Ask Me Anything - Live Q&A with Jason Kreidman | Dad University

0:04 now we're live gotta love technology um so it takes a bit for youtube to send out notifications um so if you are joining us on a recording meaning this has already happened and you're watching this um then it might be a little bit boring for you in the beginning if you are joining us on the live and you're actually coming on

0:35 the live stream then hey you're here and that's great um so youtube usually sends out a notification it takes a bit and then people start coming in so until then i will cater to the people that are watching this on a recording and coming in and talking um want to a couple of announcements um membership for the dad university membership i just launched a new course called finding work life

1:08 harmony talks about everything from you know regret to creating schedules gives you specific strategies and tools to eliminate a lot of the wasted time that we have and just really make sure that you are in line with what it is that your goals are and what you want with the actual actions that you're taking you know work life harmony is different for everyone so um we don't tell you that you know you're supposed to spend this much time

1:37 in this area and that much time in a different area we just give you the tools so that you can decide yourself and you know what harmony is for you so that's what the work life harmony course like all the other courses it is included in the membership and the cost of membership is pay what feels good so there is not a specific price there is an average price of what people pay but you can pay less you can pay more

2:08 you can pay what feels good for you and for some people that's they feel good contributing to dad university and so that we can create more content and obviously the more people and the more uh people pay the better and more time we can allocate towards things so um yeah so that's good if you are interested in the membership go to the website daduniversity.com click on become a member and you can enjoy that um if you are joining the live stream uh be

2:40 sure to say hello where you're from i love kind of hearing where people are from and then any questions you have i'm happy to answer or at least attempt to answer i won't pretend to answer meaning if i don't know the answer i'm not going to say it um you know let me know what you're thinking uh always enjoy you know hearing some feedback or questions that you might have and then what else um so we have the the membership and the

3:08 new courses uh prior to that it was actually a month ago we we launched another new course too i think there's a total of seven now seven courses inside um and so that is for members we also have a discussion forum and as well i have hundreds of videos um edited videos slimmed down to specific stuff there's not there's no fluff in these videos uh meaning i'm not telling you uh or asking you to buy anything or doing it

3:38 these are just the core cont it's just the core content of what we're offering and um so there's a couple hundred videos of that so and it's all broken down by the age of your child the different behaviors or the different subjects so you can check that out too so let me know if you have any questions happy to answer um if you are here just to observe and hear what other people have to ask that's cool too

4:08 um i guess maybe what i can do if there are no questions coming up that quickly um i can talk about work life balance a little bit and the uh because we talk about work-life balance in this new course and it's an issue for for men a lot it's a lot of questions that i get especially for for men that have a baby on the way they're really worried about their free time they're really worried that they're

4:37 not going to be able to do the things that they used to do and sometimes that's true um you know things do evolve and things do change but um you know this course that's that's the purpose of it is to sort of understand what is important to you and you know we have all different facets of our lives as a father husband son friend brother you know just whatever the roles are that you have you know in the community

5:08 as a business person or an employee you know your spirituality or religion i mean there's all kinds of things that we can identify with and things that we like to spend our time on and it can be overwhelming to try to do all of these things at once and do them all really well and that that's part of what this course talks about is you know giving yourself um some some compassion and some self-care to understand that you know you can't be

5:38 perfect all the time and i've talked about that in a couple of videos but this goes into a lot more detail about really outlining what's important to you um you know you don't want to live with regret i talk a lot about regret in this course and um yeah you just you don't want to go through your life living with that regret um you know the line is you know nobody on their deathbed ever says i should have

6:03 spent more time at the office so you know i should have spent time with the people i love i should have told people that i love them and that's a lot of what this course is about it also doesn't judge or i don't judge how you spend your times you know everybody's work-life harmony is unique and so it doesn't mean that you know you should be spending more time with your family versus your working if you love

6:27 your work and enjoy your work then that's great um you know it's really about the quality of the time not necessarily the quantity of the time and we go into that too quality versus qual quantity versus quality um that's another one of the issues so if you're just joining us i'm what i was talking about is just a finding work life balance course that's now added for members if you're a member of dad university uh great if you are not yet

6:52 you can go to daduniversity.com it's pay what feels good meaning you pay the amount that you want to pay that you want to pay and um it supports us and it supports yourself it's an investment for yourself but then also helps us make more content and continue helping people so if you have a question go ahead and write it in the chat say hello uh let me know where you're from i'd love to hear from you

7:19 and that's all i don't want to keep promoting but uh i certainly can talk about one of the topics if we want um we've about a couple different topics uh let's see we can talk about how about feeling overwhelmed if anyone if anyone who's watching this feels overwhelmed put it in the chat and just say yes um so that i know that there's people out there that actually feel the same

