Welcome in to the cool grandpa podcast. This is the podcast where we talk to grandfathers, adult grandchildren, and experts in areas of importance to grandfathers. Whether you're a new grandfather, a seasoned pro, or somebody interested in learning about relationships, this is the place for you. So come on in, join us as we learn together, laugh together, and support each other on the cool grandpa podcast. Welcome in. I'm happy to have you join me this week for a great conversation with Alan Shedland. Now, Alan is a person that has a great perspective on the difference between just being a father and being a daddy. And there is a difference according to Alan. You're going to enjoy this conversation with him as we get to know him a little bit more his journey as a daddy, as a daddy to an entire elementary school, as well as starting to be an advocate for daddy and daddy relationships. So this is going to be an interesting conversation with Alan. You're going to enjoy it. Now before we get started with Alan though, I want to remind you to go over and check out the bookstore at my website. I've got hats and mugs and glasses, polo shirts, all sorts of things over there at this point that would be sure to please the grandfather in your life and make a great gift for the holidays or just because gift. So go over there to the bookstore, check it out, and make your order soon so that we don't get lost in the big Christmas rush that's coming up here in the next few weeks. And without further ado, let's jump into this conversation with Alan. Hi, Alan. Welcome to the cool grandpa podcast. I'm excited to have you on. And I'm really excited to be with you. Now, I'd love for you to give us a little bit of an introduction of yourself and just tell us kind of where you came from and where you grew up and what are you doing? Okay. The most important thing to know about me is that I am a grandpa or Gramsci as I used to be called. But we could get to that as we talk more in terms of how that name has changed and what variations on that theme at that. And there's my five grandchildren have gotten older. So if I have grandchildren, it must mean that before that I had children. So I'm the dad of three adult daughters and five grandchildren, as I mentioned, and I'm also blessed to have a whole bunch of bonus children and bonus grandchildren. So my background in terms of my, let's say my formal training is as an educator. And I began as a special education teacher of autistic and severely emotionally disturbed children in the New York City public schools. And when I was doing that and while I was doing that, it occurred to me that the term special as some special education, the word special has a positive balance and association in our culture. Unfortunately, until you put the word education after it's and then it's not always positive in most people's mind. I always believed it was positive. And the reason I believe that was positive is because you really needed when you work with children with challenges of that nature, you really needed to focus on their assets and their strengths. And so I thought, gee, wouldn't it be interesting if you did that for all children and with all children? So I believe all education that way should be special. And so I ended up lucking out and becoming the principal of the school for gifted children and independent school in New York City. And lo and behold, using that same attitude, that same mindset of focusing on strengths and assets, the kids, you know, everything was was much better. And so that's that part of the background. When I was for eight years, school principal, I had a rule for the 70 faculty members I had, which was you're not allowed to complain at faculty meetings, which were weekly for two hours. So a great opportunity to really professionally be helpful to each other, that you can't complain at faculty meetings unless you accompany or complain with a suggestion on how you're gonna deal with whatever it is you're wanting to complain about. And so I applied that rule to myself. And as I had a lot of things I wanted to complain about by year eight, I thought, you got to do something about it. And so I left my job and I created the National Elementary School Center, which had three missions, I'm more three objectives. The first was dignifying the importance of the earliest school years. So we always talk about going up the educational ladder. We always talk about higher education, I believe, and I like to tell people that I've taught all the way from graduate school up to nursery school. And what we did at our twice a year annual meetings, one in New York and one in Hawaii, and I was there for 10 years, so we had 20 such meetings. We introduced our really good keynote speakers by where they graduated from elementary school. We said nothing about their college degrees or college education, and that really conveyed the point. The second objective of the center was to bring people together across their professional boundaries and silos, because if you work in special ed, you are used to talking across those silos. You talk to neurologist, psychologist, social workers, etc. In regular education, that doesn't happen unless there's a problem. And I missed that. So that was the second objective is to bring people together across their professional boundaries. And then the third objective was to have independent school teachers and public school teachers understand that they were actually colleagues, and they weren't adversaries, and they weren't enemies, and they weren't on the other side. They were actually colleagues. So I did that for 10 years, and it was the National Elementary School Center, which doesn't exist anymore, was a 501(c)(3), which most people also short-handedly call a non-profit. I don't use that term. The term I use is it was the social profit organization. We described ourselves by what we did, not what we didn't do. But it's pretty tiring for 10 years to be holding your hand. I've been begging