Raising Resilient Daughters: Lessons from Dr. Tovah Klein on Parenting and Emotional Growth

Unlocking Emotional Strength Through Attunement and Support

In a recent episode of Dads with Daughters, we had the privilege of hosting Dr. Tovah Klein, an esteemed professor at Barnard and author of the insightful book Raising Resilience: How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty. Our conversation centered on the vital role fathers play in nurturing resilience and emotional strength in their daughters during challenging times. By delving into the essence of resilience, Dr. Klein offers invaluable advice on how fathers can become pillars of support and emotional stability for their children.

The Essence of Resilience

Understanding Resilience

Dr. Klein defines resilience as the ability to adapt, adjust, and be flexible in the face of life's challenges. It is a critical aspect of a child's development, enabling them to navigate adversity with the emotional backing of their parents or caregivers. Rather than shielding children from every hardship, it’s crucial for fathers to allow their daughters to face small adversities, helping them build coping skills and inner strength.

Attunement and Emotional Stability

Attuning to Emotional Needs

Dr. Klein emphasizes the importance of fathers being emotionally attuned to their children. Emotional attunement involves understanding and responding appropriately to a child's emotional cues and needs. For fathers, this means managing their personal stress and emotional states to maintain stability at home. Children require emotional availability and unconditional love to build confidence and mental health, and fathers play a pivotal role in providing this foundation.

Shifting Focus and Modeling Healthy Behaviors

From Work Stress to Home Serenity

A key recommendation from Dr. Klein is the necessity for fathers to shift their focus away from work-related stress before engaging with their children. Modeling healthy behaviors, such as limiting screen time and prioritizing family interactions, sets an example for children to follow. Fathers should strive to be present, listen, and engage in meaningful conversations during everyday moments like car rides or bedtime, turning these instances into opportunities for connection and support.

Embracing Vulnerability

Teaching Through Vulnerability

Dr. Klein underscores the importance of fathers displaying vulnerability. By expressing a range of emotions and acknowledging their struggles, fathers teach their daughters that it's normal to experience and cope with various feelings. This modeling helps children feel validated and understood, fostering emotional intelligence and resilience.

Practical Strategies for Coping

Handling Academic and Social Pressures

When addressing academic struggles or peer conflicts, Dr. Klein advises fathers to listen and validate their children's feelings rather than solve every issue for them. Encouraging daughters to learn from their experiences and take pride in their achievements, even during adversity, builds their problem-solving skills and resilience. Conflict with peers is natural and can lead to stronger friendships as children learn to navigate and resolve disputes on their own.

Empowering Fathers, Empowering Daughters

As fathers, the role you play in your daughters’ lives is immensely significant. By being emotionally attuned, modeling healthy behaviors, and embracing vulnerability, you empower your daughters to develop resilience and emotional strength. These foundational skills enable them to face life's uncertainties with confidence and adaptability. For more resources on enhancing your parenting journey, visit Dr. Klein's website tovahklein.com, and consider joining support communities like The Fatherhood Insider and the Dads with Daughters Facebook group. Together, let’s raise a generation of strong, resilient young women.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:05]:
Welcome to dads with daughters. In this show, we spotlight dads, resources, and more to help you be the best dad you can be.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:16]:
Welcome back to the dads with daughters podcast, where we bring you guests to be active participants in your daughters' wives, raising them to be strong, independent women. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always every week, I love being able to sit down, talk to you, work with you, and walk on this path that you're on. And I call it a path. It's a journey. We're all on it together as we're raising our daughters to be that those strong, independent women that we want them to be. And it's not always going to be easy. There's gonna be bumps in the road.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:46]:
And but in the end, each and every one of us is working to try to help our children to be able to be self reliant. And one of the topics we're gonna talk about today, resilient as they get older. And every week I love being able to bring you different guests that can help you to do just that. Sometimes we have dads on. Sometimes we have others that have amazing resources that can help you to do just that. And today we've got another great guest with us today. Dr. Tovah Klein is with us today.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:17]:
And Tovah is a professor at Barnard, as well as we're going as well as a author of a new book called raising resilience, How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty. I'm really excited to have her on and to introduce her to you. Tovah, thanks so much for being here today.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:01:40]:
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:42]:
Well, I'm excited to have you here as well. Because as you heard, this podcast is all about raising strong, independent women. And part of that is being able to give our kids the keys to, well, I'm gonna say the castle in regards to helping them to be resilient in the things that they're going to come up against. And there are definitely going to be things that they're going to come up against. And there's some of those are gonna be positive. Some may be negative and some may be somewhere in between. And I'm really excited to be able to delve a little bit deeper into this book that you've put out into the world. But I think I wanna step back in time just a little bit.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:16]:
And first I wanna have you define resiliency because you know, this book is called raising resilience and every person that hears that word resilience may have a different thought in their mind of what that means. And then I'd love to hear your origin story. I wanna hear why this topic and why you wanted to put all the time, passion, effort into putting this out into the world?

