Stop Shouting And Start Connecting: Dr Justin Coulson

Parenting can feel like a daily drain you never clock out from. We sit down with Justin Coulson to name what so many families are quietly carrying: parental burnout, constant pressure, and the way screens can steal the best parts of home life without anyone noticing until the connection is already thin.

We get practical about the moments that blow up, especially yelling. Justin breaks down why shouting becomes a default habit under stress and how to interrupt it with a surprisingly simple shift: get your child’s attention first, move toward them, and speak softer instead of louder. From there we talk about kids having “L plates” on emotionally, why trying to “fix” people often creates resistance, and how love, limits, and laughter create the kind of stability kids actually grow from.

The conversation goes deeper into purpose and faith as anchors for mental health, including a way to pray that invites action and course correction instead of paralysis. We also explore the pressure we put on kids to “fulfill their potential,” the real value of gap years and alternative pathways, and what Justin’s new work on raising boys is trying to solve. His definition of healthy masculinity is simple and challenging: a healthy man helps the people around him feel safer and stronger.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Parenting Hurts

Dave Quak 0:00

Well, welcome to Sunburned Souls. On this show, we get to speak about life and faith in our mental well-being. And I'm fanboying out a little bit today because I haven't got Justin Colton. I'm blushing. Stop, but I'm blushing. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

I'm stoked to talk to you, Dave. I love, I love that you do this. And um and and if it helps, if it helps just one person, let's do it, right? Like, yeah, absolutely. I'm all in.

Dave Quak 0:24

I was just um joking with you, Justin, that my wife was out saying, Hey Dave, do you want like a co-host today? Do you want me to come in and hang out as well?

SPEAKER_00 0:33

That's very kind. You're far too kind.

Dave Quak 0:36

Well, mate, you've been a benefit to us. I mean, our kids go to a school that you recently did a presentation at and a whole parenting workshop. And, you know, you've really lent into leading the way with happy families and what it looks like to, you know, flourish as a family, uh, which I think is super important in this day and age because I I know just as well as you, Justin, this is a hard gig.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, yeah. Um there's so much research showing that parents are feeling more burnt out than ever. Uh, the parental burnout scale uh measures the extent to which parents are just struggling and and over it. And uh we're seeing numbers that have never been seen before. Uh there's so many challenges around our investment in our children, our hopes, dreams, and aspirations for our children to fulfill their potential, which I have massive problems with, but we can talk about that later. Uh, the cost of living, the fact that both parents, assuming you're in a two-parent family, it's even harder if you're doing it on your own. But uh parent parents just don't have the capacity that they once had. And then there's just the interference of screens, the way that screens uh disrupt the most important relationships that we have in life: the relationships with the people that we love, our children and our our our spouse or partner, and the relationship that we have with God. So all of these things and a whole other confluence of additional factors that we can again discuss further if we need to when we're talking about mental health, all of these things are impacting our well-being, they're impacting our relationships, and they're absolutely impacting our parenting.

Six Daughters And Parental Burnout

Dave Quak 2:03

Yeah. I I just to frame it in case anyone doesn't know, you've got an like a basketball team of ladies at home and your daughters.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, yeah. Um so the background in a nutshell is that I've got six daughters. Uh my wife and I were married in the late 1990s. Uh, we had our first one in '99. Uh, and so she's what is it, what the 2020? She's 27, 27 this year. Wow. Yeah. Uh in fact, the the the maths, maths here. I was 24 when she was born. She was 24 when she had her firstborn. So I'm a grandpa uh of a two and a half year old little granddaughter called Indiana. We we only do girls in our family, evidently. So um, yeah, six daughters, one granddaughter. Um, my my oldest and her hubby have been married for a number of years now. And my second one's about to be married. Uh so it's, I mean, it's fantastic. They're they're marching out the door and it's it's it's happening, and we're kind of breathing a little lighter and spending a little less every week, and life's like, okay, we can do this parenting thing. We we can get there. We're almost there. Our youngest, unfortunately, unfortunately, our youngest is 12. We've still got a number of years to go. Uh and I'm currently raising my fifth 16-year-old teaching her to drive. Fifth 16-year-old. Yeah, yeah. So like I've we've we've done the ad we've done the toddler years six times, we've done the middle childhood years six times, and we're currently on our fifth of six 16-year-olds. And I tell you what, like you said, like parenting is just hard yakker. Yeah. So the one of the biggest things that I've learned is that in parenting, you will always give more than you receive. And the sooner you can get your head around that, the easier parenting's gonna be. Because if like this this is a really crude way of saying it, but children are takers, they are not givers. Yes, they will give you a hug, and yes, they'll give you a smile, and yes, they'll help you if you ask the right way, and uh it's convenient for them, and they're not too tired and not too hungry and not otherwise occupied. But generally speaking, the role of parent is to give and give and give and give, and and to not receive very much gratitude and certainly not receive very much back in return. Um, and I know this is a faith-oriented podcast, I think it's worth highlighting straight away. I wonder what we are like as children of God. I mean, we've got this, we've got this all powerful, incredible God who has given us this world, he's given us our relationships, our families, our health, our wealth, everything that we have, every blessing, and and every challenge, which I would also argue could be a blessing as well. He's given us everything. Most of all, he's given us his son. Yeah. And I wonder, I wonder whether or not he looks at us and goes, Yeah, Justin, Dave, you you are you are taking a lot. I'm I don't think that you're a particularly profitable employee, if that's the way that I was going to look at you. I I reckon I'd sack you for an employee. Lucky you're one of my children and not an employee.

Dave Quak 4:42

I think you nail it because once you start expecting less, it's actually not as offensive when they don't give anything back.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The secret to happiness is low expectations, I think that's what you're saying.

