Foundation Father
By Matt
Foundation FatherJan 04, 2021
Mimic Your Child’s Excitement
Your children approach you over and over to show you something. They are proud. They are excited. They want to share these emotions with you.
So get excited for them.
Helping Your Children Face Their Fears
We have to help our kids face their fears while they are in the controlled environment of our home. We do them no favors if we let them wallow in timidity.
The Reality of a Child’s Imagination
Evil rises and good is defeated. Epics are written in a moment, acted out with vitality, and then forgotten every single day.
Don't Raise a Bubble Boy - Deflate the Bubble
You can’t let your kids live in a bubble. Eventually, it will be popped by something beyond your control and they will have to deal with the outside world. If your children need to walk around with a fainting couch, just in case they hear someone use a bad word, you have failed as a parent.
Better to introduce the outside world to them on your own terms. This takes discipline, wisdom, and patience. Not easy, but doable, as long as you don’t mind doing it imperfectly.
Fix Your Own Face
Being a man means doing the right thing even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you know you will suffer.
And not complaining about it.
Be Like the Unicorn
You should be able to have a conversation with anybody. If you think you are high above a certain class of people, or that you think thoughts too grave and mighty for the peasants, you’ll come off as an insufferable boor.
Just Say “Yes”
“Yes” should be your default answer whenever your children ask you to do something.
As I look back on the times I have said “yes,” I realize I have never regretted saying “yes.”
Echoes of Your Own Words
Children learn to speak to themselves based on how their parents speak to them. They are mimickers.
Their thoughts will be echoes of your own words.
Boys and the Dangers of Homeschooling
There is no better environment than homeschooling to tailor the education of your children to their specific needs.
But...
There might be a reason to send your boys to public school. Eventually. This has to do with the differences in how you treat boys and girls.
Be Thankful
We are so busy doing things for our children that we risk never stopping to recognize what they are doing for us.
They are a gift.
When Apathy Leads to Anger
If you are getting angry at your children, it’s your fault. Every time.
All of the time.
10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Children - Part 2
Based on Anthony Esolen's great book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.
This is part 2, going over items 6-10.
10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Children - Part 1
Based on Anthony Esolen's great book, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.
This is part 1, going over items 1-5.
Pulling a Solomon
This is the most important thing we can learn from Solomon: his humility. Without that, we will never be able to do justice.
Do or Die Moments
Every boy needs a “do or die” moment to consider himself a man. His confidence depends upon it. It doesn’t have to be drastic. It doesn’t have to be literally life or death.
But there needs to be some risk. Some serious consequences for failure.
Book Recommendations from 2021
I read over 50 books last year.
These are the 7 you should read this year.
A Garden Untended is Not a Garden
Many fathers don’t tend to the garden of their family and then get mad when it doesn’t bear any fruit. Years of neglect, and they are surprised at the thorns and thistles that greet them.
What to Do When Your Kids Won’t Answer Questions
Whenever we ask our kids a question, whenever we try to get them to open up, there are two dreaded responses:
- Silence
- “I don’t know.”
When this keeps happening, we should first check that we aren’t asking boring questions. Or that we are asking questions that deserve to be asked. They need to be worth the effort and breath we are expending.
But sometimes, kids just need a primer.
They Might as Well be Orphans
You can tell when a little boy has had no masculine influence in his life. When I take my kids to parks that contain lots of other children, these emasculated boys stick out like a tone-deaf singer in a choir.
They might as well be orphans. They are desperate for a father. They’ll take a fake one. Anything.
The Lowest Stakes Imaginable
And this is what childhood is all about. Learning to make the right decisions when the stakes are small, the risks are minimal, and the consequences minor.
Don’t Assume They Know
When we teach them something, we are coming from a position of experience and knowledge. It’s hard to go back to the beginner’s mind and speak from foundational principles. What words do we need to define? What concepts do we need to elaborate on?
Require Excellence
As your children grow and you begin to give them jobs, you will quickly find yourself in several predicaments.
And you must require excellence. This episode goes over several reasons why a child might be do something with excellence and the different responses a father should have.
Listen to Both Sides
Never reward the first one to come yelling to you for help without having a firm understanding of the situation.
There are no easy answers here. But if both sides feel they have been listened to, things usually go better, no matter what your decision.
How to Homeschool Your Kids in Under 2 Hours per Day
The book has been launched. This is a free preview.
Buy it at https://foundationfather.gumroad.com/l/hSKHP
Admit Your Fears
Admit your own fears, and your kids will trust you to help them deal with theirs.
What Makes a Good Friend
While there are many attributes that a “good friend” will have, there is one that is critical.
A lack of envy.
Agamemnon gives a clarifying speech about so-called friends.
7 Ways to Cultivate Gravitas
Gravitas means you have weight. People tend to conflate it with somberness and over-seriousness, but the men who have the most gravitas usually have an equal amount of charisma.
But true fathers have gravitas. They have a weight that attracts and influences. If you want to have influence on your children, and on others around you (including young men who are looking for good models of fatherhood), then you need to cultivate and promote your own gravitas.
Stay Married
Good fathers are good husbands.
How you treat your wife will be mimicked by your boys and expected by your girls.
At a minimum, this means you should stay married. It is one of the most important things you can do as a father.
Nate Dean - Life Insurance & Generational Wealth
Nate Dean is the co-founder of Unlimited Life Concepts. He does financial coaching and mentoring, helping people build up wealth while they start to erase their bad debt.