for money. And 85% of my time was spent that way. And that left 15% of the time to do programs. I wanted it the other way around. And so we closed the center. There's a branch, I believe, that still exists in Hawaii. And we made sure that some of the programs that we created, you know, got carried on. And I had no idea what I was going to do next. And a family friend talked to my three daughters who were in their early 20s at that point, and said to Alan, "The way your daughters speak about you is so father you need to write a book on fathering." Because I'm a little bit of a smart ass, maybe a little more than a little bit. I said, "Lucky didn't talk to them when they were teenagers." You might have gotten a different read. But she said you need to write a book on fathering. And I had written a lot in education, but never thought about writing anything about being a dead. And this goes back now, Greg, to probably about 31 years ago. And so I thought, "How would I do that? How would I write a book about what I call that being?" So again, not criticizing without offering an alternative. When I was asked to write, or one of the suggests that I write a book on fathering, my response was, "That's not a book. It's a paragraph. Fathering is a one-time biological act requiring no commitment whatsoever, just a shot at DNA." And so I came up with the word "daddying," and "daddying" is what happens when fatherhood and nurturing intersect, and that's a lifelong process. And given that all three of my daughters and now members of AARP, I can assure you it's a lifelong process if you're smart enough to seize it and think about it that way. And so how would I go about writing a book on daddy? Well, I guess I'd first think about myself as a dad, and then I'd think about myself as a son and as a grandson. And then I'd think about what a four-year-old told me when he said he thought my job as principal was to be the daddy of the school. And that was probably the best definition of my job I had ever had. And I decided that if you think of "daddying" as a product and you want to improve a product, you talk to the consumers, whether it's a car, whether it's a cooking utensil, whether it's a sleeping bag, whatever the product is, you want to improve it, you talk to the people who are the consumers. And so I set out, given that children of the consumers of daddying, to do focus groups with kids. And I did 28 focus groups in three different countries, and the kids were as young as five and as old as 21. Each focus group was a like age. And by then I thought I had a pretty good outline for the book. I found an agent, and I showed the proposal. She said, "Alan, have you interviewed dads?" And I said, "Nope." And she said, "Why?" I said, "Too obvious." And she said, "That's cute. Go do it." As I said, that was about 30 years ago. And now I have interviewed and continued to interview, not nearly as often anymore, but 205 dads from 20 different countries, ranging in age from 16 to 104, every social and economic group, every ethnic group, religious group, and so forth. And the proposal got rejected. Now this is about 22 years ago. The proposal got rejected summarily by eight publishers according to the agent. And they all said, according to her, exactly the same thing. Best book proposal we've ever seen, perfect how to write the book. But men don't read, men don't buy books. No book on father is ever so well, and nobody ever heard of them. As you said, worst book proposal I've ever seen that's acceptable on a different level. And I was, of course, discouraged. One way I responded to that was to get rid of my agent, who I thought was no longer as excited about the project, and determined to get myself into a publisher. And I did, I got myself into a Simon & Schuster, I handed the proposal to the editor I met with, admitted to her, I know nothing about publishing. Again, 20 plus years ago, what happens next? She said, I read it. And then I'll call you. And she read it. And much to my shock, she called me in 24 hours and said, I love it. I'm sending it up the line. I said, what does that mean? And she said, editor and she. And again, much to my shock within 24 hours, she called back, she said, the editor and she loves it. And she's sending it up the line. And I said, wait a minute, isn't the editor and she gave the end of the line? And she said, no, marketing. So got the same response as the agent at Gotten. There was a little bit of an irony. And that was, they were wrong about no book on fatherhood had ever been a best seller. There was one. Yeah, the irony is it was written by Bill Cosby. That's what I was going to say. I remember that being a huge deal for a year or so. Yeah, exactly. And it was when he was at the height of his fame, not his aim for me. When he was, you know, the Huxtables. And he was quote America's dad. So yes, his picture was on the cover. And yes, it's all well. I never got to speak to marketing. Had I gotten to speak to marketing, I would have said, I don't expect first of all men to read. Second of all, I don't expect men to buy the book. I expect women to buy the book and give it to men. So it might be a mother, it might be a partner, it might be a daughter, it might be a mother-in-law, somebody would give the book to a man. But I never got to do that. And so I was more than discouraged. But I was also determined, given at that point, I had probably done about 50 of the Daddying interviews, which are one on one. And the soulful sadness, Greg, that I heard during those interviews was not something I could ignore. And so I felt something needed to be done. And I wasn't sure what it would be. And I went to see a movie, the small independent film house movie theater in the D.C. area where I live. And it was called My Architect to Sun's Journey. The 2003 Academy Award nominee is Best Documentary. It didn't win. Had I voted it would win. But it really moved me. Again, my architect, a son's journey done by Nathaniel Kahn about his father, Louis