7:49 otherwise i might be the only person that feels overwhelmed and i certainly don't want to talk to a room full of people that are not overwhelmed so so if you are overwhelmed thank you eric um yeah it's it's not something so i am there is somebody else out there who feels overwhelmed i'm excited not not i'm not excited that you're overwhelmed i'm excited that we share uh the common humanity that we all share that you know we all uh have similar

8:18 problems um so one of the things with with feeling overwhelmed that i have learned is prioritizing my overwhelm and so what is what does that mean it means there are things that cause us overwhelm at different levels yeah and and you know combined together they are overwhelming and so i'll give you an example let's say you're changing jobs you know and and it could be that could be an exciting thing but it could also be overwhelming or you know you're taking

8:49 care of a sick parent that could be overwhelming you have some issues with your kids or your wife or whatever you have all these issues that eventually that all together cause you overwhelm but it's important to prioritize that overwhelm and in other words you know if you have a hundred percent overwhelm what percentage do each one of these items cause you you know let's say taking care of a sick parent is 50 of your overwhelm you know that's a good thing to know

9:17 it's a good thing to to analyze and you know whereas maybe you know the stress of like your child you know overwhelming you is maybe like a you know three to five percent it's really not as big of a deal but in combination with all the other things it can be quite overwhelming so you know one of the things to do is when you prior to prioritize your overwhelm you can then identify maybe which ones can you do something

9:44 about you know and so let's say it is your parent you're taking care i mean taking care of a sick parent you know how could you reduce that overwhelm well maybe you can get some additional help maybe you can um you know is there another alternative of where they might be able to stay um you know you start going through those processes of sort of where should you put your effort and where can you um you know change

10:12 something and an understanding too that you know things that cause you overwhelm you can't always change them but if you can then you go through that process of doing that so in the course we we help you define those things as well as you know determine what you can and can't control um when you can control something and you don't do anything about it that's really on you you know that i

10:42 mean there's nobody else to blame in that scenario it's really on you to to change something so we go into that and i think that that's an important concept um the other is talking about it you know just just the idea i mean i appreciate eric and colladen 2745 of you know saying yes i'm overwhelmed that is a big step just admitting that you're overwhelmed i mean i can tell you right now this minute i'm overwhelmed why

11:10 because i have so many different things going on and i can prioritize them i have whether it's the work my kids just started school you know physically i've got my arm hurts you know whatever i mean there's a lot of different things i have sick parents so there's there's various things that we can do and so part of it is like first just admitting that we feel overwhelmed and then you know two prioritizing it and tackling them and saying you know

11:36 hey can i change this or not you know is and is also is the feeling does the feeling of overwhelm help me in any way like me stressing out about this is that gonna you know is that gonna help me um rnr uh ray here from australia i spoke to you on messenger just wanted to give you an update my wife gave birth last night to a beautiful beautiful healthy baby girl about to go back up into the room well

12:05 congratulations ray uh that's awesome to hear uh hope that everything else goes well um so as an example ray just had his child that's awesome he could be excited it could also be overwhelming it's like okay now what do we do so i think um um you know i think it's important to you know recognize what are the things that are causing you do you have any ability to you know change them if you don't have any ability to change the

12:39 situation well then you have to change either your attitude about it or you know change something if if you have an opportunity to change then you need to change it so um another thing too and this goes i'm doing actually some training on self-compassion i'm taking a course um and this is a big thing about this is knowing that you're not alone and there's a lot of power in knowing that you're not alone and and i think that's why a lot

13:10 of guys enjoy this channel alexander wife is 32 weeks love the content subscribe for a week or two now thanks for keep it up great to have you here alexander appreciate that um and that's that's an example alexander came here seeing you know that there's other people you know going through similar things the things that i'm talking about you identify with you're like oh man that's exactly how i feel that in itself that feeling that you're not alone

13:38 helps reduce the overwhelm it helps reduce the anxiety and the stress and i was i was talking about the self-compassion which i just did a three-part video series on that's a big thing about compassion and self-compassion is is feeling like you're not alone and you're feeling like you're not the only person going through whatever you're going through um or you know or just the person that's going through something i think we all you know go through our different things

14:07 at different levels but this idea that everybody has stuff that they're going through is um i say use the word comforting but it's you know that's the case you know when you see people on social media or you see you know celebrities or you see your friends and they're posting they're only showing you the good stuff you know they're if that's the only method that you uh communicate with them you know you don't see a lot of the

14:38 um the daily struggles that you know that people go through and unfortunately that doesn't help us feel better you know because you don't think that anybody else is going through that or you think that you know xyz or your friend here or there is not having any problems so that kind of helps perpetuate our difficulties so um sorry um

15:09 christopher asks best approach when it comes to feeding time to not be overwhelmed christopher maybe you can clarify what specifically around feeding time is feeling overwhelming sometimes i know with if you're breastfeeding it can be that the child doesn't latch on or the child's not feeding um so maybe you can be more specific of what's overwhelmed but what's overwhelming if your child's not wanting to eat or not wanting to feed um

