The "Calm The F*ck Down" Challenge 🧘🏼‍♂️

Dadpack Digest, V3.2

Dear Dads,

Whether you were woken up by a screaming baby or curious kiddo trying to scope out a lunar eclipse, it’s safe to say you are tired of a lot more than discussing midterm elections. Rest assured, Dadpack has you covered with everything you missed on the internet.

For this issue, we're doing a deep dive into about why resilience is such an important quality to have, and yet such a frustrating topic to discuss, as well as sharing some tips for new dads from a seasoned father of six, and offering a few suggestions about what exactly to buy yourself — if and when you have the cash to spend, but no time to think.

Finally, we’ll close with a poll about your Thanksgiving plans, along with some unconventional strategies for calming down about said plans. No matter how busy the next few weeks get, remember: the Detroit Lions won last Sunday, so anything is possible.

You can certainly run interference on whatever comes your way.

This Week From Dadpack

• The paradox of resilience: The ability to bounce back from adversity, has been linked with better mental health and success later in life, but how do you raise a kid to have it while being a good parent?

• How to self-care: It’s hard to stay in tune with your wants and needs when you’re a busy dad, but Ask Men Over 30 has a few ideas for what to buy yourself when you can afford to splurge.

• Advice for new fathers from a six-time dad champ: Read to your kids, ditch your phone, and always try to make your spouse’s life easier, are just a few gems offered up by a guy who’s been there.

• Moving the goal post: Meet the father-daughter duo changing the South Dakota football scene.

• A meditation for dads who hate meditating: Maybe more swearing will relax you.

How To Raise A Resilient Kid

You might already know that harsh discipline doesn’t help kids grow into better people, it just predisposes them to be depressed later in life. On the other hand, a growing amount of research reveals that children who develop resilience at a young age, go on to have fewer mental health problems overall, regardless of the challenges or traumas they’ve endured.

So why is it when someone tells you that your kid needs to be “more resilient,” you want to punch them in the face? Of course, you don’t. But what is it that makes resilience, an objectively good thing, feel so infuriating?

Clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher shared some theories as to why in a recent Twitter thread. From preschool to college age, from sensory issues to problems with relationships, whenever kids have problems, their concerned parents are brushed off and told that their child needs to be more resilient.

But as Fisher explains, resilience is not a catchall term to let bigger systems off the hook. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Resilience is something that can only be cultivated in a supportive system, and not one where children and families are told to suck it up when they need help. That makes resilience pretty much impossible, and probably why it feels like it’s such a bad word.

But even if some teachers, counselors and larger institutions won’t stop using resilience as a cop-out, there are concrete things dads can do to foster it in their kids (without screwing them up in the process).

Child psychologist Mona Delahooke recommends a strategy called “responsive parenting," a more specific and neuroscience-based alternative to “gentle parenting,” a comparatively vague and permissive approach.

The key to responsive parenting is assuming that kids generally wants to make their parents happy. When a toddler throws a tantrum over a snack, it’s not because they’re being difficult or ungrateful, Delahooke said in an interview with CNBC. They’re having a developmentally appropriate response to disappointment of not getting the snack they want, or what Delahooke called a “body-up reaction.”

The goal is not to guess and scramble for whatever snack they want, but to react to their feelings with empath rather than punishment. “Responsive parenting is about meeting the child where they are and soothing them when their nervous system is in distress,” she says.

By acknowledging that it’s a bummer to not get what you want all the time, you're teaching your child how to regulate their emotions while their neurological development catches up.

So how do you teach kids to self-regulate? First by being consistent in how you react with empathy, rather than bending to their every whim.

“When disappointment is compassionately witnessed and you are emotionally soothing, the child’s brain and body stress response is reduced,” Delahook added. “An adult’s caring presence changes the way a child’s body and brain responds to stress. It reduces the stress hormones.”

Being empathetic before giving kids space to figure out how to cope on their own teaches them resilience, whereas punishment teaches them how to be stressed out all the time. Delahook, who wrote the book “Brain-Body Parenting: How to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids,” suspects that this kind of responsive parenting could prevent a ton of future mental health issues – that is, if parents can let go of more traditional ideas about discipline and learn to roll with the toddler punches.

“You need the ability to flex through change and the unexpected, which could be anything from finding out you have to leave the park to discovering that you didn’t get your favorite teacher in school to getting the wrong color cup,” Delahook said. “Every moment of the day is an opportunity to be flexible.”

In other words, maybe parents need to be more resilient first.

For more discourse on raising a resilient kid:

Everything You Need To Know As A New Dad

Tobi Emonts-Holley loves being a dad so much, the UK-based non-profit CEO did it six times. That said, parenting has been far from perfect and he has made plenty of mistakes as a father and husband. So circle up, fellow new dads, because Emonts-Holley graciously shared everything he wished he knew the first time around.

Sure, some of the tips are more mushy and sentimental than others, but the general sentiment is that you have to put in the work to do all of these things every day. But now, thanks to this guy, you don’t have to start your to-do list from scratch. He's got 21 tips to get you started.

The Best Thing To Buy Yourself For Less Than $100

Most dads are notoriously bad about buying things for themselves, partially because you’re financially responsible for raising another person. But even if you have money to spend, after a long day at work and taking care of your kid, it’s hard to even know what to treat yourself to. Allow the subreddit Ask Men Over 30 to be of service.

In a recent post that asked for the best thing guys have bought for under $100, an electric toothbrush surprisingly ranked as the top answer, followed by a water flosser, confirming that preventative dental care may be worth the investment at home.

Other top pick is blackout curtains, but obviously you can't relate to guys that get to sleep in.

The Only Ref You Can't Yell At

If there is any natural dad enemy other than high school boyfriends, it’s referees making bogus calls that could cost your team the game. Whether it’s the pros on the TV or your kid in little league, some hot head dads will always want to yell at the ref. But in South Dakota, there’s one ref-duo on the middle school and junior high circuit that you don’t want to mess with, because one of them is the other’s daughter.

Local CBS news affiliate KELOLAND reported that Doyle Johnson, who’s been refereeing for over 25 years, brought his daughter Megan in on the game when she was just a freshman in high school. Now, in her third year of reffing alongside her old man, she hopes to start throwing flags for the NFL one day.

So the next time you want to yell at a referee, remember that’s someone’s kid… and if you really have a problem, you can take it up with their dad.

Parting Paternalism: How To Calm The F— Down

Quieting your mind is a ridiculous premise when you’re a busy parent with a million things to think about. But if you’re going to occasionally lose your temper and drop an F-bomb in from of your myna bird of a repeating toddler, you may as well do it with Yogi Bryan who will give you a mindful excuse for such a slip up.

We’re talking about the “Calm The Fuck Down Challenge” a simple 5-day series of two-minute meditation exercises that are so easy, even an exhausted dad can do it. The takeaway from day one? Long exhales go a long fucking way.