CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - My Parents Hit Me And I Turned Out Fine with Gabriel Hannan

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

In this conversation, Whitney Goodman interviews Gabriel, also known as The Indomitable Black Man, about his journey to becoming a content creator who promotes respectful or gentle parenting. They discuss the challenges of being a black man in the gentle parenting space and the misconceptions surrounding discipline and abuse. Gabriel emphasizes teaching and guiding children through discipline rather than resorting to physical punishment. They also explore the long-term effects of abusive parenting on adults, including anxiety, depression, and difficulties with self-regulation. The conversation explores the impact of spanking and abuse, the importance of striving for more than 'fine' in parenting, the power imbalance between adults and children, the denial and accountability of parents, the cycle of bare minimum fatherhood, and breaking generational patterns. Takeaways Spanking and abuse can have long-term negative effects on children, leading to physical and mental health issues. Parents should strive for more than just 'fine' in their parenting, aiming to provide the best for their children and create a positive legacy. The power imbalance between adults and children should be recognized, and physical discipline should be replaced with effective communication and guidance. Parents need to acknowledge and take accountability for the trauma they may have caused their children, rather than denying or minimizing it. Fatherhood should go beyond the bare minimum of providing for children's basic needs, and fathers should actively lead, guide, and support their children. Breaking generational patterns and cycles of trauma is essential for creating healthier and more positive family dynamics. Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest today is Gabriel Hanan, an educator and content creator who's here to talk to me about the importance of gentle parenting and the effects of physical discipline on a child. I'm Whitney Goodman. Welcome to the Calling Home podcast. I'm glad you're here. I love this episode with Gabriel because we really get into this whole narrative of like I turned out fine after physical discipline and why it doesn't actually work. And Gabriel is able to talk about this in a way that's super easy to understand and really illustrates why we should consider this child abuse. But this conversation also goes a lot deeper than that because there are many reasons why abuse is found in a family. But what I don't think we talk about enough is how abuse can be carried down through generations and even

stemming back as far to days of colonization and societal oppression. And Gabriel teaches me a lot about that in this episode. And I think that's really interesting to note because a lot of people may not even realize that they're carrying this generational abuse that can be passed onto their children if the deeper issues are not addressed. What I would like to note is that we talk about in this conversation that parenting is a skill that can be learned by anyone. And it starts by having open conversations like these. So now let's get into the episode. All right. So when this episode comes out, we will be talking about father-daughter relationships inside calling home inside of my paid community. And I know that you did a series on father.

So I want to get into that in a little bit. But first, I had to look up with the word indomitable meant. I had, I did not know that word I had to admit. And so I discovered that it means that cannot be subdued or overcome will or courage, unconquerable. And I'd love to know why you chose that word for your name, the indomitable black man. So I'm Afro-Indigenous. And on both sides of my family, one was eradicated, one was enslaved. And so a part of who I am and my identity is, and my platform, is about liberating people who are trapped in institutional systems of oppression. And it was drapedomaniac, as in someone who has a mental illness, which is the desire to run away. And then I changed it to the indomitable black man because I'm not one or my aspiration is to be one that cannot be dominated, that cannot be held down or oppressed by any system or any institution that would want to oppress me.

So that's kind of where that came. I love that. That makes sense. and it's definitely in line with the work that you do. Absolutely. So the number one headline that I found when I Google you is this line that says this guy's been slapped, spat on and bitten by kids, and he still stands by gentle parenting and here's why. This is the thing that's associated with your name. So I'd love to hear kind of your journey to becoming a content creator who promotes respectful or gentle parenting practices?

This was not a journey that was easy. It was very hard. There were a lot of ups and downs, and it started off with me being homeless. And I had been in school for biomedical sciences. That's what my plan was to do. I was going to go, and I was going to major in infectious disease and oncology.