Kahn, who is a very famous architect, who I had never heard of. And he decided 25 years after his father's death, his father died when he was 11, that he would learn about his father, who he knew very little about by studying his architecture, but also talking to the people who commissioned his buildings. Probably his most famous building is his Salk Institute in California. But he also did many, many other buildings, including the capital of Bangladesh, some buildings in India, some buildings at Yale, a building, I believe, that's in either Kimballard Institute in Texas. Anyway, so that movie really got me. And like through at least half of it. And when it was all finished, when the movie was over, I decided three things. One is to figure out why it nailed me as much as it did. And that was pretty easy for me to figure out. The second thing was that I want to find Nathaniel Kahn and give him a hug because he needs one badly. And the third was I wish my dad had been sitting next to me watching the movie. Because we could use the movie as a way to talk about issues presented in the movie, which was similar to issues that he and I had. My father had died the year before, so that wasn't going to happen. But that was in 2003 when the idea of using film as a way to open up discussions between fathers, maybe grandfathers as well, and their children. So that brought me to think of doing a film festival on that theme. And again, that was 21 years ago. And then I got distracted. I haven't figured out whether my ADD is a gift or a handicap, I think it's boats. But I got distracted for 17 years. And I started doing programs rather than a festival using film in the programs for fathers, and in many cases for fathers and their kids together at the penitentiary of New Mexico for wounded warriors, for veterans, on Native American pueblos at the World Bank. It had start centers in nursery schools and so forth. Until three years ago, now we're almost up to the point. Until three years ago, before I grew my beard and I was shaping, and this old dude was looking back at me from the mirror, and he said, Alan, you know, you're not looking any younger to me. And what happened to the idea of the film festival? And so three years ago, created the Daddying Film Festival and Forum, which had its third year in May in terms of what we do. So it's a little more than you ask for. It doesn't tell you, you know, where some of this stuff took place. I did mention a lot of the professional work took place with the Daddying stuff in New Mexico. Before that, a lot of the education stuck took place in New York City and in Connecticut, and I've lived in the DC area now for about 26 years. So that's where it took place as far as where I grew up. The answer is, I hadn't. And I have no intention of it, but that's where I got older in those places. Oh, awesome. Awesome. That's some great background. And I want to jump into the Daddying and your work there, but I always love to kick these conversations off as well about learning what your reaction was the first time you heard you were going to become a grandfather. I was elated, you know, being an educator. I knew from a very, very, very early age that I wanted to work with kids. My first job with children was when I was a job with children was when I was 17. And I was a counselor at a residential camp, summer camp setting for emotionally disturbed children. But I knew long before then that I wanted to be working with children. So the thought of being able to become a grandfather, I just was elated. And I was elated from the second that happened, which is now more than 27 years ago, to the four subsequent grandchildren there were after the first one. So yes, I was just beyond belief of my luck at becoming a granddad. Oh, I love it. As the grandkids started coming along and you were starting to interact with them, what were some of the things that maybe you were doing to create a relationship with them when they were smaller? And did you have any meaningful activities that were just kind of a grandpa, grandchild one-on-one type activities? You know, one of the things that I've learned is that we have three resources to become the father or the grandfather we want to be. And they're all free. The first is ourself. And what I mean by that is we think about being the age of our children or our grandchildren. And we think about what gave us pleasure, what gave us comfort, what the opposite of those things might have caused us as well. And we then incorporate that into, as we remember those things, like what are the good parts of that that I want to incorporate into who I am? So that's the first resource. We have the second free resource, in my opinion, that we have is experts. And what I mean by experts is not necessarily the big name, folks. But let's say we have a neighbor who we think is a really good dad or granddad. Or let's say we've seen a film like To Kill a Mockingbird. And we see Atticus Finch model a particular type of dad. Or we read about a particular type of dad. That's an expert. And we can pick from those people in our lives that we want to be in the third free resource is our children. And so observing our children carefully seeing what their assets and strengths are going back to my very beginning professional career. But what I've also used in terms of getting more specific to your question is that in my interviews with children and fathers and grandfathers that I talked about earlier, there were five qualities that were identified over all those hours and hours and hours of listening that stood out of the qualities that kids said they wanted in their father, which I would say you could multiply for grandfathers. And the first was being. And as a 14 year old boy, while rolling his eyes at me said, and Mr. I mean really being there. So that means the example he gave to me 20 plus years ago was my father comes home from work. He sees me sitting on the couch doing my homework. He sits down next to me. This is