Dave Quak 4:53

You're

Kids On L Plates Emotionally

Dave Quak 4:54

talking about their brains being on L plates. Are you talking in that window, the 16-year-old window? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

So uh you would have seen this with your family. It's so easy. Once the kids are walking and talking, so from about the age of three or four, their vocabulary is expanding, they're able to get around, they can get up and uh up to uh the bench or the the the table, they can eat on their own. Once they start doing that stuff, we kind of just start treating them like they're um little mini adults, and then when they lose it, we get cranky at them, and it's like, oh, they've got their L plates on. I I think about emotion regulation, right? The ability to turn your emotions up or down appropriately for the context. Um, and and I I kind of go, hmm, how how long does it take to learn how to write your name or tie your shoes? And how much more complex is it to regulate your emotions than do those things? So yeah, kids figure that stuff out around five or six, or maybe four if you're lucky. Um, but emotional regulation, I know plenty of adults that can't do that. So, yeah, I something that I refer to all the time is that kids are running around with their L plates on and we should treat them as such. We need to go slow, step them through it, show them the process, give them the structure, and then repeat, and then repeat because that's what parenting is.

How To Stop Shouting At Kids

Dave Quak 6:06

Yeah. One one of your shorts actually hit me where it spoke about not shouting at your kids. Like, so when your kids are annoying, going off at them or whatever, and then you'll say where does that work in the rest of society? Like in imagining on the workplace and you're just shouting at you, you know, and it's actually quite hard because I used to be a shouter, but I'm also in life with a couple that are shouters, and I don't know what to do or say to help them, but I know it's not helpful, you know. Like, when do you reckon it's time to just take that bold step and say, can we have a chat? Like I got some I got some cool advice or even give them one of your books or something.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

How did you stop shouting? Can I turn this interview around and ask you some questions? Yeah, like how how did you number one, when did you become aware of it? Number two, what did you do to stop? And and and how and are you cured of it?

Dave Quak 6:57

Sorry, I mean didn't mean to speak over you, brother. Um I'm mostly cured. Um, not a hundred percent. I grew up in a shouting house. It was whoever was the loudest was the winner of the fight. And really intensely, like it was like screaming at each other, like we were the family where the cops got called because it was just too much. Wow. And then you know, you always swear you're not gonna be like your father until your kids turn up and frustrate you, and then you sound exactly like him. And so I went on a journey where I'm like, I need to be set free from this, I need to get patterns in place, and it took a while, Justin. Like it took a long time to you know, the first time I was really tempted to yell, I had to overcome it. Second time I had to do it again, third time again, and maybe 50 in what became what was a discipline became a habit. And I started to finally show patience instead of choose patience, it sort of became part of the character.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah, yeah. Um, I I think it's Paul that says that we should pray for charity. Charity's a gift of God, and we should pray for it. Um so a couple of things on shouting. First of all, you use the word habit, shouting is a habit, and so is not shouting. So so if you're a shout or if you're a yeller, uh that's because you've taught the kids that they don't need to listen to you until you get there. Uh and I I think it's also worth just giving ourselves a little bit of grace here. Like if you are hungry, if you are tired, if you are uh sleep deprived, if you are stressed, under pressure we revert to our most practiced habit. And so if shouting has been a habit, no matter how committed you are to not shouting, if you're under stress and you haven't re uh re-established this new habit of speaking softly, uh that that will you'll always go back to it's like the nail, right? You get a hammer, you hit a nail, and if the wood's too hard, or if you don't hit the nail flush, you kind of bend the nail and you can straighten that nail out. But next time you hit that nail, it's already got a weakness in it where it bent, which means that if you don't hit it dead on, it's gonna bend again. And shouting's a bit like that. You've hit the nail, it's bent, you've straightened it up, you know what you want to do, but if you're a bit tired, or if the kids are stressing you out, or if there's some time crunch, that's when you're gonna start to shout again. Um, a couple of things that I found really useful. Number one, before you start speaking to your child, make sure you have their attention. Like, it's such an obvious thing when I say it, but we don't do that. We we decide that they need they they need to pay attention to us right now, and we're in the kitchen doing the dishes, our hands are in the sink, they're into the other room, and we just start shouting at them. And we're just calling them by name. It's not like we're shouting insults or obscenities, we're just yelling at, hey kiddo, or whatever, but we've already we've already stepped away from that. And then when they don't respond, that's when our temper goes up. It's like that's disrespectful. You're supposed to be responding to me. And that's when the hostility starts to creep in and the frustration starts to explode out of us, and then the shouting takes on a different tenor. So my my number one piece of advice is always make sure you have your child's attention before you start talking to them. And that usually means that you're the one that needs to move, not them. So instead of yelling at them and telling them to come out of the room so you can talk to them, which is, let's be honest, it's pretty arrogant, right? Well, maybe, maybe we might just say, hmm, I need my child, they're in my bed, they're in their bedroom. I will walk the 14 steps down the corridor to their bedroom, tap on the door and say, Hey kiddo, can I just check in with you about X, Y, or Z? It's so simple. And it stops shouting right there because they're looking at you, you've got their attention, and then you can have a regular conversation. The other thing that I found is really useful is to speak softer, not louder. There's something remarkable that happens, Dave, when when you soften your voice, people lean in, they get closer, they want to know what you're saying. Whereas when you start shouting, everyone's like, Whoa, what's going on? And you might have their attention, but you certainly don't have their heart. And so uh they're just a couple of little ideas. As for the the shouter that you want to help, um people are really, really sensitive and often defensive when we let's let's let's jump into the Bible for a second. Can you remember that verse where Jesus says, I'm gonna give you a new commandment? He says, A new commandment, I I I'll I'll go King James, that's kind of what I'm most versed with. A new commandment I give unto you that you uh uh fix one another as I have fixed you, that you also fix one another. So what it says, right? He says he so so I find this really interesting because as parents we're we're really intentional, we're absolutely, if I can use the word fixated, on fixing our kids. We can see all their character flaws, especially the you don't listen to me character flaw. Yeah. But everything else, you're not kind to your sister, you um you're ignoring your father, you're not helping around the house, you uh you're slothful, you're not doing your homework, you're blah, blah, blah. And um, and we're just because we want our children to do so well in life, we're pretty well convinced that it's our job as parents to fix them. Uh and and I know that we've got a role to socialize them, but what research seems to show is that if we're really good people, that the kids will figure it out, they'll watch us, they'll like our modelling is everything. That's why we're supposed to be you you show your discipleship to Jesus by following his commandments. Yeah right, and and he set the perfect example. So if we can be a really good example to our kids and have good conversations with them, our job is not to fix them. When you start trying to fix people, they just they resist. Uh force creates resistance. So if you're in a counseling situation or you've got an uncle or a sister or a brother-in-law who is shouting at the kids all the time and you find it harsh and punitive and aggressive, and you step in and say, Hey, can we just talk about your shouting for a second? My guess is that unless they have high levels of self-awareness, or if they're a really penitent soul uh who is aware of their faults and they just want to be better, most people don't have the humility to say, Oh, Dave, I'm so glad you raised this. I'm struggling, and you are the wise oracle that I've been hoping would step into my life and show me the way. That's not what they do. They're just like, I've heard you shout. Oh, what do you mean? Like, I I I could point my finger at you. It doesn't work well. Um, so our job really is to just just love them. Like that, that's the commandment. This is the commandment that you love one another. Let Jesus look after the rest.