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:02:37]:
So when I think of resilience, what I really think about is the whole person, the whole child. And resilience is not like a trait or a dose or something that you say, you know, I'm 1 or I'm a 6. It's actually a part of who we raise our children to be. It's about adaptability, adjustment, flexibility. You can think of it as opening up their thinking, but it's being able to move with whatever life gives them. And as you just said, life's gonna give them good and not so good. And so, really, when we think about preparing our children for life, we love them, We do all kinds of kind of things for them, but really what we want is for them to be able to handle the hardest parts of life, and that's what we call resilience. It's a process to help them develop it, but also that adjustment, adaptability, flexibility allows them to face hurdles and shift, face hurdles and shift, knowing that they're not alone in the world.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:03:38]:
They're not doing this themselves, but with originally a parent or whoever is the main caregiver, and then in life, other people who can be there for them. So that's really how I think about resilience is this dynamic piece of self that gets developed over time. Actually, I've been in the field for almost 3 decades now working first with young children and parents, and my research was always centered around young children and that really important influence of parents on them. And then as careers change, I started working with, you know, older children and parents, and that just broadened my thinking. And one day came to this sudden realization that really what parents were doing is helping children prepare for uncertainty. Like, every single day is uncertain. And I have kind of 2, I would say, areas that I'm passionate about and I've spent my life in. One is kind of everyday, normal development challenges, stressful moments.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:04:41]:
And then the other piece, which I always saw as related, was working with families in traumatic situations, so either individual trauma from, you know, abuse or hurts, or fleeing a fire or a flood, but also collective trauma. So children and families after 911, I've done work now in COVID, which when I started conceptualizing the book, I had not yet, but, you know, sort of large scale traumatic events. And when I put those 2 together, I realized that the piece that happens in trauma, whether that's a severe crisis and you've just fled a hurricane and those roads washed out, or you're getting through a normal day with 3 children of different ages and you're trying to get out the door, you're always dealing with uncertainty, and it's very destabilizing. And then that what I got to is, like, oh, then what we're doing every single day in our relationship with our child, whether we know it or not, is helping them prepare for life, which is gonna unfortunately have bad things happen in it, and we want them to be able to handle. We want them to be able to people to turn to. So the book started out really about uncertainty, wrote a proposal, kind of put it aside, you know, life gets in the way, work gets in the way. Then when COVID hit, it really became very clear to me that uncertainty was here to stay, or I thought it was here to stay, and I felt like I needed to get back to this book. But when I started writing, and my contract, you know, got a contract with HarperCollins, the editors kept saying to me, you know, everything you write about is about resilience.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:06:13]:
And I pushed back saying, you know, that's really a buzzword. And I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in writing a book about how do we raise decent human in writing a book about how do we raise decent human beings? What does that mean for parents?

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:06:19]:
What does that mean for children? And what I meant by that was children who grow up with a strong voice and ability to take care of themselves and have confidence and, equally, an ability to look to others and be kind and compassionate and aware of their community. And they said, yes, but everything you're writing about is resilience. And so I said, okay. I'm gonna take it out of that buzzword, and I'm gonna really unpack what does resilience mean, and what does that parent relationship or caregiver relationship mean in terms of raising that child because so much of this is about us as parents, and that had been the life work I've been doing is really studying and working with everyday parents to understand what we bring to this as parents, because that then drives how we see our children, how we either do or don't accept them for who they are, and children have to be accepted for who they are. And so what's the work we we must do on ourselves to understand ourselves so that we become that buffer between the world and what the world gives us and children so that there's stress, but it's not overwhelming stress for children. And that's really how this book came to be.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:37]:
Now one of the things in the book that you talk about and that you emphasize is the role of parental attunement in building resilience. How would you say that fathers in particular can attune to their children's emotional needs during challenging times? And what specific strategies can they use to be more emotionally available?