I consider myself pretty good with finances, but Nate has taught me some things that completely blew my mind.
- How to be your own bank
- Leveraging loans that you make to yourself
- Making every dollar that comes in earn you more money
- Grow your wealth tax-free, without an IRA
You don't want to miss this one.
*None of the info in this podcast should be considered financial advice.
Earning Respect From Other Men
You aren’t owed respect. You have to earn it.
If you want to be treated like a man, you have to act like a man. This means taking on responsibility without grumbling or complaining.
Killing Envy in Your Children
If not kept in check, envy will destroy relationships.
It can also twist a person’s affections beyond recognition, making them chase things they don’t even care about.
Here are 4 ways to kill envy.
Don’t Make Your Daughter Beg for Attention
If you have sons but only one daughter, you can inadvertently cause her to beg for your attention. Even if it is an accident, you are responsible.
Don’t start relating to your daughter as if she is one of your sons. This can lead to resentment and insecurity. Be intentional about relating to her as your daughter.
Here's how.
Limiting the Freedom of Teenagers
We get a lot of things backward. With children, we must move from strict to permissive. Not permissive to strict.
When your child becomes a teenager, you want to start giving them more freedom and more responsibility. You want them to start exercising more self-control.
How to Protect Your Daughter from Insecurity
A girl craves male attention and validation. She seeks it out. She desires it most from her father, and a good father will provide that attention and validation.
Let’s walk through a common scenario that plays out day after day, time and again, in homes across the world, and how it leads to broken, insecure women.
Focus on Your Future Grandchildren
It is not enough to think about the future of your children. If you are not at least thinking about what you will leave your grandchildren, you are not thinking long-term enough.
It is a poor legacy indeed that only lasts a single generation.
Respecting the Strength of Her Brothers
Prepare your daughters to respect the strength of your sons. She should treat their potential strength as actual strength.
Don’t put your daughters in a position where they are naive about the strength of men and the respect it deserves.
The Best Habit to Build as a Father
Reading to your kids every night is one of the best habits to have.
Start immediately after they are born, before they can hold their head up, before they can crawl, before they can read. The earlier the better.
Tips to get started and some book recommendations.
Choosing Your Wife Everday
Marriage is not choosing your wife. It's choosing your wife every day.
What your wife wants is for you to have lots of other options…and then choose her, no matter what. To choose her every day. To come home every day.
She chose you when you were still a boy.
Choose her after you have become a man.
King David - The Quit Porn Strategist
Interview with King David - The Quit Porn Strategist.
Porn is poison. It will cause you to rot from the inside and prevent you from enjoying life to the fullest.
David has made it his mission to help people quit porn for good. He shares why porn is so addicting, why treating it like drug addiction is useful, why real-time accountability is important, and some tips on what NOT to do if you find out your sons are looking at porn.
Check out his master class on how to quit watching porn: https://gumroad.com/a/459347059/WinfK
Find him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KingDavidTKA
Growing Generational Wealth
It’s hard to create a legacy without wealth. And by wealth, I mean valuable assets: real estate, investments, intellectual property, etc.
I wish I had discovered this secret 15 years ago.
- Grow your cash, tax-free, at a guaranteed rate
- Help pay off your bad debt while growing your pool of money
- Bypass banks to fund your big purchases (cars, mortgage down payments, etc)
- Provide emergency cash when needed
- Help fund your other investments
- Reclaim opportunity cost
- Take care of your family in the case of your untimely death
I’m pretty good with money. No credit card debt and I save up for big purchases.
The Secret to Making Your Wife More Beautiful (Overnight)
If you could instantly make your wife more beautiful overnight, would you do it?
It's in your power.
Love is not Inclusive
Love creates boundaries. It sets up exclusionary relationships.
Those you love have a claim on your time. They have a claim on your attention. They have a claim on your strength and treasure.
Ask Them to Teach
Are you having problems connecting with your children?
Ask them to teach you something.
If you ask them to teach you about something they love, they will not shut up about it. You will be drinking from the firehose.
Replace a “No” with a “Yes”
You will be forced to say “no” to your children for various reasons.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t give them something else.
Chores and Money, Identity and Obligation
A family is about a shared identity. It runs on something more important than money: shared obligations and responsibilities.
Your children should learn to fulfill their obligations without expecting any kind of monetary reward. Just like their father. Just like their mother.
Basic Financial Education for Your Children
You can start the financial education of your children early. And the earlier the better. It doesn’t have to be elaborate.
Make Home Economics Redundant
How far our households have fallen. The word “economics” now needs the qualifier of “home” to have any semblance of its original source, despite having the meaning of “home” in the word itself!
Modern households have become places of personal fulfillment and entertainment. They used to be the core productive unit of society.
Mothers do not Know How to Attract Women
Boys should not learn how to attract women from their mother.
It’s like asking for a recipe and getting all of the measurements but with no ingredient names. Meaningless.
Fathers should take the lead on this. Which means they need to know what to teach and how to teach it.
Reclaiming Authority as a Husband and Father
You are a husband and a father. You have been invested with real authority and you don’t want to squander it anymore.
You want to change.
You want to lead. Like you are supposed to.
How do you do that?
Start small.
House Rules vs. Universal Rules
Universal rules never change. House rules can vary from house to house, from town to town.
House rules are important. They will be part of what makes your family different, what defines its culture, and what helps form a legacy.
But remember to never conflate house rules with universal rules. Equating them does not elevate your house rules. It only lessens the universal rules in the eyes of your children. It drags them down.