Dave Quak 13:13

That's really helpful, Justin. Uh yeah, no, I know if I was corrected on my parenting, it would be the walls would be up straight away.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Oh, yeah.

Dave Quak 13:22

I do appreciate that all your content, Justin. Sometimes you don't use the overt words, this is the gospel, but the principles are clearly underpinned by the the character and the love of Jesus, where even the way you talk about children, you know, you approach them gently and lowly and get on their level and treat them as equals. That's what I picture Jesus doing when he's you know, the disciples are trying to send them away.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

I I'm not paid to be a preacher, uh, and and I don't actually have that desire, although I I love to talk about the gospel of Christ. Uh but uh and and that's why I said yes to the podcast. I was like, oh, I get to actually be my full self. Uh people people want me to, I'm I I'm secular, I've got a PhD, I'm a scientist. Uh that that's that's the work that I do and that's what they're paying for. Um and and I love to my my whole I I I genuinely feel like my calling in life is to help people have happy families. I I'm not sure that there'd be too much that pleases God more than having peace, harmony, love, charity, goodness, meekness, holiness, humility, having those things in um i in our homes, the fruits of the spirit, Galatians 5. Uh I I think the only thing that probably pleases him more is when people uh are humble and penitent and and turn to him and say, I need your brace. So so I feel like it's a real a real privilege and a real blessing. I feel like that's what he wanted me to do with my life, and it's been just the greatest gift to like we were just talking before about how people do not want parenting advice, and yet people show up to me on a daily basis and say, I'm struggling, I don't know what to do, and I've I'm I'm entrusting you with the most sacred thing in my life, my children. There's nothing more important at all. What do I do? How do I help them? So I don't take that for granted. I find it just an extra it's an immense privilege.

Purpose Faith And Daily Discipline

Dave Quak 15:06

This has taken you so many different ways in your career, Justin. Like you've been on TV, you've got your podcast, you've got your resources and all that. And this isn't even me trying to be funny, but how exactly do you fit this all in? Like, do you sleep? Because there is a massive family at home, yeah, great grandbabies, you know, your good wife, Kylie. How do you do it all?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Um I I I lean on God. Um it's so funny. People say that I must be productive and I'm prolific. I just I'm I I I'm constantly chastening myself for not being more productive, for for wasting time staring at a news article or um or or for choosing to uh go and do some fitness stuff rather than focusing on my work. I my last book took me four years, and I reckon if I'd been really disciplined, I could have done it in two. Um my PhD took three and a half, but if I was really disciplined, I could have done it in two years, I'm sure of it. I I I don't know. I'm I I I I kind of drive myself pretty hard. I I think I think Dave that I'm pretty disciplined. Um but but more than anything, you you mentioned it before, waking up every day with that purpose. I I talk regularly to people who will say, I just don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and they'll be 40 or 50 or 60 years old. And like I'm still trying to figure it out. And and I get that. Like, I'm still trying to figure out stuff with my life and what I'm supposed to be doing next. And do I write another book and what topic? Or should I put a course together or should I try and expand more online, or what should I do here or there? There's all those we're we're all just making it up as we go along. But having that having that overarching purpose has been uh it on your pod, you talk a lot about mental health. And while there are so many facets to it, as as I've well, I've just written a book about boys, as I've thought about what it is that makes somebody a good man, um, and then when I think about life more generally and what my life has been, I I cannot help, I cannot help but think that having a sense of purpose, a sense of commitment to something larger than me, has got to be one of the greatest drivers of well-being that we know. So we know that relationships are vital. Relationship and relationships might actually be your purpose. It could be your family, it could be your kids, it could be your aging parents. But having having that purpose, that thing that you are committed to that is bigger than you, your faith, uh, your your career, your your opportunity to serve that the the research shows at a at a fundamental level that this is foundational to well-being. And so for me, I I just love what I do, Dave. And therefore, because I love it, um, I don't I I have to drag myself out of the office so that I can go and spend time with my family, for example. Which and I love my family, I love spending time with them. But so my my ideal um, well, I was gonna say Friday night, but it's any night, is grabbing one of the many psychology texts. Or I mean, right right here above my um above my desk, I've got um I've got a whole lot of academic papers that I'm uh I'm reading through at the moment. All these academic papers that are helping me to um be better. Like I've got this one here called From Needs to Goals and Representations: Foundations for a Unified Theory of Motivation, Personality and Development, Disentangling Autonomy, Supportive and Psychologically Controlling Parenting, and Meta-analysis of Self-Determination Theories, dual process model across cultures, towards an integrative and fine-grained insight in motivating and demotivating teaching styles, the merits of a circumflex approach. And this is what I do on a Friday night when the kids have left me alone. I'm just like, oh yes, I get to read one of these. Um, like that's a little bit weird, let's be honest. But but because my my purpose is so explicit and so clear for me, uh, I I just I I I love it. And that's what helps me to be productive, and that's what drives me. And then my life philosophy for the last 20 years, my my wife, Kylie, really wants me to change this. But my life philosophy, uh, I was asked in an interview back when I started my career um about 20 years ago, somebody said, So what's your what's your underpinning philosophy here? And I said, uh bite off more than you can chew and make it up as you go along. And it just sort of came out of my mouth and I thought, no, that's about how I live my life. I I I bite off far more than I can chew, and I have no idea what I'm doing. I just make it up as I go along. Like when you've got a deadline and you've made a commitment, you just figure it out, and that's been a it's been a great gift for me. Um, fortitude, persistence, the ability to be rejected and not let it bother you. Um, these are these are some of the reasons that I can do what I do.