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:07:58]:
Yeah. It's such an important question because, you know, as you know, as a father and a and a podcaster with fathers listening, for so long, the field of psychology didn't even know that fathers existed, or they were sort of like, oh, yeah. But we know now from experience and equally from the research that a loving parent matters and fathers matter. And so this idea of attunement, particularly when times are stressful, really means starting with self. And I think the the challenge for some dads, I think not always, but is that boys are raised into becoming men who aren't really taught or told, oh, you're supposed to feel feelings. Feelings are okay. This this is human. And so doing the work to say, oh, how am I doing? How am I feeling? Can I ground myself as a dad so that I can turn to my child and figure out what my child needs? Because often as parents, when we're upset, we go for control.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:09:00]:
Right? If I'm feeling really rattled, if there's a lot of uncertainty, every parent, male, female, non binary, like, every parent who feels unsteady kind of we kind of go for, what can I control? And when you take a step back as a dad and you say, okay. I'm the one who's stressed here. How can I get a little steadier so I can turn to my child and then say, what does this child need for me to protect them right now? Not protect them by keeping everything out, but by saying, right now, we're not sure what's happening. People are getting sick and we're not sure why, but what I know is that by staying home, I'm gonna keep you safe, and we're gonna still have our meals together, and I'm gonna still put you to bed. It reassures a child that even when there's bad things going on, this parent is close to help them, and that's what children need. We always think of it in young children. Children need it across ages, for us to say I'm here for you even though this is scary or stressful.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:59]:
So some of what you were just talking about, those emotional barriers or the walls that sometimes some men put up, it's not always easy for some men to break those down. And to be, as we've talked about on the show before, is vulnerable with those around them. And from what you just said, really, to me, what I'm hearing is the importance of being vulnerable and showing that vulnerability with your kids. Because by showing that vulnerability, it equates to allowing and providing your kids a glimpse of resiliency in many different ways.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:10:36]:
Yeah. You'd summarized that very well, actually, which is we have to be vulnerable in order to say, oh, what am I feeling? And, you know, I read something recently that said being vulnerable is the opposite of cool, you know, being cool. Because being cool is kinda putting on, like, armor of some kind. Like, you know, I got this. You know, I'm a cool person. Being vulnerable says, I'm gonna show you and myself all of me. And all of me is not always parts that we're proud of or that we feel good about, but they're part of us. So right now, you're a father and something's going on in your life or in the world, you have to say, look, I'm a little scared, you know, to yourself or to a partner or to a friend.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:11:18]:
I'm a little scared, but I know I have to take care of these children. So I'm gonna figure out what that's about so I can turn to my child and say, yeah. This is unknown, and we're gonna figure it out together. And it's that vulnerability that allows us to be full people. What it shows to the child is it's okay to have this range of emotions, of, you know, reactions, and that that's life. Life is not about covering up how you're feeling. Life is not about pretending. Oh, no.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:11:49]:
No. No. I'm not upset. It's just the opposite. It's saying, you know, I am upset. And even if I can't do what I wanna do, I know that daddy is gonna love me even though I'm upset right now. And so when fathers model that, children go, oh, it's okay to fall down, to fail, to feel really dumb. Whatever it is, it has to be modeled for them.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:13]:
Now also in the book, you talk a lot about how adversity can actually make children more resilient. Can you share some examples of how fathers can help their children to reframe difficult situations? And it could be something like it could be peer conflict, it could be academic struggles, it could be other aspects that they're going to run into.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:12:36]:
So I think, you know, one of the biggies on the academic side is, you know, your child comes home, your daughter comes home from pick a grade and says, like, I'm just stupid. I can't do math. This is very stereotypical and yet happens all the time for girls, for adolescents and younger girls. I'm stupid. I can't do this. You know, and as a dad, you might think, oh, maybe maybe I shouldn't push her to take that harder math that she wanted to take. You know, maybe I should just say to her, oh, honey, you know, you don't have to take algebra, advanced, or whatever it is. Instead, you can say, like, yeah, that is hard, and learning is a hard process, and be there with them.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:13:15]:
So some of it is listening. You know, we tend to want to problem solve. I know, there's all kinds of jokes about, you know, men and dads wanting to problem solve, but I always say, well, moms do that, too, you know, but, you know, that's sort of the stereotype of, of males. And what we don't do as parents well enough is listen. So it may be listening to your daughter really cry, scream, tear the paper up if they still have paper tests, and then say, yeah, this is there's no question this is hard. Maybe you recall a story from your own. Oh, yeah. I remember when I got to quadratic equations, and, woah, I thought I'm the dumbest person in the world, but I wasn't.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:13:54]:
And it's holding them through that, allowing them to have all of those emotions, and then some sense of tomorrow might be better is what I call it. Right? So let's see how it goes tomorrow. Do you wanna talk to the teacher? Tomorrow, you're in the moment. It's like, no. You know? They just wanna vent, and you let them vent. But the next day when they go back to school, they may actually come back and say, hey. I got my test back, and I didn't do well, but I didn't do the worst. Or I got problems right.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:14:21]:
I was sure I got wrong. You go, oh, really? What you learned from that? Oh, okay. And you have to have this, like, almost like a humorous distance. Right? You don't wanna say I told you so or I knew it, but you can say, yeah. You know? That's gotta feel great. So what are you thinking next time? Or if you wanna think through studying differently, let me know. And then the child builds on that. Oh, I actually didn't do as poorly on that test as I thought.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:14:48]:
The dad wasn't there going, oh, it's only because you were tired. Like, we love to make excuses for our children. We either blame them, like I told you to go to bed earlier, or we make excuses. Oh, remember you weren't feeling so well. And all of that works against a child saying, I faced something. It was hard. I don't love my score in that test, but I'm actually proud of the things I did get right, and I'm gonna study a little differently next time. That's strength.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:15:14]:
Fighting with friends, children do it all the time. And in fact, the data we have with younger children is that they fight more with the people they're closest to. So they don't really fight so much over, you know, building a block tower or how to organize the playground game if it's somebody they're not friends with because it's not worth their energy. But they can get into pretty heated fights with people that they're friends with or that they play with a lot, and then they come back together. Why? Because they want to. The motivation is I might have thrown you out and said I never wanna see you again or talk to you again yesterday, but today, you're my friend again. And it's even stronger because we've been through this conflict, and we've we've resolved it. And so I think as a father to know that it's not about the problem solving, but to to listen, to say, hey.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:16:09]:
If you want my help, I'm here. But to recognize that you have to wait for the child to come in and say, I really do wanna play with her tomorrow. Oh, okay. Well, you know, do you want wanna think about what helped you last time with that friend and and to talk it through. And I see it all the time now with with social media and teenagers. You know, when I hear my kids or my college students, I teach at a women's college, so I have all these incredible young women. You know, that term ghosting, which was new to me in my generation probably shows, like, what? But with ghosting, it's almost like there's a brick wall. And so sometimes I say to a teenager, like, is there a way to take a step back and maybe try another day to reach that friend? Because it sounds like that really was a friend.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:16:55]:
So it doesn't have to be the message is this doesn't have to be forever. And I think dads have to give that message when it's appropriate. Right? You're really heated now, but I'm wondering if in some time and initially, the the child goes, no way, but then they may come back to you and say, yeah, I was thinking about what you said.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:11]:
You know, one of the things I was thinking about, and it kinda goes into some of the things you wrote too, was the fact that more and more you hear today about the mental health concerns in young people and the rising concerns about mental health and the struggles that young people are having. What would you say to fathers about how they can contribute to create a supportive environment at home that fosters both emotional intelligence and emotional component. You know, I say it in my book, these 5 pillars, but the first is building trust, right? That's what every father is doing with their child. They're building trust in this relationship. Like, even when things go awry between us, I'm here for you. You know, putting your child to bed at night or going into check on your teenager really can be about, boy, we had some rough spots today, and you know, I'm sorry, and I still love you. All of those disconnections that get repaired, reconnecting are really core for our children and particularly, I'm gonna say, for our girls, because they need to know conflict is part of life. That's where you get this emotional attunement, which is, yeah, we were angry before, you were really mad at me, and now we're back together, and we're good. This is part of it. You're not, like, overlooking it.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:18:40]:
But I think the other piece at home is that we tend to put a lot of pressure on our children, particularly firstborns. Not always, but particularly firstborns. Right? They're our first ones. They make us a parent. You know what I'm saying? Before that first one, there was no such thing as I'm a parent. Now I'm a daddy. You might have subsequent children, but the first ones are kind of our reflection. They go out in the world, we feel great when they're doing well, and we like smile.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:19:06]:
And then when they're not doing well, we're like, we feel terrible, but also, we tend to blame them. Don't do it that way. So I think for dads to really think about, when am I too hard on my child or my children, and when am I putting too much pressure on them? Because we live in a very competitive world, you know, certainly academically and just there's all this messaging about mental health, which we should be concerned about. But there's equally messaging about, there's only one way to get to the top, or if you're not at the top, you won't succeed. And it's a total lie. It's just a lie. And I feel like if every per parent, every dad could say to their child, there's lots of ways to be okay in the world. You know, some people are really great at sports.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:19:50]:
Some are really great at math. Some just enjoy it. Like, we've taken the joy out of learning or doing. So I think at home to really think about, can I bring the pressure down? Can I find moments of joy together? Like, you're much better off having a dance party, if that's what your children like to do, or have a backwards dinner. This is I grew up with backwards dinners occasionally, and they were just such a joy, or can we take a different path to get to where we're going today, and who wants to map it out? And even if you get lost on the way, that's funny. That's really funny, you know. So where can you have those moments of shared joy, and then I'm gonna get back to listening. We don't listen to children.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:20:29]:
They're not busy people. Dads are busy. Maybe you have work or maybe home is work. You've got a couple of kids or you've got one who's got some special needs right now and you're trying to figure those out and you're taking them to different therapists. Whatever it is, we're busy. And what gets lost is what I call the space in between, which is like getting there. You know, maybe that's in the car or it's, you know, you walk to school or to a doctor's appointment or something. In those moments, there's a lot of time to connect and listen to your child.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:20:59]:
And so putting more of that in or thinking, like, do I really wanna rush through bedtime with my 8 year old? Or can I slow it down and so they go to bed 10 minutes later? Anything at home that brings down the pressure and gets parents to exhale and the dads to say, just wanna connect with you. I don't really care what you eat for dinner. I'm gonna serve it. I'm not gonna take it personally if you don't need it, and I'm gonna listen to you today. So the lighter we are with children, the better. And it also opens them up to talk more. And we say, you know, we ask them questions, they shut down. They're like, I'm not answering you, daddy.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:21:32]:
But when we sit down at dinner and say something funny that happened I I'm just thinking of my husband used to sit down and he'd go like, I'm gonna tell you the funniest thing that happened today. And it would just be this, like, beat fact of some kind. Then the children would start talking because nobody asked anything of them.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:47]:
Earlier, you talked about fathers trying to protect their kids. And I think that the word protect means different things for different men. But I guess one thing that I think that many men feel is that they need to protect their kids from hardships, from that they need to protect them from getting hurt. How can fathers reconcile that instinct with some of the approaches that you're talking about, about allowing kids to face adversity as a means of building resilience?

