Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 231 | dad tell ALL! (Andrew answers your questions)

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Andrew felt left out so it's his turn to answer all your questions from Instagram.. Haha, enjoy!! Love you guys! Shawn and Andrew Follow our podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/couplethingspod/?hl=en Subscribe to our newsletter! ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up? Happy Wednesday. This is Andrew. Look, I felt a little left out last week. Sean got to do just a solo Q&A with you all. She said that she had a blast. So I thought, you know what, why don't we make this week's episode my time in the sun? So we're going to go through some questions. We asked Instagram these. We can also pull these straight from the YouTube chat. If you have any questions, go ahead and sling them my way. This is just going to be a dad Q&A. I love doing these. Q&As are always fun. I am always a little nervous

to see what questions come in, though. But we have wonderful Lexi, Caroline, and Maya back here, hustling, trying to give me the questions. So before we jump in, though, I hope you're having a great Wednesday. Can't believe it's October. Just felt like it was August.

Not that long ago. But here we are. It's fall. It's chilling out here in Nashville, and it's a great time of year. Who do we have with us? We have L.A. Shopper, Tainted Love, just classic. Love senior name pop up.

Thanks for joining today. And we have a whole bunch of people on Instagram as well. All right. Let's roll into some questions. Oh, Aaron Sullivan, hello. Here we go. Best thing about parenthood versus the most challenging thing about parenthood. Best thing.

Oh, my gosh. I feel like I just grew up so much being a dad. and then you think about the little moments you share with your kids the other day I was walking down the stairs and Jett said he asked me if I could hold his hand and it's like those little things where you're like oh my gosh I didn't know that could mean so much but when you when you pour so much into the little kid and then they like kind of reciprocated that's really special seeing them grow and learn is fantastic yesterday we went to the BMX track and Jett was just ripping around there

is a three-year-old, and he's riding with like eight-year-olds, a 30-year-old, and he's having a blast. Like, just to see them kind of catch on to what their passions are, there's something uniquely satisfying about that. The challenging thing is, I mean, it's like, it's a refining process, you know, you kind of get tossed in the fire, it's uncomfortable. It takes a lot of, just takes a lot of growing up, which is not always fun, but I think it's good, you know?

So I would say that's the most challenging thing. I'm thankful for it. Someone's saying nice haircut. Matt McLaren says, Hey, brother. Hello from Louisiana. Fellow Christ follower, proud of you, man. We got Regan Boyd.

Happy Wednesday. Thank you all. Next question. How can I best support my wife postpartum? My wife and are expecting our first child. Well, let's go, dude. Congrats. Oh my gosh.

You're about to enter into one of the greatest adventures life has to offer. We're so excited for you. Man, the first couple months, there's nothing like it. The late nights, you might have heard this, but like, they're tough, but you will probably miss them. We're in a phase now where our youngest is nine months, and I'm starting to miss the late nights, just like the little cuddles with a little potato baby. It's amazing. How can you best support your wife postpartum?

It's a journey. Sean and I had a whole process that we that we kind of worked through after our first kid getting outside, being active, involving as much community as she's comfortable with. We were really tight with the diet. This might sound funny, but we only watch comedy movies. There's a lot of like downtime at home

because we got a little time off of work and like you just can't, you're not that mobile. So you might be watching Netflix, and I would think about just watching uplifting things. We try to stay away from like the horror type, dark type of stuff just because it's just a weird phase, so you might as well try to get as much positive momentum rolling as possible. Just being with her, crying with her.

Yeah, that's my best advice. You're going to do great though. The fact you're asking the question means that your head's in the right spot. So congrats. You can't wait to hear about how the base. baby goes um tainted love asked how is drew relating to bear she's adorable with him this is the other satisfying thing about being a parent when you take care of your kid and then you watch them take care of something else it's nuts it's like it really is humbling because they might

reflect your faults as well but they'll also reflect like some of the things you've done well and that's like really encouraging as a parent when uh day-to-day you're like not really seeing a ton of those moments. Amanda says, hey, Andrew, hope you guys are having a great week. You too, Amanda. All about Sports Zone. Ask, what are some of y'all's favorite hobbies?