Dave Quak 19:43

What what do you reckon for people who might be listening who can't or haven't been able to zero in on your equivalent of happy families?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is my purpose? How do I find my purpose? Yeah, how do they do that? So this is a conversation that I have all the time, whether it's with kids that are about to leave school and they're saying, I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. I got two kids right now who are literally just they're just treading water. They're like, I don't know what direction to go. I don't know what direction to go. Where I do I do this course or do I go and get this job? Or do I like what do I do? And and and it always feels so urgent. It feels like I need to know now. So the first thing I always do is I I encourage people to pray about it. And and the way that I pray about these kinds of decisions is probably a little bit different to what most people do. A lot of people say, God, show me what to do. And I I'm just not convinced that God works that way. I think that he wants us to do the work and then maybe have us seek his confirmation of that. So the way I usually do it is I'll be like, um, God, I've studied this out and I think right now that the best decision that I can make is X. I looked at Y, I looked at Z, but X just feels right to me. Can you stop me if it's wrong? And then I just I go full tilt at it. And it's really funny because every now and again I've started something and I've just had this really strong feeling. No, don't do it. It's not the right thing. And uh that means that I have an opportunity to reorient myself. I'll give you a simple case in point. Uh I was finishing my honors degree and getting ready for uh my postgraduate studies, and uh we were given uh uh notice that there was a PhD scholarship available at the University of Wollongong. I was living in Queensland, Brisbane at the time, and we had a young family, and I looked at it and it looked really good. It looked actually really intriguing. There was a little bit of money in it, there was the scholarship, there were opportunities for teaching. I liked the look of what I was gonna be doing in that doctorate. And Kylie and I talked it over, prayed about it, and we're like, nah, let's not do it. But it wouldn't stop niggling. And I went and interviewed for a couple of other PhD candidatures in Queensland at the at QT, at Griffith, at UQ. And none of them felt quite right. I just it was like, hmm. And that Wollongong thing just kept on niggling in the ribs, niggling, niggling, niggling. I said to Kylie, I think I need to go to Wollongong and have a chat with them and just check the place out. So I jumped on a plane, flew down, had the interview. I came home and I said, now that I've got more information, now that we've really studied this out, we've looked at about five or six different options, this just feels good. And Kylie looked at me like, I don't think so. I don't want to move the family interstate. This does not feel like it could be a good thing to do. And and and Dave, we we knelt down and prayed about it. And I just looked at Kylie and said, Well, we said to God, stop us if it's wrong, because this is the way we're going to go. And we stood up and we looked at each other and we're like, we're all in. Until this feels wrong, we're all in. Ten of the best years of our lives we spent down in Wollongong on the South Coast. It was, I did a wonderful doctorate down there. I had wonderful uh tertiary uh and and and and educational experiences. I was able to become a university lecturer. We raised our family through a decade of their life down there. We made lifelong friends, joined a gorgeous faith community. Just everything that you could imagine being fabulous happened there. It was also hard at times, but it was it was the right move. Oh, and I discovered cycling. Uh, I'm already a surfer, and but I discovered cycling as well. So my life became richer that way as well. Um bad joke. Um so I can see this, I can see your bike in the background. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I've got a couple of bikes in the background there. Yeah, so um that that's always been that what I would say to to get to the crux of your question is when somebody asks me, how do I know what direction I should take? The first thing I say is pray about it, but don't just pray and say which direction. Make a decision and and say, stop me if I'm if I'm wrong. And and that doesn't mean God will talk to you every single time, but I think he will often. But what also happens is sometimes you start on a direction and you just go, Yeah, this is the wrong direction. And that in and of itself, maybe an answer to prayer, that in and of itself is giving you direction. It's saying you need to reframe, reorient, you need to shift things up and head in a different direction. And one day you're gonna take a few steps down a path and you're not gonna have that, this is wrong. Instead, you're gonna be like, Oh, this feels good. And then another couple of steps, oh, this feels good. And then eventually you're gonna be like, This is the path. So I always say take action before you focus on direction.

Finding Direction Through Action And Prayer

Dave Quak 24:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Because action, you you get information as you're taking action.

Dave Quak 24:26

Most of us, but can't be all of us, but most of us have the desire of our heart to be able to bless our children, to be able to bless our families and stuff. What do you reckon at the moment is the biggest barrier to seeing that we envision in parents' life? Like what what is the biggest hindrance to parents like now?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Uh so I reckon there's I know you said the biggest. I'm gonna I'm gonna grab three things if I can, and I'll whist through them quickly. The first one is I I think technology is um I I I was gonna say uh technology is the devil. That's not

Screens Control And Pressure To Succeed

SPEAKER_00 25:02

not actually true. Technology is an incredible blessing in our lives, but we need to be intentional about how it is a blessing. So I recommend to parents that they have a conversation with the kids and say, we're finding that technology is interfering. What are you doing? What are you seeing? Uh and and the conversation should be when is technology a gift and a blessing to us? Like how how is technology facilitating goodness in our lives? And can we use it more in those ways? And then how is it a detriment to our lives, to our relationships, to our physical activity, to our sleep, to our schoolwork, to our life's purpose? Uh, and can we therefore orient ourselves away from it in those contexts? Um, technology is is just so devastatingly impactful on relationships, particularly parent, child, and couple relationships. I think it's horrendous. So I've got a couple of rules in our home. Rule number one, I'm not allowed to drive into the driveway or walk into the house if I'm on the phone.