That was going to be my life's goal, as far back as I can remember, that was my dream. And when I became homeless, I started working at my church's private school. And I was a Bible teacher. I taught Hebrew and I taught theater, nothing too big, needed money, so I did it. It was great. I fell in love with the job. My theater professor, she kind of convinced me to go into the route of education because she saw how well I was with kids. And I was like, I mean, it's a free undergrad. I do love kids. And as I continued towards the goal of education, I switched my career up and I became a registered behavioral technician, which worked. in the field of applied behavioral analysis. And basically, I just work with children who are on the spectrum, and I work with kids who are

very aggressive, who need to learn life skills, things of that nature. I also need to preface this. A lot of people are against ABA. There was old school ABA that was very ablest, that was about suppressing autistic traits. I did not practice that. My BCBAs never told me to practice anything like that. I focused specifically on doing things that would increase the quality. of life, like how to tie your shoes, how to put in your clothes, how to shower, how to pay people,

how to literally live, and how to also control any dangerous behavior or self-injurious behavior. That's all I did. So just throwing that out there. I did that for about 10 years, and that's where I experienced most of the things that turned me into a gentle parent. I've been kicked in the chest by a six-year-old. I was backhanded by a five-year-old. You name it, it's happened to me. And so when I'm looking at parents and they're talking about the things that their children do that sends them up a wall, like talking back, I'm like, baby, you have no idea. You have no idea. The grass is not green on the other side. You don't know how good your child is. And because I've seen how bad children can be, not saying that kids are bad, but how bad the behaviors can be. And I can still

control myself. I can still help regulate the child and then teach the child how to regulate themselves. I know that you can do that with your neurotypical child. So if it can work here, it can work there. Here's how we make it work there. So that's kind of how I got to where I am today. You know, it's so interesting that you say that because yesterday I have a son who's almost three and he's exhibiting behaviors that are very consistent with three-year-olds, right? But my husband got home and I was like, I am so glad that I have done all this work on myself leading up to this moment because I can tell what it feels like when a child is directing physical aggression at you and that anger wells up in you and you feel it. And if you don't know what to do with it

and you don't know how to control it, you could snap. And I get it. I think people who hear maybe what you're saying are like, well, you just don't feel it as strongly as I do. Your kid isn't as And it's like, oh, I exactly. Like, I feel it. It's just that I can imagine, had I had a kid 10 years ago, I would probably be reacting in a very, very different way. And so learning those skills is so important. But I think something, you know, striking about your background and your story is that

this like gentle parenting spaces filled really with white women. There aren't a lot of people like you that are talking about this. And so I'm wondering, like, how do you think that's helped you? How has it hindered your message? Like, what is it like to be one of the only people in this space that has your background? It has been very bittersweet. Yeah. When I first started really getting into this platform, when I first started blowing up, a lot of the people were white women.

If you look on my analytics, it's predominantly women and it's predominantly white women. That are following you. something that a follow. Oh, interesting. And because of that, it also kind of diminishes the efficacy of my platform because it's used against me as, you don't know what you're talking about, you was raised in a wrong generation, did it, like, pick an excuse that they have. Oh, that's not white people parenting.

Yep, yep. No. Did you know that black people were not hitting their children prior to colonization? Do you know that corporal punishment for children has its roots? in Europe, like antiquity, like the Greek Spartans would take their five and six year old boys and put them in the Agoge where they would beat them. What? So it's been really hard, especially as a black man living in the South that grew up in the hood where getting hit and spanked is the norm. It takes away from a lot of that. I actually have a friend who's Afro-Dominican and he makes

funny me all the time, especially back when I didn't have kids. I have a 16-year-old that I've adopted, essentially, but I'm not a biological father. And so he's like, you don't know what you're talking about. Baby, behavior is the same. Your mom was beating you. That was abuse. You just don't see it because you probably stockholmed into thinking that it's okay. And that's what I see with the black and brown communities, Native Americans, African Americans, and Latino Americans, the same kind of concept where beating your kids, one is a remnant of what happened on the plantation, but it's being perpetuated down even to now. And it's not benefiting anything. And so although I'm reaching a lot of black people where a lot of my brothers and sisters are waking up to see that, no,

we don't have to put our hands on our kids, there's still so many that are still blinded by, even on my Instagram right now, there are so many black people commenting on one of my videos about a kid just saying no. And they're like, oh, no, it's the bill. You got to beat these kids and, oh, you're being too soft. Why do I have to be hard with the child? It comes from that slave mentality that we have so hard to break away from. Otherwise, it's going to continue to put us in the same situation we're in.