before smartphones were as plentiful as they are. He picks up the newspaper turns on the television and he would say he was there. I would say he wasn't. So really being there number one, number two is taking your child or your grandchild as seriously as they take themselves. And that can happen with the one year old. And I'll give you an example. So when I visited my granddaughter to the first time, not for the first time when she was about one year old and I had stayed there many, many times before that. And she was living in an apartment in New York City. And she was sitting on the floor at the end of a long hallway playing with pots and pans and blocks and sitting on the floor. And my daughter answered the door and said to me, you know, dad, it's really interesting how differently Casey reacts to you than she does to most other people. And I said, really? Well, what have you observed? And she said, well, other people come in and they stand at the end of the long hallway and they look at Casey, I don't know, 50 feet away and they hold out their arms and they say, and be is here. And you walk in the door and you sit down next to Casey on the floor and you start playing with her pots and pans and her blocks foot there. That's what I mean about taking your child seriously and even at the youngest level. The third thing that always has come up is being an advocate for us. The fourth is and there are five things that came up initially in each of these groups. Show us you love us and be affectionate. That means physically affectionate and not all dads are or grand dads are comfortable doing that. And then the fifth is which they don't have a way of verbalizing and some of these they don't have a way of verbalizing as little ones is provide us with security and protection. So those are kind of the five most cited qualities that kids identified. And what's interesting is when I asked the dads in their one-on-one interviews, what are the qualities you think the kids most want? They're able to identify all of them, not necessarily in the same order, but they all come up. And what's even more remarkable or not maybe remarkable but more important is that as an educator and a child development person, I know that those are also the qualities that kids need the most in order to flourish. So what are the activities, what are the specific things that sort of following the lead of the grandchildren, which is what I did with my children as well. So if this is what they're interested in, then this is what it did. Take them seriously, play with them, spend time with them, be there. That's great advice. Yeah, because I think it's all going to change, especially when they're very little and their interest can shift on a dime. So trying to make one activity stick the entire time is not going to be what the children are looking for. Exactly. Some things that remain the same and the whole notion of routines are also really, really important, I think, especially when the kids are little. So one of the things, for instance, that I was determined to do is read a bedtime story every night to each of my children. And as I mentioned, there were three of them and it was rare that I would read the bedtime story to all of them together. I would read one every night to each one of them. That would then, there was a routine to their bedtime. So part of it was reading the story, which then also, in all three of the cases, lattice and depending on their age to then get into some kind of discussion about what their day was like and something. There's a funny anecdote about it, which is that there was no way that I did not fall asleep while reading the story. To one of them. And so I always alternated the order in which I did the reading just in case, you know, I would fall asleep maybe by the third one. But I didn't think they ever noticed because I kind of felt like I kept reading even when I was dosing off. And one day when I was with all three of them, when they were much, much older, I was tellously at the movies with them. And they laughed at me afterwards. And they said, "Just like he used to when you read to us." And I said, "You knew?" I said, "Hey, session." "Dad, of course we knew." And I said, "And you didn't say anything until now." And they said, "Dad, we knew." And what it showed us was how important it was for you to be with us and read a story. And we didn't want to hurt your feelings. So just more evidence of how important it is to do those kind of things. So routine is also really, really important. Oh, yeah. How did the relationship with the grandchildren change over time as they were getting older? There was some elements that were absolutely consistent. Two of the grandchildren are from one mom and three of them are from another mom. The my third daughter does not have children. Biological children, she is a narrow, amazingly, a retired teacher because I have no idea what that word means. But she's a retired teacher and she had 25 kids every single day for 25 years. So she had children in a different way. She was the mommy of the class. So anyway, so it changes. And now the grandchildren, the youngest is 18, just went off to college 10 days ago. And the oldest of whom is 27. And the 27-year-old is a clinical social worker living in Nashville, Tennessee, who I'll be visiting in about eight days. And how it's changed, I guess, being a dad and being a granddad is not just who you are. It's what you do. And so having that kind of history with them, there has been a consistency. And one of the things that I've thought about a lot, again, being an educator, being somewhat knowledgeable about child development, is we talk a lot about different stages of child development. We don't talk nearly as much about the different stages of adult development. So I am a different guy than I was when I became a dad 57 years ago. And I wouldn't say I'm more tired in a way I do, but not so much because I'm not retired and have no intention of that ever happening. But