Dave Quak 25:55

Oh, so you'll finish all your chats in the driveway?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

No, I'm not even allowed in the driveway if I'm having a chat. Yeah, I have to go down the street and finish it because once the car comes into the driveway, everyone knows I'm home and then I'm not coming inside. And it just it's like, oh hang on, yeah, dad's choosing the telephone over us. That's a good one. So that that's that's the first rule uh that that I have, and I'm I'm I'm pretty strict on that one. Uh the the second one that I've got, we just don't have phones at the table because when we're together as a family, we're together. Phones just don't have any place there. And the third one is that we worked really hard on making sure that, or at least I do, no telephone in that first hour to two hours after I wake up and no telephone uh ideally after about 6 p.m. I just put it away. And if somebody needs to get me, sorry, we'll chat tomorrow. Like focusing family time on family, that would be my first one, and I just don't think we're doing it well. I used to think that I had to be glued to it. I used to think that I was gonna lose business or I wasn't gonna be able to be responsive enough on social media. And then I I came across a quote, and it it's probably a nice way to sort of wrap up this one and move to the second one, but the quote was something it said this it said, we we cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. Uh so much stuff that we think is really, really important. It's just not. You know what I reckon is important? Our relationship with God, the covenants and promises we make to him, and our relationship with our family. Two great commandments love God, love others, and everything else is just not I'm not saying that work isn't important. I'm not I I'm I'm suggesting that we overestimate the importance of practically everything. So uh once I kind of got that through my head, I was like, yeah, what whatever's happening on news.com.au or abc.net.au none of it actually affects me. And even if it does, I can't do anything about it affecting me. You know, so so there's a there's a war happening overseas, it's affecting me, but I can't do anything about it. Um there there are there are changes to the budget as a result of everything that the the government's doing. Um I can't do anything about it. Um maybe there are one or two things that I can do about it, but I'll figure that out whether I'm glued to the news seven or eight or ten times a day or not. Uh so so yeah, really, really focused on what's right in front of me right now. That's that's the thing that matters. My family, my family are what matter. Dave, I um I I I quit social media a little while ago.

Dave Quak 28:30

Oh bro, I'm thinking about doing that. How's that going?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Uh it's been the one one of the best things that I've done in decades. Uh, I I'm fortunate that I've got a team who can look after from a business point of view. I have social media accounts and and I'm I'm committed to providing a serv a service, providing information, content, and so on on social media. But I've I've got the right people in place and they look after the social media. So I still provide content for them. But I got a I got a message from somebody uh on my team maybe a month and a half ago. I'd posted something, or sorry, they'd posted something for me on the Happy Family's Facebook page. We got, I don't know, like a quarter of a million uh followers. There's probably more than that now. I haven't looked at it for a while. Um and and it kind of blew up, and a lot of people were really angry with what I said. And this staff member said, We really need you to log on, and you've you've got to reply to some of these. Like, and she sent me some screenshots of what people were saying. I thought about it, and then I remembered that we cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. And I responded to her and I just said, So, so here's the thing, I've already said what I needed to say, and me jumping in there and arguing with them is not gonna change their mind. There's a little couplet that I love, one convinced against their will is of the same opinion still. And so I said, I'm not gonna change their mind, I've already said what I wanted to say, and in 24 hours they're gonna have forgotten about it. And so I just walked away, and it felt so freeing, it felt so good. So uh being really intentional about how I spend my time is probably also how I get a lot done as well. Um, the second thing that I think is a barrier to parents doing well with their kids and their family and and their families flourishing in happiness is um we've become increasingly controlling as parents. We feel like we need to do everything, fix everything, structure everything. You know what kids really need? They need love, they need limits, they need laughter. Uh you you tick those three boxes, they're gonna do really well. Um, learning would be another L if you want to chuck that in as well, but they get plenty of that throughout their life anyway. Love, limits, and laughter. So uh love, what does that mean? To a child, love is spelled T-I-M-E. So get rid of the screen and that'll look after that. Um connection. Connection means feeling seen, heard, valued, and accepted. Um actually, you know what, at the start of this conversation, we're talking about giving feedback. I can't remember the exact context of it now, but I wanted to say something and we skipped past it before I got there, but it actually fits really neatly here. Well, we're talking about fixing, we're talking about fixing our kids. Oh yes. My my brother-in-law is a a sports coach for a um uh uh uh a major team uh in one of the major leagues. You've got AFL and NRL and all that sort of stuff, and he's he's a sports coach in uh he's coaching one of the biggest teams in in one of those major leagues. And we were having a chat when he had once been a player, and and he was talking about how the coach used to just get in there and scream at the players at half time and yell at the players, uh, maybe at training on a Wednesday afternoon when they didn't get a drill rod or they weren't working hard enough. This coach used to just tear the players, like just tore strips off them when he wasn't happy with them. And I said to him, How's that working for you? And and my brother-in-law said, Oh, we all hate it, it's so demoralizing, it's so dispiriting. And and I said, One day you want to be a coach, right? And he said, That's the goal. Yeah, like I'm gonna retire from the sport, and then I really want to coach. And and I said, As a coach, how would you do it differently based on what you're experiencing with this particular coach now that you're a player? And he said, Oh, yeah. We talked it over and and and where we kind of landed, uh and and this you you might even note the way that I'm having this conversation with him. I'm not saying, well, when you're a coach, you need to make sure that you do A, B, C, and D. I'm literally saying, what would what would you want now as a player? And then how would you incorporate that into your coaching down the track? So I I I had a phone call just the other day with him, and he said, I'm doing it. So what he's doing is when the players aren't doing so well, instead of doing it publicly, he has a little one-on-one with each player who's struggling. And they actually sit down and they watch a video of the game. And he says, What did you notice there? What happened? Break it down. What were your other alternatives? What could you do next time? And then they have a conversation about he says, You've got this, fist pump, high five, I believe in you, off you go. And so rather than him doing the fixing, he's giving that player the opportunity to identify the mistakes, identify the errors, come up with better solutions, and then go out and practice it. And um without making too big of a deal of it, um, as an as a coach, he's he's on an incredible streak, and people are very, very happy about what he's doing. He's doing extremely well. And it's like this is just a basic parenting principle. And we're too controlling, we're just too much into telling the kids what to do all the time. Do it like that. No, not like this, like that. Hurry up. Why haven't you done it already? I keep on telling you if it's I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, just just slow down. If the kids are struggling with something, let's recognize that they're struggling and let's sit with them in their struggle and ask them what they're noticing and see if they can find some solutions themselves. Because once they do, they'll endorse the solution way more than if we just spray it at them. And they're much more likely to go ahead with that. So the second thing, just way too much control, way too much control, way too much structure. Uh, we need to give our kids a bit more breathing space. And and the third thing I think we're doing, or the third barrier to really, really happy families, is um just the pressure that we're putting on them to fulfil their potential. I told you we'd probably end up back there at some point in this conversation. I I just see this again and again, Dave. We we kind of look at the cost of living, the cost of a house, and we say, well my goodness, if my child does not get a 99 ATAR, it's over for them because they've got to go to uni. Like we we now see university as the absolute necessity. I've got a son-in-law who's an electrician. I've got a son-in-law who's a sparky, uh, sorry, not a sparky, yeah, yeah, a builder. I can tell you right now, those guys are doing better than the majority of people I know. Yeah, they're they're doing pretty well. They're doing a lot better than most people that I know that went through university. Uh, I'm I'm a pretty big believer in um in getting kids into trades if they have uh that orientation, especially if they're struggling with school. Um but but even if university is on the agenda, uh I'm a big believer in gap years. The research seems to show that taking at least a gap year, if not two, three, four, five gap years, and going out and getting some range, some breadth, some depth, yeah, learning a bit about life, working out what it does turn you on, what you are interested in, and then going back to study that. Like when I was a university lecturer, the school leaves, this is their standard line. I gotta get through uni so I can get on with my life. Yeah. You know what the univ the mature age university students would say? I gotta get university through me so that I can make more of my life. Yeah, that's cool. What a difference. And this the school leavers, they put up their hand, they'd ask a question, I'll be like, Yeah, what's your question? They'd say, Is this gonna be on the exam?