I'll say this is my last point for this specific thing. A lot of, one of the biggest tropes that you hear in the African-American community is, beating you now so the cops won't have to later. Oh, interesting. But when you sit and you, you analyze that critically, George Floyd, Philando Castile, Elijah McLean, Briona Taylor, Sandra Bland, pick a single person. Eric Garner, pick any of them. Daniel Shaver even, he was a white guy. I guarantee to you, every single one of them got their butts kicked on a daily. I guarantee it. They got their behinds beat. But in every situation in every case their lives were taken from them. So it has nothing to do with spanking.

It has everything to do with just teaching your child how do you handle those specific interactions. My dad was a cop. He showed me how to deal with those interactions. My mom taught me how to deal with those interactions. They didn't have to beat me to do it. That doesn't make sense. You're just finding yet another way to perpetuate the slave mentality. I'm beating you now so the master won't have to later. Baby, the master is going to beat you just because the sun is up. Mass are going to beat you just because he feel like doing it. So it's not benefiting anybody. And I really want to see more of my people wake up to the realization that this is detrimental to our people. It causes precocious puberty, which is why we think some of these girls out here are fast. No, it's because

you beat them into their body's head basically, hey, let's go ahead and prepare to reproduce just in case we don't live long enough to do it. Yeah. That's basically what that's saying. No, it's, you know, I've never heard that saying about, you know, the police. And I think it makes a lot of sense, especially with the data that we have on your right, you know, puberty, women who are exposed to domestic violence at home being more likely to enter those relationships in adulthood or to think that that's normal in partnerships

that it doesn't pan out the way that we think it's going to, that you. you physically, you know, people like to use the word physically disciplining or punishing, but you're using the words I usually use, which is abuse, is going to somehow prevent you from ending up in those situations when, if anything, it makes it more likely. Exactly. Yeah. And that's what I really need people to understand. There is no separation.

Physical discipline is abuse. Unless, like, I grab a kid's head and I just turn them and steer them, that's a form of correction of their physical path, but I'm not putting my hands on the kids to hurt them or to harm them. No, I'm literally guiding their head. You're out here putting your hands on a child to inflict damage so that they can figure out something different to do instead of just teaching them. No, baby, that's abuse. Just call it what it is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a, you know, a comment that I wrote down that you get on a lot of your videos, and I get on mine as well, is like, you know, kids need discipline.

And it's like equating this word discipline with physical abuse, right? And I was wondering if you could speak to like what discipline actually is and talk about this idea of like, we don't teach through hitting or physical harm. Discrupulous actually come, well, discipline comes from the word discupulus, which means to instruct or to teach, which is why you have a disciple. Oh, Jesus wasn't going around here beating his disciples to teach him something when they did something stupid. I mean, can you imagine a world? We wouldn't really follow him.

I take martial arts. I'm a disciple of my seafood. My seafood doesn't beat me. Now, granted, he puts his hands on me every now and again to show me a technique or to show me how to do something more effective. But that's not him punishing me for doing something wrong. That's him correcting what I'm doing. So the concept of discipline being something where you have to, hit them is it does not match. It actually comes from the 12th century in France, where that was

kind of the norm, right? Let's just, you know, beat people, make them fear us. That completely different from what discipline actually is. It is to teach. It is to guide. If you were walking down a path, you have guardrails up or fences up, so you stay on that path. That's essentially what discipline should look like. It looks like teaching your child explicitly what they should be doing, or teaching them in a natural environment. When I was in RBT, we had two types of training. We had DTT and then we had any team. And DTT was basically, you would sit down with somebody and you would, let's say, we were trying to learn about colors, right? We would put three colors out and we'd say point to red. And if they pointed to the wrong one, we would take their hand, redirect it to the