Pickle ball, ping pong, fitness, reading, e-bikes, swimming, we like to grill. Yeah, I just got my pilots license. and life is really good our days are weird it's like we will work for the most of the day we hang out with the kids just like chill in the playroom with them for three or four hours and then we go to bed at like 830 so we don't have like a ton of margins on either side but that's fine like I'm not I thought about pursuing golf for a little bit but it just feels like a real big ask and time commitment so a lot of it is like we do a bar

bunch of groups. It's like book club type stuff. We like that a lot. Um, next question. Reagan asked, how did Sean show up for you in the loss of your dad? Man, she was so patient and gracious with me. Uh, it was like a week of logistical concerns and there's like pretty time intensive. So spending time with all the people that you need to plan with, the pastors, siblings, my mom. And like just also, um, um, allowing room for emotions. She just did a great job of making space and allowed me to go on hikes with my brothers and sisters, and we did big family meetings, and, you know, all the while she was taking

care of kids or taking care of logistics to take care of the kids, all the meals and everything. I really felt loved and cared for. So she did that, and she also just, I think, she was just there to support me and love me and not like try to be overbearing or like interject too much um even with like i probably spent seven hours writing my dad's eulogy and it was it was really amazing cathartic process going through all of his stuff that he had linkedin profiles facebook post everything and just like writing this 10 page document and patchworking my memory of him so she just allowed me to do stuff like that, which was way off our norm. And I'm super thankful

because I think if I didn't have that space, I'd, I don't know, been irritable or the grief process would have gotten delayed or extended. And she was really nice. I'm thankful for how she handled it. Next question. Ooh, my gosh, these are deep. If you could redo one major decision in your life. What would it be and why? One major decision. Ah, it's interesting. Going to Vanderbilt was a really amazing experience. I'm super thankful for it. I think now I realize how much that pulled me away from my home, which I think was necessary at the time, but now it has lasted, we've been in Nashville 15 years, and all my siblings are now back in Indiana. So it kind of like, it was a divide of family, which when we get our kids together with their cousins, my brothers and sisters, kids,

you like realize how special that family unit is. And so I don't know. I think that decision I made to come to Vanderbilt was strictly because I wanted to play Division I won football, and I was, like, really tightly grasping to that, as opposed to just, like, being down to play football wherever. So maybe that would be it, just to preserve the family. Next, how have you learned acceptance with yourself and peace? Peace is a big word.

Learn a lot about what that means. um we just finished the 16 week marriage counseling program it's like two hours every week and the whole goal of this it was kind of marriage related but really it was individual and it was like it was it was all about trying to preserve peace in your life and that's that's like the goal to a happy life is just to be peaceful so um i learned that let me just try to rip this off i think like extreme ownership is important and it's almost like controlling what you can control which is pretty much just your response and actions that's important i think uh having a strong sense of self-identity and not being swayed by how other people are are trying to like be a voice in your

life even even if that voices your wife like sometimes sean and i will get in arguments and we say things that we shouldn't, and that, like, used to really get under my skin and disturb my peace because I was really attaching my self-identity to Sean. That's what I kind of thought marriage was, was like, okay, you're the person nearest and dearest of my life. You're going to tell me who I am. Like, you're the lens I'm going to see myself through. And that's not really the best way to go about it. I also think I kind of subscribe to

stoicism a little bit, which is like being an audience to your own life. I think there's like an interesting overlap between stoicism and Christian thought. And stoicism was like this ancient Greek philosophy like school of thought.