Dave Quak 35:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Right? But the mature age students, they're saying, I don't understand. Can we go deeper? Or you said this before, and now you're saying that, and that seems like they contradict. How do we how do we square the circle? Like, what's going on here? There's just there's just a a difference in depth, in commitment, and and the research bears it out. The mature age students, they do tend to do better at university than the school leaves who have a pretty high dropout rate in those first that that those first couple of semesters.

Dave Quak 35:57

I'm with you on that because like if you in even if you figure out your career by 27, you've got to do it for 40 more years before you get to retire anyway.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

And and I actually m maybe I'm maybe I'm just being too autobiographical here, but I had a radio career when I finished high school. I f I failed high school, absolutely cataclysmically, colossal failure of high school. I scored on the bottom 15% of New South Wales. Brutal, absolutely brutal, bottom 15%. Uh and and then I had a radio career. I wanted to be a radio announcer, had 10 years in radio, and when I went back to school as a 27-year-old, nothing but high distinctions. So I went from thinking that I was dumb, thinking that I was really unintelligent, to going, oh hang on, no, I just needed to find the motivation. And once I found the motivation, smashed it.

Dave Quak 36:46

You've just written a book about boys, which I'm so thankful that you're doing that. I think yourself and a few other people in the same sort of area I respected doing the same thing, focusing on what it means to have men and how to raise them well. Can you tell us just about that book and the process for you coming to write it and how we can get it? All of that. Yeah, sure. And what was going on behind the scenes for you?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Yeah, okay. So uh first things first, the book comes out on June 16. I'm not sure when this podcast drops, but June 16 it's available. You can pre-order it right now, and pre-orders make or break the success of a book. Um, the publisher has already ordered a