right color and say, this is that color. Good job. And then give them a reinforcer. We would do that over multiple trials until they understand that this color has this word associated with it. That's DTT. Now, NET is a natural environment where we've practiced something. We've roleplayed like a social interaction and we go and practice that. You can do that all the time. You do that all the time anyway. If you were training somebody on the job, you're doing the same thing. If you're training somebody for in school, you're doing the same thing. The education doesn't stop and behavior or information acquisition looks pretty synonymous. We've been doing it for centuries, millennia. Don't change it up by just beating a kid. Teach them what they should be

doing because spanking doesn't teach any. It does not teach anything. It teaches them if it were to teach anything, just how to fear you. But it's not teaching them what they should be doing. Don't spank your kid because they stole something from the store. Get them a job. Don't spank your kid because he lied. Put them in a position to not lie. Don't hit your kid because they were out past curfew. Give them ways to get in before curfew. There are so many different things that we can be doing. But our whole mindset is we want to build strong, healthy kids.

But you don't beat a kid down to build them up. We're not in the military. You're in the military, don't put their hands on you like that no more? Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting because, like, I think people feel that when they're parenting this way, you know, when they're using physical force and they're being, like, quote, unquote, tough, that they're in charge and they're strong. And to me, I see it as like such weakness or like laziness in a way of like you are taking

the easiest route here. You're not teaching. You're not explaining. You're not getting in touch with your feelings. Like to me, when I see someone behaving that way, I'm like, oh, it makes me sad. Like I'm like, you must not have any other tools. And so it's weird how we've been conditioned to believe that that is somehow like tough. powerful parenting. I don't know if you see that a lot as well. I'm a seventh grade middle school

teacher. Yes, I see it all the time. I feel sorry for people, once you start to really understand behavior and that it's a form of communication, you start to realize that everything that you're seeing is bound by an antecedent. There is something that's preceding this behavior that causes the behavior. And that leads to either reinforce or reinforcing that behavior where it increases or it punishes the behavior where it decreases. But in a lot of cases, it increases. So you're seeing these adults who have not been taught how to self-regulate. You're seeing adults who are not, who have not been taught how to critically think about their actions or their choices. And so they've been put out into the real world without being fully raised. And they've just had to figure it out as

they go along. And so they're pushing that same thing on their children. I think one of the most sobering realities for me when I became an adult in my, like, mid-20s was realizing that my parents had no idea what they were doing and they were just stumbling through life. That's a crazy moment to realize it really is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was comforting, but it was also terrifying.

It was comforting in the sense that, okay, so I don't have to have it all figured out yet. But terrifying in the way that, hold up. So y'all was just doing stuff and didn't really know how it was going to affect me later in life. It's wild. And so my job is to provide parents with as much information as possible so they're not making the same mistakes. So they are able to go into parenthood healthy.

They're able to go into parenthood with tools and skills that they practiced so that they're not passing the same thing down. Right. Right. Yeah. So I think, you know, the majority of people that are part of my audience are. adults who are reflecting back on their childhood, trying to make sense of it. And a lot of those adults are parents of young children as well. And so I'm wondering if we can speak to, you know,

the adult who maybe was abused as a child was hit and they're trying to reconcile or understand what happened to them. And maybe you can walk us through like what are some of the long-term effects that they might be experiencing as adults now. So if I understand correctly, just to clarify, you're asking what are some effects that abusive parenting can have on their kids or what they could be experiencing right now? Yeah. So what could some of those adults be experiencing now if maybe they're not aware of the way that this parenting practice impacted them or they're kind of in denial about its impact on them?

