((00:55:23)) - - You know where one son responds to questions? One song responds to calm. This one responds to time. So you just begin to learn. And I've had all my kids take a love languages test. I've had all my kids take this personality assessment, and so I can understand how my kids think and function within the within the within their own life and how they and my daughter in law, I've done that with the daughters in law too, so I know how to interact with them.
Speaker 2** ((00:55:47)) - - Right. And so. Yeah. So it's been a and it's it's definitely a journey. And I think as they move into the phases like at one point I had two kids in the home and one kid in college. And so we just kept doing the same with those two in the home. Right. And then I then all of a sudden I had only one in the home, you know, and then all of our kids, when they graduated college, we said, you can come back and live with us and save money until you go out. So when they came back into the home, we said, okay, you're you're an adult, but you are under our banner of leadership now, so you will comply with these certain rules still as under our home. And we loosened them. But we said, these are our rules and you will live. And they said, okay. And we said, hey, you're going to say, so my oldest son, we said, you pay us rent.
Speaker 2** ((00:56:30)) - - So he paid us rent every month. And I saved it and gave it to him, which is good because he had no money. Saved my other son. Who's the money guy? We didn't ask him to give us rent. We just said, hey, we want we expect you to put money away. And he did. He banked and bought a house.
Speaker 3** ((00:56:42)) - - So. Right. Well, we try.
Speaker 2** ((00:56:44)) - - To watch how they interact with life.
Speaker 1** ((00:56:46)) - - Oh, wow.
Speaker 3** ((00:56:46)) - - So interesting.
Speaker 2** ((00:56:47)) - - Coach them according to their bent.
Speaker 1** ((00:56:49)) - - Yeah. Oh my gosh. This was this is amazing I did I literally took notes the whole time. This is so good. Thank you. I've kept you over time here. But for people who want more of Jim Ramos men in the arena tell the audience where can they find out more about you, man?
Speaker 2** ((00:57:04)) - - Yeah, I appreciate that, man. And you're a great interviewer. It's so fun to be a part of this. So they just go to men in the arena org and they can find everything they need.
Speaker 2** ((00:57:11)) - - We're on all social media outlets and it's either at men in the arena, Dot, you know, at the arena or the at the men in the arena.
Speaker 3** ((00:57:19)) - - Fantastic.
Speaker 2** ((00:57:20)) - - Get a hold of me as men in arena.org.
Speaker 3** ((00:57:22)) - - Okay, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1** ((00:57:23)) - - We'll put links in the show notes to everything. Yeah. This guy's blowing up on social guys. So go check them out. And you guys have a great day podcast as well. Some fantastic guests coming through there. So we'll link all of that in the meantime man God bless you and thanks for your time today.
Speaker 2** ((00:57:37)) - - You too brother.
Speaker 1** ((00:57:38)) - - Have a great day. Well, there you have it. That is my interview with Jim. Hey, go check his stuff out. And in the arena. They're doing some really, really good things over there. And Jim is a resource monster. He's very active on social. He's constantly launching books and releasing other content, and I know that you'll glean a lot from him. And look, if you are listening to this and you're realizing that maybe, maybe you want to be a dad one day, but porn is still in your life and you don't want to pass that on.
Speaker 1** ((00:58:05)) - - Or maybe you have kids already and you realizing that pornography is a problem. It's affecting the way that you parent, but it also now has the potential to affect your kids. Now is the time for you to get free, my friend. Things only get worse. They only spiral downwards. They don't get better without an intervention. And I would love for you to consider deep clean my program for helping men make a full recovery in 120 days or less by tackling the root issue. So we're not believers in internet filters and accountability partners. Those are great. They work. For some people. We're a lot more about getting to the roots, because that's the most confident way that we can get you to lasting freedom. So if that's something you want to explore, there's a link in the show notes. You can book a call with my team. We'd love to speak with you. We speak with people all around the world every single day, and it is one of the greatest delights that I've ever had in the world.
Speaker 1** ((00:58:56)) - - Helping guys like you experience freedom in their lives, get their marriages back on track, get their careers up and running, stepping more into the things that God's called you to do. That's what this is really about. We just need to remove porn while it's in the way, and Deep Clean can help you do that. So the link is in the show notes there. Just click to book a call with my team. Someone will speak with you, they'll understand your situation, and we can talk about whether or not deep clean is the right fit. In the meantime, make sure you share this interview with somebody that you think would benefit from it. Spread the word. That's how we grow here, and that's how you can change another person's life. In the meantime. Love you guys so much. Thank you for listening. We'll talk soon. Bye bye. Hey everybody, it's Sathiya again. Thanks for listening to Unleash the Man Within. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about a free e-book that I wrote for you, called The Ultimate Guide to Porn Recovery.
Speaker 1** ((00:59:47)) - - It provides a basic framework for the recovery process and a few of my top tips completely free of charge. You can get it now at w w w dot ultimate Recovery guide.com. That's w w w Ultimate Recovery Guide. Com. Now if you've been impacted by the podcast and you want to show some support in less than 60s, there are three ways you can do that. First, you can leave a rating or review on your podcast platform. This lets people like you know that the content here is valuable. Secondly, you can share this episode with someone in your life that might benefit from the content. If you're passionate about helping other people experience freedom and success in their lives. This is one of the easiest ways to do that. And lastly, you can subscribe. I personally only listen to the podcast that I subscribe to. If you're seeking daily encouragement, guidance, and insight in your recovery journey, I highly recommend subscribing to Unleash the Man Within. Thanks for listening. I look forward to connecting with you very, very soon.
Speaker 4** ((01:00:48)) - - The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast by Sathiya, Sam and his guests are for general information only and should not be considered medical, clinical or any other form of professional advice. Any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