I don't live with them. I get to visit them, and I see them all quite often. Not as often now, because now they're all living in one in Texas, one in Tennessee, one just moved back from California to New York, one back home now in Virginia, and one in Colorado. So I don't get to see them as often as I used to. But I can talk to them and interact with them on a different level in terms of with the one who's a special ed teacher and the one who's a clinical social worker, we can talk also professionally as well as personally. But none of that, in my opinion, would be possible or would be possible to the same degree if we hadn't laid the foundations much earlier. So it's just a different level of discussion and talking. They seem a little bit more interested now in learning about their granddad's history. And like you, where did you come from? What did you do? And so forth. And I send you a copy of this, Greg, you'll get it in the next few days. But when I turned 80, my oldest granddaughter, Casey, wrote me the most extraordinary letter, which I actually had framed. It's also illustrated. And I had been framed on one of the walls where I lived. And she wrote to me, and I think it answers the question the best. She said, "Grancy, you are so many things in one. A grandfather, a role model, a confidant, an advisor, a sage, and a best friend." She went on, and the letter was quite long. But I may quote in response to another question later on. But basically, I think she's described the different aspects. And she's obviously very articulate of what the different roles have been, and they've been different at different times. And I'm remembering, as a 13-year-old, one of them saying to me, "When you were dad, not a granddad, but when you were dad, she used to micromanage your children a lot." And she was 13. I knew exactly what she was getting at. I said, "You mean like you, honey?" And your mom, in my case, it was mom not a dad. So, you know, being able to be present enough to have that kind of question, being asked, so that showed kind of a change over the life cycle. So, I'm in a different place than I was when I was a 20, just turned 25-year-old dad. And so were they. So, if the relationship doesn't change, somewhat it means we're not dealing with reality. But I think the foundations that were established early on allows it to evolve in a way that, for me, is extraordinarily rewarding. It's the most joyful part of my life. Yeah, I love that. And along with what you were talking about is, what do you think that grandchildren need most from their grandfathers? You know, I think it's very much like what kids need from their dads, but maybe multiplied a bit by the generation difference. So, I think that they need to know that you're there and that you will be there. And if it's not physically, it's now, you know, via Zoom, via FaceTime, via whatever method it is. As I mentioned, I'll be visiting Casey in Tennessee in a few days. So, it's making sure that I get myself to where they are. It's easier for me to get to them at this point than it is for them to get to me. So, I think they need you to be there. I think they need you to listen to them with little judgment at any. I think having an open heart is extremely important. And I'm thinking of, you know, yesterday I spent a short period of time with one of my grandsons who is graduated from college in May and is taking a year to work in a veterinary hospital before applying to veterinary school. And my asking specifically what is the process? What happens next for you? You know, do you have to take an exam to get into veterinary school? How many schools are there? How's it compared to getting into medical school and all of those kinds of things? So, I think it's what they need is you're showing an interest, you're showing you care about them where they are in their lives. So, I think again, it's those same five qualities that I mentioned that kids and dads cited that are most important to them. No, that's awesome. And in such a good reminder too that just because you don't live down the street or something that you can't have a presence with those grandkids. What advice would you have for men who are both grandfathers and fathers when it comes to building and maintaining relationships with their grandchildren and their adult children? So, when I became a grandfather for the first time, again 27 years ago, I realized two things immediately change for me. One is I instantly became a generation older, now broken science. And the second, maybe not quite as obvious to most of us, is I also had something in common with that daughter that I had never had in common with her before. We're both parents. If that doesn't mean your relationship changes, it means you're not dealing with reality because those are gigantic changes. And one of the joyful parts of knowing that we now had in common that we were parents was to realize that they would appreciate in a whole different kind of way the kind of love you feel. And hopefully you will allow yourself to not only feel it but to savor it, the kind of love you feel when you become a dad for your child. And out of in all those interviews with the dads, the 205 interviews with the dads hundreds of hours, there's one question I asked during the interview that has 100% the same answer. And the question is, when you became a dad, did it improve your life in any way? And obviously, it changes your life, whether you embrace it or you don't, as change your life, you then too become a generation older in that instant. But the common denominator was a kind of change, you know, my focus. And it made me see them. I'm not the only person in my life. And I'm not the only one who I need to care about. I mean, one of the dads said to me, and I love this quote from him, he said, you learn that you will never again be alone in your heart. So I think that, you know, that's incredibly important. So as far as how it changes, you know, one of the things that I think we need