Okay. First of foremost, anxiety and depression. Those are some of the bigger ones. Inability to self-regulate. So that looks like the anger where you're seeing red, the want to lash out and immediately fight or hit somebody whenever there is a threat that's not really a threat that's posed to you. Like road rage, if somebody's riding your bumper and you're wanting to get out of the cart and throw hands with them, that's a sign of that same abusive style of parenting. People pleasing is another huge one. lying. And I'm not talking about just like, you know, like small little lies here and there. I'm talking like lying. Like you don't know why you're lying, but you're lying. Yeah. As percocious puberty, like I said before, developing early, that is a huge one. Hypersexuality is also another one. Insecurities. Another huge one, perfectionism. Oh, man, there's a whole exhaustive list.

Yeah. It can even go into your physical health. If you are getting overweight, that also has. ties in some abuse, God, there's so much. I can keep going. No, all the symptoms you're listing, I think, are right in line with what I see as well in my own work with people. If you're getting spanked a lot, there's a cortisol dump into your body, which is a stress hormone, which can lead to things like accumulated fat. So obesity, think about how that is an American thing about how it's really big in the South where there's also spanking and poor

diet. On top of epigenetics, no, it's like a hot pot for physical disabilities, diabetes, high blood pressure, pick one. And it's coming primarily from the lifestyle that we've been entered into from childhood. And it perpetuates farther up. And that abuse adds to it. So how do you respond to people, because I'm sure people say this to you all the time, who say, like, I was spanked and I turned out fine? baby fine is cute fine is the low bar right like i've been shot and i turned out fine are we trying to give our children fine are we trying to give our kids the best because if you're trying to get your kid to be you know like you depressed anxious can't figure out your emotions

bad relationships you're on your fifth marriage and all this then go ahead by all means if you want your children to have a legacy where you are your best self for your child so your child can be the best version of themselves, then baby, go see about yourself. But let's be honest, a lot of the parents out here didn't really want to have kids. And so a lot of them are mean and upset to their kids because they either remind them of their ex, it reminds them of the life that they should have had, or it reminds them that their life is screwed up. And so they're stuck with a burden instead of having a child that they can actually pour all of themselves into. Let's be, let's keep it a buck about that.

We need to really reconcile that first before we keep moving on with their children because nothing I tell you will work if you're looking at your child like they're a burden or you look just like your damn daddy or you look like just like your damn mama. If you do that, nothing I can say is really going to help you. But when you start to deal with it, when you really start to sit with yourself, spanking is not, you didn't turn out fine, baby. You didn't. You didn't.

It's so true. And you know you didn't. Yeah. Yeah. There's always that quote that's going around that I don't know who said it first, but it's like that if you think it's okay to hit kids, you probably didn't turn out fine. You know, that if you think that that is a thing that you want to do in your life, it's probably not fine. But I love what you're saying about like, why are we striving for fine?

You know, and also this idea of like if you see your child as a problem, as something that's holding you back, as a hindrance, something you didn't want. Like, it's hard to engage in respectful parenting because you resent your role. Yeah. But can we also just, when I'm 6'8, right? I am a tall human being and I am not weak. I'm skinny, but I'm not weak. And I look at my students and my students now don't get a twisted.

My students, I want to pick some of them up and throw them like a javelin across the campus. I want to grab one of these kids and straight up just body slam them like I'm Stone Coat Steve Austin. I get it. But then I look at these kids. These kids still have their squeaky high-pitch voice. These kids still can't really write very well because they're still developing their fine motor control. These kids can't dance on beat because they still haven't figured out rhythm yet. And you're telling me that you're going to be so threatened by a child, so upset with a child, that you're going to put your hands on them and then do it. Being upset is one thing. Doing it when a kid is half of my height literally. Kids can be half of your height. Why would you

baby, what happened? Oh, it happened to you too. That's why. learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow down the progression of myopia. So your child can continue to discover all the world has to offer through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with stellist lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLOR.com and ask your family eye care professional for SLOR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Yeah, we don't realize the power that we already hold without having to exert any of that physicality over the child that, like, the child didn't ask to be here. They rely on you completely for literally everything.