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:22:20]:
So much of this is about work on themselves. Right? Of course, we wanna protect our children. There's a part of any dad in particular because what's the function of a daddy to love a child and keep them safe? And to say, you're not gonna always be with them. You're not gonna always be there to protect them. So what can I do to help them deal with the little hurts and the smaller hurdles and the smaller adversities now is to back off and let the child deal with them? So, I'll give an example. You know, that term bully gets used a lot. Now, there are some children who really are victims to being bullied, but every child potentially is going to have meanness in their life from other children and from themselves, by the way. I think we do a disservice when we tell children that's mean, that's mean, that's mean because it scares the child.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:23:09]:
Well, what if I don't like my friend today? And then am I a horrible person for telling them I don't like them? No. They're not horrible people. They may be standing up for themselves. So when we step back, and if a dad steps back and says, what's worrying me so much about my child getting hurt? Because every dad brings their full self to being a dad. And so it's really about saying, what's the really, what is the harm that I'm worried about? And usually, it's I remember how bad that was being left out, or I was terrible at athletics, which is takes in a whole other life for men than it does for women, right, because boys are supposed to be athletic. Right? So if you were that child who was left out or you were that kind of outsider peer who didn't really feel like you belonged, we then get more worried for our children, and we jump very quickly. So I think being aware of self, and that's what I call in my book, The You Factor, those are I have all these reflective questions there for dads, for moms, for anybody taking care of children. What is it that I bring? Because when we don't give children this opportunity to handle the smaller hurts, even when the child thinks they're big hurts you know, my friend wouldn't play with me today.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:24:22]:
He starts young and goes all the way through adolescence and then becomes part of social media. But to say, yeah, that's really crummy. Sometimes that happens. And to have some empathic, but genuinely empathic, but also, I'm gonna sit by you, but I'm not gonna take this away. I'm not gonna march up to the school and speak to the teacher unless I hear it as a pattern and I'm really getting concerned. Or as I often say to to a parent, you know, to a dad, just check-in with the school and see what the school says, if it's a school that, you know, you're comfortable with or the counselor, you know, the the middle school or a high school counselor. But when we don't let children deal with these smaller stressors, hurts, you know, not doing as well as they wanted, not getting the teacher they wanted, but then they might actually find that teacher is not so bad. It actually strengthens children to say, hey.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:25:13]:
I got through that. I figured that out, or I didn't like that teacher because she yelled more than I liked, but, actually, she was a really great teacher, and I learned to deal with the fact that she yelled a lot. That's where strength comes from, that children see people are complicated. And I think as dads, the role is to help them see, yeah, people are complicated. Maybe your friend had a bad day today. Doesn't mean she should've been like that with you, but maybe she had a bad day. Do you wanna see if tomorrow's better? Gives them a world view of, you could have a bad day, and I don't want people vilifying you, and other people also are sometimes hurtful. That doesn't mean they're hurtful all the time, and that strengthens children.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:25:53]:
The other thing it does is it helps them use voice. If you never face adversity, you never have to say, hey. I don't agree with that, or you can't do that to me. And I actually think that this huge part of resilience, which is confidence and the ability to stand up for yourself, comes from learning to do it, and it starts off in smaller ways. I well, now I said I didn't wanna play basketball today, and then I basketball today, and then I finally walked away. I just said I'm not gonna play. It's a smaller way to use voice because when people are doing things to you that you don't like, we wanna be sure that our children, the daughters say, absolutely not. You can't do that to me, and not feel like I'm being a mean person.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:26:31]:
We do give them double messages, particularly to girls. Be nice. Be nice. Now stand up for yourself. And I see girls getting confused with that. And it's like, well, actually, you can do both. You can be a kind, decent person, and that's not in opposition to saying no, or I don't like that, or can we talk about this.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:50]:
So what I'm hearing you say is that there really are a lot of tensions, a lot of things that can impact a child in many different ways, whether it be familial tensions, whether it could be tensions from outside the home, whether that that are impacting the child directly, or even world events that may be causing strife, and are impacting your child, whether you like it or not, as as you're thinking about that, or how can fathers take a proactive role in addressing those external those external stressors while still being able to maintain some sense of stability? Some some sense of some sense of stability at home?