to look out for is that often for grandfathers, we have a little more time where the different stage of our lives were not necessarily at the trajectory of building our career and, you know, having turned a lot of money or enough money to keep your family going. Life is quite different or can be quite different for some. For some, it's not because some grandparents, as you know, are now in primary parenting roles as grandparents for a lot of different reasons. So, you know, you have more of an opportunity to be reflective about it all and to be a little less immediately hands-on involved. But also that allows you to behave differently with your grandchildren to some degree than your children. And so it's not unusual for a parent to say, hey, how come you want to involve like this and around that much for me when I was growing up? So that's one thing, you know, you can, I think, none of me can talk about it, but ought to talk about it. And if it hasn't come up spontaneously, maybe there's a way to help it come up a little bit. So I think that's one of the differences. And then the another difference is, I guess, your children, your adult children, as parents, having a different perspective, obviously they do in terms of adult development or in a different place. And they may have a full understanding. Um, about why you did some of the things you did when you were a parent. And that could be both a plus and a minus. So I think, you know, directly addressing the issues are really important. I love that answer. And I want to pivot us over now and talk in the last little bit of the conversation about the dad that could see consulting group. Boy, it's going to take me a minute to get used to that one. Yeah. But yeah, if you can talk to us a little bit about that, because we talked about it at the intro, but maybe tell us a little bit more about, you know, what inspired you to really get this thing going. And then how does that support men who maybe passed having children living at home with them? So I, I think as I alluded to earlier, when the book got rejected, and I shifted my focus, and I mentioned that at that point, I had done about 50 of the 205 daddy interviews. There was some pretty dramatic stuff that came out of all of the interviews sort of taken as a as a group. And there was a soulful sadness that came out of those interviews. They weren't all, it wasn't all sad, of course, but there was a soulful sadness, which I referred to as the bookends of daddy yearning. And what I mean by that is that one of the bookends was wishing that their dads had been more directly involved in their life. And the other bookend was wishing they were more involved in their own jobs. And when you listen to 50, and now four times that, you can't, if you have a heart, I guess, you can't ignore it. And you wanted, for me, I wanted to do something about it to address that, because I don't think it needs to be that way. Will there be moments of sadness, of course, when there ain't no such a thing as a perfect dad, or a perfect granddad, or a perfect anything? But the other thing that kind of surprised me with all of the interviews, and if I thought about it more deeply, it wouldn't have surprised me, but it's with the dads often like pulling your finger out of an emotional diet. And if you ask, I'm sorry about the stereotypes, but there's a reason there are stereotypes, I guess, is that if I did these interviews at home, and I did them wherever a dad was willing to give me an hour and a half. And some of the interviews were only an hour, and some of them were four hours. So it depends on the depth of the response that the dads and the grandads gave me. If the interview was at home, which was in about 25% of the interviews, and there was a partner, an occasionally a partner would say to me, how long is this interview going to take? And my response was, I can't tell you that, because it depends on what shared with me. So a brief one would be an hour, but on average, somewhere between an hour and an half and two hours. And I occasionally would get an eye roll from the partner and say something like, yeah, you get 10 minutes out of that guy, you're going to be really lucky he doesn't talk. Well, there was no interview that was less than an hour. And my experience was not only the dad were dads willing to talk, but they were eager to talk to somebody who asked decent questions and listened. And so it's something needed to be done to allow men to have a safe place to talk, to have a safe place to deal with a soulful sadness, to know that for pretty much every dad, you can become the dad you want to be. And most of the groups that I do is that is the title, you can become the dad you want to be. But in order to be the dad you want to be, you need to think about who is that dad I want to be. And I find that a lot of us haven't really thought about that. In depth, we're kind of on the automatic pilot stage, especially when our kids are still living at home as teenagers and younger. It's sort of like you're on automatic pilot and you don't really get a chance. And that's one of the things that we do in the group. So the advocacy consulting group does those kinds of things. So we do programs in the penitentiary and the World Bank and the places that I said that at the very beginning that we did some of the other sort of programs in TELM. And then one of the primary POCI at this point is the Daddy and TELM Festival and form, which started three years ago and has grown in a way that I guess shouldn't shock me, but they shocked me. So in this year we did our third festival and to receive films on this subject, broad subject, the Daddy and from 26 countries, just blows my mind. But what it tells me is that there is a pent up desire to talk about being a dad and what it means and to talk about having a dad or not having a dad around and what that means. And so that's really what the primary programs now is of the advocacy consulting group, which includes what people are