Some of them would be dead, you know, without their parent. And to think that you need to exert any more power over them than that, you know, is really a fallacy. But I love that you're speaking about, like, that we all feel the feelings of, of race. of discomfort of annoyance, like you and I are both well-versed in this and working in it. And I feel that with my own kids. Like you feel that with the kids that you're around. But what you do with that feeling is what matters, is what I'm hearing and what you're saying. Yeah. And everybody has some power over that to work on that. Oh, yeah. I got a 16-year-old. Like I said,

he lives here and sometimes he does things that make me want to not do very Christian things. Sure, sure. But then I'm also like, you're 16, you don't know your butt from a hole in the ground. Yeah. You still wet behind the ears. I can help you. I can guide you. Let's go.

Yeah. And he's a good kid. It's just, once you've seen the worst, once you have had one of your locks pulled out, you can't see life the same way. You can't see behavior the same way. You can't see your kid doing that. small thing the same way. It just doesn't, it doesn't fit. Yeah. And every kid is like difficult in their own ways, depending on what the parent is triggered by, right? Like there's certain things that my, you know, children around me get to certain milestones and I'm like, oh, that bothered me,

but this didn't. And I hear from other parents that they're not bothered by this thing, but this other thing sent them over the edge because of their personality, their temperament, what they've been through that there are no like difficult kids or bad kids that we have to like mold. It's really just like what's happening in that relationship between us and the child and their unique temperament. But another thing I really wanted to ask you about is like I've seen a lot of clips going around TikTok lately of, you know, adult children talking to their parents. And it kind of goes along the same realm of like, oh, I remember you beating us or hitting us and the parents like, I never laid a hand on you. That never happened. And I'm wondering if you

encounter this a lot as well, like this absolute amnesia about like the spanking or the physical abuse in childhood. So kids will remember something traumatic because it's a part of our survival. Our brain is going to remember that. Parents not so much because it's not a threat, right? It's not traumatic to them. It's traumatic to the child. In a lot of cases, I see this narcissism, pseudo-narcissism, I'm not going to call it narcissistic, like, diagnosed, but I'm going to say it's a pseudo-narcissism where there has to be a denial. For a system to exist, there has to be a denial that it exists. The reason why systems of oppression can exist so well is because they deny what happened.

Pick a system of oppression. Good point. And I will show you people who deny it. Yeah, yeah. And so one of the ways that parents will still uphold their system of oppression is through denial. We see this. The best place to see this in real time is the movie Encanto. If anybody has seen it, Abuela, baby, you mess up the whole family.

That's two generations. Almost three. Yeah. And she would deny it. I don't even think she fully actually apologized. I think she was just kind of like, yeah, I kind of, you know, I did this. But no kind of apology per se. And so a lot of parents go through the same thing where they just, well, it was so long ago, just let it go, baby, I'm dealing with the trauma from it.

Yeah. I still have the behavior that's associated with what you did to me directly. My life is a direct reflection of the trauma you inflicted on my. my life. Don't just tell me to get over it. Don't sit here and try to deny it. It happened. Take accountability for it. Don't tell me I got to take accountability for my actions, but you're not willing to take accountability for yours. That's not how this works. Yeah. But we see whenever there is a system of oppression, hear me, there is always going to be denial. I don't just do parenting. I also do social justice. And in every single system,

there will be denial. So it is not surprising that parents do the same thing. It is not surprising at all. It's actually expected. I hadn't thought of it that way. I appreciate you sharing that because I think that's so true. And the denial is protective, right? Whether we're looking at that from a systemic perspective, like you're speaking to

or the individual parent of like, I need to deny this to protect myself and the practices I engaged in, right, on a larger scale from being looked at any further or from the shame that I feel from that, which is, it's how this stuff continues, right? Generation over generation. It's, you know, and that's why I'm thankful for people like you that are stepping out and talking about it. I'm trying. Yeah, I know.