Raising Boys And Healthy Masculinity

SPEAKER_00 37:23

reprint, and we're still in pre-order stage. So that's that's exciting because they they had reasonably high expectations of the book, but there's been so many pre-orders already that they're kind of going, uh oh, we're gonna run out. Like all the booksellers are saying, No, we need more. This is definitely gonna be a thing. So the book's called Boys Building Strong Young Men from the Inside Out. Um, I've I'm a dad to six daughters, and so about four or five years ago, I wrote a book about raising teenage girls. The book was called Misconnection: Why Your Teenage Daughter Hates You Expects the World and Needs to Talk. And uh I felt really qualified to write that. As soon as the book launched, I was just inundated and the messages haven't stopped. When's the boys' book coming out? And I just kept on saying, Oh no, it's not really that's I I'm a dad of daughters, I don't quite feel like I'm the guy. But then I speak to teenage boys pretty much every day. And I speak to parents of teenage boys every day, and the parents of teenage boys were consistently saying, Your answers are making a difference, they're helping me. I I'm figuring this out because of what you're saying. And and it just got to the point, Dave, where I just thought, I actually know some stuff here that's going to be really, really useful. So the the first thing that I had to work out was what does it mean to be a healthy male? Because everyone's going on about the manosphere and toxic masculinity, and everyone's worried about boys who are not doing well. And I couldn't find, I spoke to academics, I looked through the research literature, and I just could not find a really good solid definition of what it is to. I found lots of toxic masculinity definitions, but nothing about what it is to be a healthy, strong, positive male. And so the definition that I settled on was it builds out of uh there's a guy called um Richard Reeves. He wrote a book a couple of years ago called Of Boys and Men, and he talked about this idea of surplus value that a a real man is one who shows up and gives more than he takes. And I really liked that, and and that's consistent with there's another guy called David Gilmore, he wrote a book called Manhood in the Making, where he went out to all the um anthropological uh evidence and went looked to all the tribes throughout all the world and what they do to bring men into manhood and talk about how manhood is something that is learned and then earned, and you earn it by providing and protecting. I was like, okay, that's that's great, but it's 2026, and we're not trying to fight lions anymore or dragons, and and we can go to woolies or coals or Audi and we can get our our provisions right. So long as you've got a job and you're you're earning some decent coin, you'll be okay. So, what does it mean today to be, and I decided not to go with positive masculinity. I chose healthy masculinity as my preferred term. What does it mean to be a healthy man? And the definition that I settled on was a healthy man is someone who helps the people around him to feel safer and stronger. Like that's good, man. Because as a man, you're strong, you're able to dominate, you're able to control things. You're also responsible for providing and protecting, although it's in a 2026 way and not a, I don't know, Savannah Africa way. Um and if you're a really healthy man, what you do is you hold that masculinity, you hold that strength, you hold that capacity to dominate in a graceful way. You hold it in a way where you are compassionate to others and strong when you need to be, but only as strong as you need to be, and never in a way that denigrates or hurts, particularly those who are closer to you, close to you. Uh and and I was talking to my kids about this at the dining table one night, and the conversation it's evolved over the last four years, as you can probably imagine. But I said, guys, healthy man helps you to feel safer and stronger. And I've got all these daughters looking at me going, yeah, right, I whatever, Dad. And you fast forward about like nine months or 12 months or something like that. We've had this conversation a handful of times. My daughter, one of my one of my kids who's in her sort of later teen years, she comes home one day and she's really upset. And I say, What's up? Like, you look really you've had a bad day. And she fell into my arms and sobbed and she said, I broke up with my boyfriend. And I said, Oh kiddo, that's rough. I'm giving her a great big hug. She's crying all over my shoulder and making a mess. And and I said, This was getting serious. You guys have been together for like six weeks. And and um and I said, Why did you break up? And with these beautiful soft eyes, she said, Dad, he didn't help me to feel safer and stronger. Yeah. And I just was like, Oh, this is this is good. Tell me more. And she said, Okay, well, in terms of safe, I only felt safe with him when we were with other people. When we were on our on our own, he was constantly pressuring me to be intimate with him in ways that I just did not want just I wasn't ready to go there. We've only been dating for six weeks, and um, and and she said the pressure was immense all the time, so I didn't feel safe. And then she said, I didn't feel strong around him, even when we were with other people, because he constantly told jokes at my expense. He picked on me, he thought he was funny when he was making me small. And I was just like, you know what? So many red flags here. You've just this definition works. It's not just for boys, it's for girls, it's for parents. If we could drip feed just that definition of being a healthy man into the brains of every single person in our community, what a difference that would make. Helping the people around you not just feel but also be safer and stronger. Healthy masculinity right there. And so then the book is just about how to build that out from a character point of view, how to help the kids navigate um challenges around gaming and screens and pornography and uh feeling like they're not enough. Because there's a lot of boys now that just feel like they're not enough. There's so many non-thri non-thriving is the term that I use, non-thriving young men. And we need to help them to thrive because it's code-red across so many domains. Young boys, young men are struggling in ways that uh are devastating and are really only just coming to light in the research. So that's the that's the the guts of the book. There's heaps more in there, but that's that's really what it's about. When it comes to raising boys, they there are enough negative models out there. What they need to see is the goodness in men around them. They need to be around men who help them to feel safe and strong so they know how to help others feel safe and strong. Uh I was in the surf the other day, and uh, I saw a young guy that I know is I think he's about 17 years old. He he got he's in my church congregation, and he just caught this absolute screamer of a wave. And he just he carved it up. I mean, he was just shredding, it looks so good. And the the the way the wind and there was Just this gentle offshore breeze, and the sun was shining through the back because it was sunrise, the sun was shining through the back of the wave, and it was this perfect green with him carving and the spray going in. It just looked uh it looked sublime, it was magic. And there's that part of every male, we just love to goof off with one another, we love to tear strips off each other, we love to put each other down in joking ways, like bash the boys kind of because it's fun and it's funny, right? And and I had a couple of lines come to me where I was gonna be a little bit snarky and say, Oh, you could have pushed that turn a bit harder or just give him a bit of a hard time for his surfing. And then I thought, safer and stronger. And I looked at him, I said, Josiah, that looked so good. I wish I'd had a camera. You really deserve to be able to see that moment because that was it was just one of the best things I've seen in the water ever. I said, It looks so good. And he went from sort of paddling past me to the grin on his face, like it just enlarged him. It was life-giving. And that's what that's what real men do, right? They give life. Oh my goodness, if we could just do more of that. It's just it captures, it captures the essence of what I want boys to be doing, and that is being outside and being in nature and taking control of their lives and seeking sensations and but doing it in healthy ways, doing it in ways that are um that are that are safe and healthy and wise rather than yeah um the the the less savory ways.

Dave Quak 45:28

You know, I appreciate what you're doing in the schools at the moment. So are you still doing that? Because that's where we first connected a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Yeah, I um I speak in schools, uh, that's probably about 60 to 70 percent of my work, speaking to students, speaking to staff, speaking to parents, uh, and and like I said before, it's such a great privilege. Do you know what though, just just on what you've said there, um there's probably a couple of things that are worth highlighting in terms of the way that I take that material and uh try to be helpful. My whole goal when I do this, uh, I'm not financially independent. Uh I'm still paying off a mortgage and raising a family, all that sort of stuff. Uh so we we we certainly have to generate income. That's that's a reality of life. But but my whole goal when I write a book is to sit beside a parent and say, How can I help? Like, what what is the and and it's my prayer when I'm writing? How can I, how can I serve, how can I help? How can I lift? How can I guide? What can I offer here? Um, and I look for heaven's inspiration in in what I'm writing all the time, even if I'm not writing from a faith perspective, because that's not what people are looking for usually. Um that that's my whole thing. And and uh just another quick thing on that. So the word compassion, I I try to I try to be as compassionate as I can with parents, uh again, because I'm trying to follow Jesus and I I believe that he's just the the the pinnacle of compassion. But but the word compassion is really interesting to me. So if you look up the etymology of compassion, it comes from two Latin words. I don't speak Latin, so I'll just keep it in English, common passion. Yeah. And so so com is the it's the prefix, it's the root of a whole lot of words like community and common and communicate and combat and commune, and and all of those words they connote togetherness, right?

Compassion Unconditional Love And Final Prayer

SPEAKER_00 47:13

They're all about being together, belonging. Um and then the word passion, I I don't want to put you on the spot, but you're involved in um running a church, so I'm gonna I'm gonna test you anyway. Do you know in Latin what the word passion actually means?