definitely able to and I hope they will look at the website, which is advocacy. Yes, it's advocacy within the in front of it, advocacyconsultingweek.com, all one word, no spaces and check out in addition to the different programs and the film festival in particular. But look at the group that we call our dadvisory team and see the breadth of individuals who contribute to the programs. Oh yeah, and we'll be sure to put the link to all of this information into the show notes. So when folks are out driving around listening to this, they can go and quickly be able to get over to your website and learn more. What has been some of the biggest surprises maybe that came across during your interviews with 200 fathers? Well, as I mentioned, it shouldn't really have been a surprise, but the not only willingness but the eagerness that dads have to share their experiences as fathers and to also see what happens reflectively with them as they begin to process their own experience as sons and as grand sons. So that's one of the surprises is the willingness and the eagerness to talk about it. I guess that that would be the biggest surprise. But in a way, it's like that second quality that kids identified is taking them as seriously as they take themselves and the responsiveness to being taken seriously as a dad. You know, when I did my first focus groups with the kids, you know, nothing and so far in my life to the most part has stopped me from jumping into an area that I know absolutely nothing about. I knew absolutely nothing about from festivals. And one of my mantras is weak and a net shall appear. But usually I know somebody who has an ad. So I try to talk to them before I leave. So I knew nothing about doing focus groups. And I met with somebody who was an anthropologist, kind of an expert in doing focus groups. And one of the things she told me was when you do a focus group, you never put in anything about yourself. You never interject anything about yourself. I discovered that that wasn't really good advice for me. And that especially with the dads is that sometimes that there's any if there's a little bit of reluctance and obviously if you've agreed to do and that being an interview with me, there's not complete reluctance, so you won't be doing it. But it's if there's like a moment where there's a hesitation is that too personal. Can I share that? He won't know what I'm talking about. He's never experienced. So I will interject a story as you can tell. It's not a hard thing. Well, I will interject something very personal and that then opens things up. So, yes, it's important to do that. So taking dads as seriously as they take themselves and their role as dads and being there. So those who are maybe two somewhat surprising things to me, which later on didn't become surprising after the first few few times. Oh, okay. Well, that's great information. I love it too because I think just with guys in general is that we're hesitant to open up any kind of emotional intimacy unless there's that kind of a shared sense because I think it's normal for us to feel like, okay, if I do that, I'm really vulnerable here. But if you're both doing that, then it it eases things up. So do you have some of the same experience, Greg and the work you do? I do in the sense that sometimes when we start out on these programs, it may be a little bit of hesitancy to give a lot of details in the first few questions. But then as we get going and I'm sharing a little bit of back and forth, it does become much more of just like, you know, what I was telling you is like you and I sitting at the coffee shop and I'm just asking you questions. I'm interested in knowing more about this. I think for people that don't normally respond to writing articles or doing podcast interviews or things like that, there's a little bit of a hesitancy of, am I doing this right? And then also how open should I really get with somebody that I, that's not a close friend, let's say. Yeah. So maybe, I'm sure we're coming toward the end of this podcast, but I would like people to be encouraged to look at the Daddying Film Festival and Forum, we call it D3F. So that's Daddying Film Festival and Forum, those are the D3Fs because we loved, the first year was just films submitted by children, children elementary school through undergraduate college. The second year, we were approached by some adults saying, could they send films in? And I have to be really careful the way I speak about that. So we're not accepting adult films. We challenge by adults, right? And if there's, I don't want there to be any confusion about that. That might be a different festival another time, but right. So we have had in the year two, actually more films submitted by adults and more by women than by men, interestingly. And the kids films can be up to 10 minutes long and they are judged by other children the same age. So we do a Zoom training of kids on how to judge films, not critique them, but judge them different skillset. And the films submitted by adults, we have adult judges on that. So we would encourage people to check that out. We will begin accepting films for 2025 in November and we'll close the submissions in March and the festival and the forum will be in Philadelphia in April of 2025. Oh, that's great. Yeah, we'll be sure to put a direct link in for that information as well. And Alan, I have had you on for a while. Is there anything that you would like to share with us that maybe I haven't asked you about or that we need to cover? You know, I would say, and we have, I think, covered your questions have been good ones. And I'm not shy about talking. So I think that just maybe to reiterate that being a dad is more than just who you are. It's something you do. I guess the only other thing is, I mentioned Greg that if you want to be, if you would like to become the dad, you always, let's say, wish you would have, you need to think about that. And when I asked dads, who is the dad you want to be, that question