It's rough out there. I get it for sure. I want to pivot a little bit because I mentioned to you that this month inside calling home we're talking about father-daughter relationships, and you did a couple of videos on fathers, and I want to talk about those because one of the videos that you did was about how the bare minimum won't get you by anymore in fatherhood. And I was wondering if you can speak to that. So I had the privilege of growing up with my granddad, who was a man's man, if I have ever seen one. Like, when I talk about a man who sounded like God himself and he was a reverend,

When I think of God sounding like anybody, it sounded like my granddad. And my granddad was this big, burly six, two, like, powerfully strong man up to, like, his 80s. This man was strong. And when I saw, I saw what masculinity really looks like. It wasn't just being strong. He also had this softness to him where he wrote poetry for his wife. They were married 67 years. He will write her poetry and just.

speak it to her. This man's man, right? The only time I heard him say anything remotely sexist was when I was in the kitchen and all the women and my family were cooking. He said, come out of that kitchen, boy, let the women work. Close as thing. But in the same way that he would say that, he would be up cooking for his family, cooking for the women. And if the women were sitting down, come in here, boy, being here with the men, say less. I did not see the wrong. I did not see the the gender roles like that. It was he saw what needed to be done and he did it. Yeah. The weaponized incompetence that a lot of men are exhibiting today is disgusting because it's not showing that you're a man. You're a boy. You're a boy that just grew up and is smelly. And you

probably got a job and you're probably not that good at it. It takes more than that to be a man. Now, a lot of people can look at me and say, oh, I got fingernail nail polish on and I got like a weird voice or whatever like that, they could say whatever they want. Maybe I'm more man than they could ever be. I know how to work with kids. I know how to raise kids. I know how to change diapers. I know how to set appointments. I know how to do everything that is expected of not a mother, a parent. Yeah. I can have those calming conversations with a child to help steer them the way they need to go. I also know how to be assertive. I also know how to fight. I also know how to hunt. I also know how to cook. Fish, whatever. I have the best of both worlds. Not because I'm trying to be more man

than I am, I'm doing it because this is what's necessary to provide a life from my family, which is at the end of the day what a man and what a dad should be. Right. Should not be just asserting your masculinity all over the place. If you have to assert your masculinity, that means you are insecure in your own masculinity. If you can exist as you are naturally, unapologetically, and get everything you need done done, you can provide for yourself, provide for your family. give them training, teach them how to live in this world, provide them with the ability to be

a self-controlled, independent person. You're doing your job as a parent. If you are out here yelling at your kids, if you are out here asserting yourself and flexing your muscles every two seconds, baby, that makes me think your parents probably raised you like crap. That means that somewhere along the way you felt like you were less than a human, less than a man, and you have to prove to the world that you are. I don't have to prove nothing to nobody. I simply exactly. exist and everybody knows who I am. Yeah. The same thing needs to happen to fathers. Fathers need to realize it's not enough that you have a thing in your pants and you sling it around everywhere. Anybody can be a dad. Can you be a father? Anybody can be a baby daddy. Can you be a father? Can you

guide your children? Can you provide for your children? Can you protect your children? That's what it is. can you be a spouse, a good spouse to your partner? Yeah. Not a, you know, let me take the kids for a couple minutes and then play video games while they're sitting next to me. Not a, I don't know, pick something that's kind of dumb that anybody can do. Mothers do so much and they're having to do so much. After pushing a human being out of their body, the least a man can do.

The least a dad can do is step up even more and be the leader and lead by example. I wish my wife would have a whole child and I'm sitting here not doing that. I wish I would. I wish I would let her do anything. Not because I'm a simp, but because she's pushed out a whole human being. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. What you're saying is music to my ears. I 100% agree with you. And this isn't going to be simping. This is just legit. She pushed out a whole being. Right, right. And grew the whole thing.