Dave Quak 47:30

The literal I actually don't know because not only do I not know Latin, I failed to get a college.

unknown 47:37

You're very good. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

So I didn't know it either until I went and did the research on it. I love words, and so I really I'm always interested in where words come from. And the word passion literally means to suffer. So that's why we talk about the passion of the Christ, right? Because that's his suffering. The passion isn't, oh, I'm really pumped about this, so therefore I'm gonna do this hard thing. Passion literally means to suffer. So to have compassion literally means to suffer together, to suffer with. So when I'm writing a book like this, I'm recognizing that there are a lot of parents who are just going, I feel like I'm challenged right now. I feel like there's a bit of suffering involved in raising this tween or teen boy. I don't know what to do. I'm praying about it. I'm pretty stuck, uh, I my tears are wetting my pillow some nights as I wrestle with how to get this relationship healthy and and and positive. And compassion means I'm gonna sit there with you, I'm gonna suffer with you, I'm gonna make sure that you know that I understand what you're going through. Because if I can extend that compassion to you, then we can solve problems together. You can trust me enough to let me in and we can figure this out. That's what our kids need us to do with them. Like when they're being disobedient, challenging, naughty, and all those other things, they need us to sit with them and have compassion. And we have a perfect God who shows us how to do that because when we go to Him and say, I'm struggling, He sends us His gifts, He sends us His spirit, his presence to suffer with us, to buy us up, to get us through those, those down days, those dark times. Yeah. You know the um I I I know that we need to wrap this up and uh but but I just I just remembered one of my favorite stories. You know the old hymn Lead Kindly Light? It's by a guy called John Henry.

Dave Quak 49:27

I actually don't know that one.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Oh wow, okay. So this is a this is an old, I think it's like an old Church of England hymn or something like that. John Henry Newman. It's the 1700s, and Newman is a um, if I remember correctly, he's a Catholic priest, and he's doing missionary work through uh Italy, and he's starting to question his his Catholic faith, he's starting to question a whole lot of things about his life, his mission, his purpose, and he decides that he's gonna pull up stumps and get on a ship and go back across the Mediterranean Mediterranean, go back to England. He's gonna leave the church, and I think at that point he goes and joins the Church of England instead and starts being a a priest for the Church of England if I've got my history right. Okay, but as he's making his way back to the Mediterranean, he gets sick, really sick, so sick that he almost can't get on board the boat. But they let him on the boat, and as they're sailing across the Mediterranean Sea, the winds stop and they're be calmed. Which is, I mean, they they don't have outboard motors. They're like if the if you're be calmed, you're stuck on the ocean, you run out of supplies, you run out of water, everything turns rancid. This this is a recipe for for death, and he's already sick. And it's while he's on this ship in the middle of the Mediterranean that he writes this hymn, Lead Kindly Light. And and the words are as follows He says, Lead kindly light mid the encircling doom. Lead thou me on. The night is dark and I'm far from home. Lead thou me on. Keep thou my feet. I do not ask to see the distant scene one step enough for me. And I I I get a bit emotional when I share that because that that's kind of that that to me, that's parenting, that's faith, that's life. We actually we can't see the distant scene, we don't know where the shore is. We don't we we just know that we're heading home. We're trying to guide our kids home. We're trying to we're trying to do all of this right, and it's it's actually really, really hard. And sometimes it feels like we're being encircled by doom. And and he just says, If if God, if if you could just look after my feet, just show me the next step. I don't need to see the distant scene one step enough for me. To me, that's uh just there's so much, so much that's profound in that for our our life journey and for our parenting journey. And I I I I I just felt to share that as we were talking about this. Justin, that's powerful, man.

Dave Quak 51:55

That was really powerful. But brother, if you have anything last you want to share, please now's your chance. And then after that, do you mind praying for us as we finish for the day? I always ask our guests to pray for the podcast and for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

And is that all good? Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, okay. So so here's the last thing that I'd share. Um, people people often talk about um the importance of unconditional love. And I I've I chafe when I hear that because love has to be unconditional. If love is conditional, it ceases to be love. And and and uh therefore, when our children are struggling, the most important thing that they can hear, the three most important words that we could ever say to our children, a lot of people think that it's I love you, right? Everyone thinks I'm gonna say I love you, but it's actually not. It's the three words that come next. They need to hear no matter what. When you when your kids are struggling, especially when they deserve it the least, that's the time where you've got to sit with them and just say, you know what, this is really hard, but you need to know something. I love you no matter what. I had one of my kids just a couple of months ago, she came to me and she said, Dad, I've made a terrible mistake. And she walked Kylie and I through that terrible mistake, and it was it was really serious. It was a it was a great, big, challenging uh mistake that that could have lifelong consequences. Um and and and I said, Well, you know what, that that mistake that you've made, it's it's and I held my arms out like I'd caught a really big fish. I'm like, it's it's it's this big. This is a really big mistake. But here's what you need to know. And then I held my hands out as wide as they go. I said, My love for you is this big, and so is God's. In fact, it's even bigger. So that mistake, it gets covered because we love you no matter what. We we can cover that mistake, that challenge, that difficulty with our love because we love you no matter what. It is absolutely, fundamentally, completely and in every way unconditional. And the fact that you've come to us and talked to us about it, and now we can solve the problem, we can work on this, we can move forward, and we can make sure that this doesn't affect you for the rest of your life, that we can put you in a great spot. So, so my closing remarks, I guess, would be make sure those kids hear that word, those words. Not just I love you, but the next three, no matter what, particularly at the times where you least want to save them. Because that's when that's when we all need it, right? When we're struggling to have someone in our corner put their arm around us and say, I know this is hard. And yes, this is a colossal misstep. But I gotcha. I love you, no matter what. Powerful. Well, what about we pray, hey? Yeah, all right, dear Father in heaven, we have been so blessed. More than anything, we're grateful for the enormity of the gift of Jesus, and for his eternal sacrifice for us, for his taking our sins on him, for his resurrection and the promise of eternal life. Please help us to always remember him. Please help us to have him in our hearts, to have his teachings on our minds, and to be able to share those in our homes, in ways that connect with our children and help them to understand his mission and his love and all that he's done for them and for us. And Heavenly Father, we we pray that our families will be strengthened with love and with charity, with grace and with goodness, with compassion. Help us to be wise, to be gentle, and to guide our children rather than fixing them, to to offer them love, especially at those times that are hardest. Bless Dave in the work that he does and with his church and congregation. And these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.