usually is completely immobilizing. It's just so vast and like, where the hell do I begin to answer that question? And so I've changed that. I don't ask that question anymore. Instead, I ask a similar question gets to the same place, but it's not necessarily immobilizing. It's still big. And that is, how do you want your child to describe you as a father? Today, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I would say the same thing about a grandfather, you asked that question. That's still very comprehensive and very big. But I think it's somewhat more manageable. And you can answer that. And then you go back to the beginning part about those three free resources that you have, which is referencing yourself. You know, what was it about your grandfather if you were lucky enough to have one around? For you and with a positive experience, what were some of the things or who were those, quote, expert grandfathers that you saw maybe one of your friends had, or you saw on a TV program or in a movie or a book you read. So I guess that's the that's the main other thing is to encourage anybody who listens to this to actually spend some time thinking about that. How do you want your child or your grandchild to describe you as a father and understand that you can be that person. And sometimes it's not as daunting as you make it. I'll end with this one little story about a dad I interviewed in Connecticut. And he said to me, Alan, I know I should be I should spend all day Saturday with my daughter. But I am exhausted. I have so many things I have to do on Saturday. There's no way I could spend all day Saturday with my daughter. This sort of happened to be a teenager. And the first thing I said to him is on it. You don't need to. You don't need to spend all day Saturday with your daughter. How about if you just had breakfast with her every Saturday and that becomes your routine. And his response was, that's all I have to do. I said, no, I didn't say it's all you have to do. But you're making it so unreachable for yourself that you do and nothing. So if you narrow it down, and then of course, because I like using a little bit of humor, I said, and you know what's going to happen when she's an older teenager. She's not going when I have breakfast to be anyone Saturday's either. You know, she'll probably want to sleep in or she'll be want to be with her friends, which she'll have the games she needs to go to or something. But don't make it so unreachable for yourself that you're not able to do something. So the my experience has been that becoming the dad you want to be doesn't need to be as exhausting as and daunting as you make it for yourself in your in your. I love that and to your point too, I think sometimes when we think about the role of grandfather, it can be that overwhelming, especially when they don't live close by it's, I've got to really overdo it on the presence and I've got to really do this and I've got to read. And it's like, it's not necessarily that's not what they're looking for. They're looking for that time, that presence, that, you know, being there. And that goes a long ways more so than a truckload of Amazon presence showing up. So yeah, so another diamond if it's to be continued is how I dealt with that experience with my own father as a grandfather who used to arrive with a car filled with this Barbie stuff for my grandmother and had that became an issue and had to deal with it. Oh yeah, no, I think we definitely need to get scheduled again to follow up on some of this stuff. But Alan, it's been an absolute blast having you on the podcast and I really enjoyed our conversation today. As did I Greg and I really appreciate it for what you do. That was a great conversation with Alan. I really enjoyed getting to know him a little bit more, learning more about his journey as a daddy and as well as his advocacy for education as well as for all the dads out there. This has been a fun way to get to know that people are out there that are really waving the flag, helping not only grandfathers out, but also dads. And it is a great opportunity for us to collaborate a little bit. And the next conversation we're going to have is going to be for the film festival. So I do have links in the show notes that you can check out, also check out the links that are available to for the film festival. They've already started taking early submissions. So if you're thinking about putting together a movie about your dad, what being a dad means to you, go over, check out those links and be sure to get your video submission in so that it can be reviewed. I'm thinking I might even travel up to Philadelphia, come April and be part of that film festival. So we'll have to see how the old schedule works out, but I would be excited to participate. And I hope if you have a young child in your life that they like to get a movie camera going and make some movies, that maybe this might be a great way to inspire them to make and then submit a film. Or if they've always thought about being a film critic, there's ways that children can be active as part of panelists to review films and to provide their input on those movies as well. I hope you have enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. I hope you get in touch with Alan over at the dad advocacy group and get connected with what they're doing. I've also had a guest blog over on that site. So be sure to check that out as well. And until next time, remember to stay cool. Thank you for listening to the cool grandpa podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do me a favor and share it with a friend. That's the best way you can help us to expand our community, as well as get the news out about how valuable grandpas are in the lives of those kids. If you'd like to leave me a comment or shoot me a potential topic for this podcast, please go to www.cool-grandpa.us. Look for the comments tab, fill it out, hit submit, it's as easy as that. Until next time, remember to stay cool. [Music]