You know, it's like, it's a little. feet, hunger pains, all that. It's a lot. And I think a lot of the, what you're saying is like the bare minimum is just like providing. You know, I think a lot of people think that when they check off that box of like, well, I paid for my kid's stuff and they had a roof over their head and they had food. I did my role. And what we're saying now and what you were really saying in this series is like there's more to parenting than doing what is like legally required of you by the state. you know, to not get your kids taken away. Yeah, exactly. So what type of parent do you want to be?

Do you want to be somebody that just pays the bills or do you want to actually be a parent that is leading and, you know, growing this child? And I think it's good that we are being more upfront and honest about the absolute labor and intensiveness of parenting so that maybe people think about, you know, I'm actually happy when I see younger people being like, I don't know if I want to have kids. That seems really hard. Like, okay, good. They're seeing what this is like and that it's not like a baby doll. You know, it's a big undertaking. And I feel like that honesty can go a long way and helping people make informed decisions. But I also want people to know that don't be afraid to have kids.

100%. A lot of it is people have seen kids that have been raised poorly or they've seen kids and they have not been taught how to self-regulate as adults. And so they're also looking at kids that can't self-regulate. And they're like, I don't know how to self-regulate that. It's a skills issue. I promise it's a skills issue. Yeah. And it's a skill that can be learned. Now, if you don't want to have kids, don't have kids. But if you want to have kids and you just not sure how to do it, there's so many people like myself and so many others that literally have dedicated their lives and their time to teaching parents how to work with their kids. Kids are wonderful. They are amazing. They smell

weird. But other than that, they're great. They do funny things. Yeah. They say funny stuff. Yeah. It's true. It's true. Having children has been the greatest, you know, transformational act and privilege of my life. And it's also very hard and very wonderful. And it's all the things. But I do think you're making a good point that a lot of people who listen to this podcast feel like, well, I don't want to repeat my childhood. I don't want to do what my parents did. And that fear can stop you from pursuing something that you actually, you can be different. And the fact that you're thinking about it, that you're listening to this, that you're wanting to learn new tools, tells me everything I need to know about how you could be as a parent, right? Because you're aware and you're thinking about it and you know that you want to do something else.

and so to me that's like that's the gateway that's once someone starts following you or listening to this podcast like you know that they're on the path to making different choices which is that's the first step yeah well on that note the one question that I like to ask all of my guess is what cycle you're breaking in your own family what is a pattern that's ending with you oh man first hitting kids yeah My mom did it. My dad did it. Not doing that to my kids. Yelling at kids. Breaking that too. Not doing it. Shaming my kids. Guilting my kids. Not doing it. Therapy. My mom used to get therapy. A lot. I'm getting therapy. My sister gets therapy. We get in therapy. That's Norman and my family. Ooh, insecurities. Breaking that. There's a lot of stuff I would go into that I'm not going to talk about everything. But there are a lot of generational traumas and curses that I'm breaking. A lot of it just. really stems from not doing the same things to my kids. Yeah. Hey, if you break any of the ones you just mentioned, I think you're on a good path

and I can tell that you are just by what you're doing with this platform that you've built. So I really appreciate you being here. I'd love if you could share with the audience where they can find you and anything that they can get access to that you're doing over the next few months or having the works. Absolutely. I'm currently working on a conference for gentle parenting, respectful parenting. It's going to be pretty big. Got some big names. That's great. Already a lot of great content creators that you probably all know that are on board that will be going up in August, August 9th through the 11th.

Amazing. Amazing. So far, it's in the early exceptions. I do parent coaching as well. So if you will like access to that, you can check out my TikTok, my Instagram, all under the underscore indomitable underscore black man. That's where you can find everything I do. Great. And we will link all of that in the show notes as well. Well, Gabriel, thank you so much for coming on the Calling Home podcast. I learned a lot from you. And I know that the audience will as well. And thank you for sharing your wisdom and expertise with us. Thank you. You were so welcome. Thank you for having me on. The Calling Home Podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health, advice or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist patient or other treatment relationship between you and Colin Colm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see

Collingholm's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.