And it's all about just like responding well and realizing that things are usually not as good or as bad as you think they are. There's this old story about a, like a Chinese guy, which I love. I'll divert. Have you heard this? So it's like, there's this old Chinese man, and he's super poor, and then all of a sudden

he gets this flock or like this stampede of horses that come through his yard and stay there. And so everyone's like, oh, my gosh, look, you just got all these free animals that came, and they're yours, and you're so wealthy. now because you have these animals and he was like he was like yeah it might be a good thing we'll see and then next thing you know uh next thing you know like one of the horses stampedes over his family member and they're like oh my gosh that's such a tragic thing that's such a tragic loss how could you ever deal with that he's like ah this might be the we'll see how this ends up he just kept

saying we'll see and it's like one thing after another it these things stack up and it's like never as good or never as bad as you as you think it would be i kind of butchered that story but it was like it's like a link of these 10 events and some seem oh my gosh you stumbled into all this wealth or you lost this person and it's like hey just write it out play the long game you'll be all right so acceptance um the other part of the question i think i've I'm not a perfectionist, which is really nice. I think I've become less of one. And I think having a sense of humor helps.

So I think that answers a question. Next, how will you encourage your kids to know it's okay to fail at something and still dream big? Wow. Brought to you by Matt Lombardi. Thank you for asking the question, Matt. How do you encourage your kids to know it's okay to fail at something? I think that's like, that's when you know you're in the pocket. That's when you know you're in the sweet spot.

It's like you're right on the cusp on the border of your abilities and learning. And it's like when you're pushing that frontier, you're going to fail. Like we read a book called Comfort Crisis, which has actually been really pivotal in how I approach things. It's like you should get involved in, if you're trying to push and learn and grow in an area of life, get involved in something that has no more than a 50% success rate. And so it's like, okay, this is. this is either going to be right inside of my realm of abilities or it's going to be right outside and lead to failure, but that's still good because I'll figure out where that line is. And so I hope I could teach them that like failing is the signal that you're learning

something, right? Yeah. I try to explain that. I used to hear people talk about failure. It's like, oh, you need to fail to succeed. I don't freaking know what you're talking about is kind of how I would always hear that stuff and be frustrated. But now it's like, dang, you really do, you need to fail to grow. That's how it works. That's how you know you're doing something new and novel. And it's like a good motivator to, like necessity is the mother of invention, you know? So those are my initial thoughts.

Next, how would you advise someone to approach dating in today's dating economy? Uh, get involved, engage yourself, and, uh, introduce your, smile and wave to take, to take notes from the Madagascar Penguins. Um, I think when you're welcoming and kind, people tend to reciprocate that in a beautiful way that at least gives the relationship of whoever you're meeting, whether it's like a romantic prospect or not, at least gives it like a little bit of legs and a little bit of runway um but i would say like hey if you want to if you want someone who's athletic i would say go get involved in athletics or write down your list of like hey here's what i'm looking for a spouse and then find activities that are derivative and associated to that and then go

get involved yep referrals are always clutch too so if you know someone who know someone do it that way. How have you seen yourself grow since being a dad? So much. I was like a surfer bro wearing a poncho with dreadlocks and now now I kind of like feel mature and responsible a little bit more at least. So I think I think my self-awareness has grown. I think my approach to life has gotten like a little more serious. You realize, okay, these people depend on me, which then emanates into, okay, maybe other people depend on me. And like, what can I do to be useful? What can I do to serve them?

What can I do to set them up for success? You start just looking outside yourself a little bit more, which I think has really positive effects. What would you tell a first time dad? I would say you're going to do great you're going to fail there's going to be moments of frustration and you're going to do great

so just stick with it show up the next day keep showing up try to set yourself up for success as much as possible so that you are able to respond in a thoughtful manner. So that's everything from,