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:27:36]:
Yeah. I mean, that's a big question, obviously. You know, what are those stressors? But I'll start with sort of the innermost or the most intimate, which is your personal stressors. And here's your first level of uncertainty. Like, we change. You know, dads change. You might be calm at some days and a little more frantic or a lot more frantic others. So part of that is being truly in tune with self as best you can and not being hard on yourself when you're not.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:28:06]:
So, oh, I'm stressed. Why am I stressed? And then what can I change? Sometimes you can. Sometimes you can't. But I find that more often than not, a dad could change something. Yeah. You know what? I keep saying that I can't bring the work stress down, but I'm gonna have to, and I'm gonna find a way, or I am gonna help ask for help. If there's a group of people who probably don't ask for help enough, it's parents, and then dads on top of that. Right? They don't say, hey.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:28:33]:
Can I ask my neighbor to take my child to the bus stop or pick my child up today or, you know, I'm gonna be late for my child's band concert? Could you let her know I'm still coming? Right? So any way to turn to others for help can help. But then there's the wider world, and that's a lot of self work. I mean, there's a lot going on in the world that is scary. There's no question. And with news being 247 in in our faces, I think it's up to us as the parents. So to the dads to say, okay. I'm a news junkie. I've gotta take some of these notifications off my phone.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:29:11]:
I've gotta come up with a way that when I walk in the door and I've got children now to connect to, I've gotta find a place to put my phone. And by the way, that's modeling for when your children have their own phones. It's very hard to say to children, when we walk in, we put our phones here if the dad doesn't do it, because they just call they'll call you out right away. You don't do that. So it's becoming aware of what's stressing you, what's scaring you, and how can you shift in dealing with it. It's a very intentional process. How do I get my feet planted? How do I exhale? 1, I'm just thinking of a dad I worked with for years, and and the first time he called me, he said, you know, I manage this huge group of people. He's in construction, this huge group of people, and I tell them what to do.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:29:56]:
And I'm, you know, in the car driving home telling, you know, putting out fires or whatever. And then I get home and no one listens to me, and I said, can you put the phone down, like, a mile away so that the last part of your drive, you're shifting focus? And then when you get to the door of your house, you exhale and say, I'm going in now, to 2 children who won't listen to me. So you're literally intentionally exhaling, switching modes, and getting some humor because that actually that calm or calmer it doesn't read perfect calm is felt by the children, and they feel they feel that dad walking in the door. They feel that dad who's stressed at the dinner table, and so it's really a very intentional process. And again, I think it's something that men in in particular are not raised with. Like, you are gonna be the emotional sustenance for your children, and you are. And so to take that in and say, wow, what a privilege, what a great thing, and wow, That means I have to be aware of myself because the more emotionally attuned a dad is, particularly for those daughters, the more they feel loved and respected. And in their worst moments, they really need to feel that.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:31:10]:
Like, I really messed up. They wanna know that this is unconditional love. I still love you. Yeah. That was a mess up. We're in this together. I'm not gonna leave leave you or abandon you because you had a, you know, rotten day or set of events, And that's what bolsters mental health too. I'm loved even when I'm my worst self for the children.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:31:30]:
Well, Tovah, there's a ton to unpack here, and I really appreciate you coming and talking about all of this. And I know that, this book can definitely help so many fathers and mothers and parents in general to better connect with their kids, but also help their kids in a lot of ways. If people wanna find out more about the book itself, where's the best place for them to go?