I realized like when I, we used to drink a bunch of wine, probably like, I don't know, three nights a week, Sean and I would have wine before kids. And then I realized I'm super irritable when I drink wine. So cut that out

because I wanted to set myself up for success. We'd probably drink twice a month now, maybe, after the kids go down. Fitness is part of that. I think learning where you can we've we've been fortunate enough to read books that have really positively influenced our parenting strategies discipline we read a book called one two three magic and it just like the more you can build a framework and like understand the scaffolding of like hey okay we're thoughtful we're not just going off the cuff here with our discipline

strategy or we're not just going off the cuff here with school and stumbling into the next thing it's like be as strategic in your family life as you are in your professional life and I think you'll be great but you're going to do good just keep showing up do you miss playing competitive sports like pro football I think I've been more competitive after my pro career ended I was a long snapper I got like eight plays a game it didn't even really feel like I was playing football I was like I was just out there occasionally on the field and so I think my after football competitiveness has looked

it's been way more fun honestly with CrossFit done ping pong competitions go car competitions um softball like we pick a ball all these things that I probably couldn't do if I was still playing football so

I still try to compete it's one of the things I most enjoy doing back to the earlier question of like what are our hobbies I would say competing in anything I enjoy because there's a chance for failure so now we're looping in some old questions

as well. All right. When did you feel a bond with the baby? Was it during the newborn phase or older? I think there's like a, there's like different types of bonds. I've heard some dads say they have not felt connected or bonded with their newborns at all. It wasn't until like 18 months in that they felt connected. I didn't have that feeling.

I really loved the newborn baby phase and tried to be as involved and active in that as possible. So, yeah, I think different types of bonds for each phase. Like now, I took Jet to the BMX thing yesterday, like I said, and I'm making him lunch or dinner, and I'm getting him his water. And I felt like that was really fun because he was talking to me about it too, sharing. but it was not bonded like the newborn phase where I'm holding in my arms and like and I'm responsible for his nutrition. He's sitting there eating his lunchbox at the course.

So, you know, it's like different types of special. Next question. What's one lesson you learn from your dad you want to pass on to your kids? I would say my dad did a great job at walking to his own beat. And I think I would want them to walk to their own beat. I want my kids to do their own thing. Like, he was a really fantastic student, but he kind of did things his own way. And that's going to lead to some frustration, but it's also going to lead to, like, really discovering why you're put here on earth, I think, when you engage in that process.

So that's the quality I hope my kids have. next what do you what do you best support Sean as a wife mom what is that question the phrase right okay I'll jump to the next one I'm not sure what that is what has been the biggest scare you've had that you haven't told Sean oh man there's been a couple things there's been some close calls with our kids are mobile earlier than most And so there's been some diving catches as I've been changing diapers and them rolling. But we caught them. So I'm not going to share specifics on that because it was scary.

It's all with the kids. Like for me, yeah, it's fine. But when the kids are at risk, dang. Okay. What's a parenting mistake you made that you've learned from? and grown stronger because of. Parenting mistakes. We are super slow to make universal statements or absolute statements.

And I think earlier on I did that more. So I was like, okay, we're never going to watch TV in the car, you know. That's just probably not true. and it creates a double standard more than I'm comfortable with. So one of us used to say that, and then it inevitably led to frustration. I think Sean and I also tended to be on different pages. So, like, me allowing the kids to watch TV after Shauna just told him or them,

they couldn't. That was a big mistake. We really kind of pow out up with that and, like, work to check with each other. So if one of the kids asked if they can watch TV, we say, let me talk to mom, just to make sure. And that way, there's no dual standard. Because I want our kids to see us as a source of truth. So we can't make absolute statements that are probably not going to be true. And I want them to see us as a team.

Next. How do you maintain friendships while prioritizing family? I don't know. It's been hard. Honestly, we work through this all the time. It's like a monthly, it feels like this changes. We host a lot. People sleep at our house a lot, which makes it feel like the friendship is active. But it's like, I don't know if I really prioritize friendships as much as I do family. I think I'm fine making that substitution. but it makes it difficult sometimes. So we have certain scheduled meetups with friends, which has helped.

I think finding friends where the kids get along has helped. And honestly, having good neighbors helps. So that keeps things pretty dynamic. Next, what are your thoughts on Halloween as a man of faith? I don't know. I think there's a lot of different ways to cut an onion. You could probably get weird with Halloween. You could probably not get weird.