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:31:56]:
Yeah. Well, the easiest place is to go to my website, Tovahkleen.com. That's Tovahkleen.com. And the book is sold wherever books are sold. So you can get online at your local book store. And if you go to my website, you've bought the book, you just put in your receipt, whatever receipt it is, and there's a free download for something that I call the UFACTOR journal. And that's all the reflective questions from the book and a place to either write out answers or just have the questions there to reflect on. And I will say I got an email this week from a couple who wrote to me and said that a mom and a dad couple, were doing the reflective questions together and then coming together and discussing them, and it's been good for our marriage.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:32:42]:
So I thought, oh, that's really great. Because reflecting on self makes you a stronger person, which makes you a better dad. No question. And shedding vulnerability, because sometimes reflecting on yourself does not feel so great.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:32:53]:
So true. Well, I truly want to say thank you. Thank you for writing this and helping parents to connect with their kids in this better way, but also for sharing this with us today for being here and for challenging us to think about resilience in a different way as well. And I wish you all the best.

Dr. Tovah Klein [00:33:14]:
Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:33:15]:
If you've enjoyed today's episode of the Dads with Daughters podcast, we invite you to check out the fatherhood insider. The fatherhood insider is the essential resource for any dad that wants to be the best dad that he can be. We know that no child comes with an instruction manual and most dads are figuring it out as they go along, and the fatherhood insider is full of resources and information that will up your game on fatherhood. Through our extensive course library, interactive forum, step by step road maps, and more, you will engage and learn with experts, but more importantly, dads like you. So check it out at fatheringtogether.org. If you are a father of a daughter and have not yet joined the dads with daughters Facebook community, there's a link in the notes today. Dads with daughters is a program of fathering together. We look forward to having you back for another great guest next week all geared to helping you raise strong and powered daughters and be the best dad that you can be.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:34:14]:
We're all in the same boat, And it's full of tiny screaming passengers. We spend the time. We give the lessons. We make the meals. Dad you can be. You're the best dad you can be.