We like dressing up. We like going trick-or-treating. We're not putting, I don't know. We're not big on the decorations of skeletons and whatnot. But that's just kind of our style. So it doesn't bug me. What are your thoughts? All right, we've got a couple more here.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever heard? my life motto used to be be comfortable being uncomfortable and I like that a lot I'm trying to think if that applies to all areas of life I'm not sure it does but I just like that approach so it reframes parts of your life when you feel uncomfortable and you feel like it's challenging.

It's actually kind of allows you to be encouraged through it, I think. It's like, okay, it's game time. Three more. Can you share tips for how to organize your digital stuff? Sean said we're good at that. Yeah. Let's see. There's a bunch of helpful tools.

Google has a tool called like Notebook L.M. We use Google Drive. We also try to be pretty redundant with our files. sales. So there's like this whole organization system on Google Drive where it's folders and subfolders. And you only have like try to only create five levels deep of subfolders. We we also use tools like YouTube for like family video type stuff. There's a bunch of videos on YouTube that we have that aren't listed as public because certain things like, as far as videos go, we try to organize and then upload so we can easily find them

later on. Converting, honestly, converting everything to digital that was once like tangible paper or whatever has been huge for us.

Using, honestly, AI has made things really interesting to organize in a great way because like notes, even in your like iPhone.

can be sorted through. And then I have a ton of Google Docs too that are like master files that link out to other Google Docs. So that was a lot. And I don't know if I can really dig into each of those in a timely way, but I would say try to make things as accessible and searchable as possible,

whether you're talking title or date or who it's been shared with. I try to document all that stuff. What online doctorate program are you using and how are you enjoying it? I'm doing Liberty Online. It's been fantastic so far. I've really loved it. I am two-thirds done with it.

So I should start my dissertation in January. I've loved the whole process of taking back into the academic world and like the rigor of it in our space. There's a bunch of people who just sling hot takes with no sources or no like, legitimate data to support it and I think that's that undermines the quality of the conversations we have as a country and in the doctorate program a lot of it is just like citing your sources and knowing how to reference them in a legitimate way and so you're able to follow the breadcrum trail of an idea so that if you disagree with somebody you can kind of have a point of reference where it's like oh, it's because we see this data differently.

Or, oh, it's because I found out certain information that this study was illegitimate or whatever. And it just makes things a little more rational. So I've loved that. And I can't wait to finish it. Last one. How to keep you cool when the kids are having tantrums. yeah this is good this is a good struggle here the noise is really what gets me um

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Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. Sometimes I'll like jump in and start making whatever noise they do. that's probably like not the best strategy other times distraction is a phenomenal tool uh so like i think if they're in the playroom and they're being all rowdy uh maybe it's like hey let's go eat a snack or hey let's go do something together i think it's like getting involved in a different way has helped um yeah it's it's like a moment to connect almost i take

tantrum is and it's it's almost like trying to find what's the button you can press that gets them out of that funk um not bribing not subduing or like falling into the trap that is the like this perpetuating cycle of oh if i cried that's going to give me this so i think it takes a certain level of awareness um yeah sometimes you just got to double down and not not give in and I think sometimes kids are looking for that assurance from you as a parent. But you're going to do great. That's all I know. Thank you for tuning in, guys.

That was a Q&A. Some of that was live. Some of it was not. But if you made it this far, please subscribe to the show. Give it a rating. Live streams are so much fun, aren't they? My gosh. Also, we have a newsletter.

Over 164,000 people have subscribed to it. Let me just read you some of these titles that we're sending out via e. email. We got, uh, you're due for a date night in where we help you plan your next date night at home. Challenges and stuff. Maybe you'll see some of the stuff that Sean and I do on there. Um, we do recipes. Sean shared her pumpkin bread recipe on that. And that's delicious. That's a hit every time we share that. And then there's after school activities, things like that. So if you're interested, we'll link it down below. Thank you for watching. I'm Andrew. And next week, it should be Sean and I back together. But thanks for entertaining solo show.

with Sean and Andrew. See you next time.