15:44 but again i i would hope christopher would feel better knowing that that's a common thing that um you know during certain times you may feel overwhelmed and other people feel that that way too um [Music] yeah you'll have to clarify what what part of it i guess um i'm not seeing okay [Music]

16:14 so the other parts of um you know feeling overwhelmed is self-care um and what is self-care self-care means you know recognizing that you're overwhelmed and then doing something that you need to feel better or to break the cycle and so as an example

16:48 for many that could be you know going to the gym it could be taking a break just taking a break from wherever you are um anything like that can be really helpful and i don't think men you know we may not think of it as self-care as much like you know oh i'm going golf in or i'm doing this or i'm gonna hang out with the boys whatever that that often is self-care

17:18 um of course people turn to uh some things that aren't as healthy for themselves whether that be you know addictions and alcohol and drugs which are not going to be self-care that might be considered self-soothing but it's not self-care you know self-care is something that is healthy and is going to help you and i think if you have a partner you're going to want to make sure that you're giving each other the breaks if you have

17:46 especially a young child you're giving each other the breaks i know eric eric said get some water i agree maybe i can get somebody here to get me some i'm uh i'm coughing um yeah and exercise um you know that's something that helps me in just exercising and um you know getting good sleep all of those things are really really important so another question here justin asks any

18:16 tips for two children when you have a toddler and a newborn um all right i'll tackle kind of one of these at a time thank you oh um all right thank you for uh noticing eric that my throat um so any tips for when you have a toddler and a newborn

18:48 um well if you do have your spouse because you talked about alone time yeah i think you have to schedule things that's probably a very important thing um you know and the two-year-old or the toddler sorry not to you know get the toddler involved in enjoying the idea and that depends if they have you know their what situation you're in but you know enjoying the idea of the new child like they can be the helper they can be um you got to be careful not

19:18 relying on them too much for like watching the child or like you know doing things but they can really be a helper and that's usually a good situation for you know but toddler and newborn if they're getting along that's great um but like as in time management you definitely have to have schedules in our course we go over a nighttime routine a a morning routine you've got to establish those routines that will help you and them quite a bit

19:49 as far as alone time you know you have to figure that out with your spouse about um you know what works for her especially because you know the end of the day you're both going to be very tired um is it something where you can schedule you know a a night alone if you have people near you that can watch the kids or you can get away for a night um or you know when the children uh before

20:20 the children wake up i mean there's all kinds of things to be creative but you're right you only have 24 24 hours in a day so you know communicate with your wife and figure out what that good time uh would be but you got to schedule things and one of the things too that we're all so guilty of is wasting time you don't really realize that and in this course that i just created you know we have one of the things is

20:44 documenting your time like what are you spending your time on and so you say there's only 24 hours in a day but you know there's other people that have the same thing and they may do a lot more in that 24 hours so how are you spending the time are you watching tv are you on social media are there things where you're wasting quote wasting time that you could be do something else or that you could do something else

21:06 uh alexander said i started massaging her feet because they were swollen and hurt and i told her i followed your channel and saw a video about it she was so positively surprised and happy about it that is good uh one more positive man uh you know woman in the world because of her man is a good thing um uh vibes the producer any advice on sentence structure my baby's almost three and says more than a few words but he could use

21:36 improvement on a sentence structure um i'm not an education expert when it comes to the children but i i wouldn't necessarily worry too much about this or push too hard you know when they first get into school um you know preschool so maybe they'll be four ish four or five that's when you start kind of at three that's that's pretty early of sentence structure i i don't know that i would be concerned about that um put

22:04 you know a child at three years old putting a few words together seems pretty good um at least that's you know that's my opinion i that that wouldn't be something that i would um try to push harder um there's probably some you know some other things dexterity agility physicality you know some other things um you know but sounds like your child's on the right track um christopher says you had an episode on

22:35 toddler discipline and how we can be more disciplined when it comes to knowing it's time to eat well if you're talking about your toddler knowing what time to eat typically your toddler will tell you or show you so if you have a schedule and let's say your schedule is you know breakfast is at eight lunch is at noon and dinner's at five for you know whatever six um you know you've got to have somewhat of a schedule uh to keep

23:07 it consistent and then what happens is you know child throws a tantrum and is going crazy that at you know 10 30 in the morning and part of it is because they might be really hungry and so it's okay to you know i don't think you can expect especially if you if you aren't really rigid you can't then expect that your child is going to adhere to the same schedule of eating that you do you know often times i know

23:39 my children were both like this they didn't like to sit down and have a large meal yeah we wanted to do that we wanted to have a nice dinner or a nice lunch but they didn't want that's not how they they operated they wanted little snacks we could starve them for a couple of hours and then they'd be really hungry but we also found that they'd be hangry they would be really upset and agitated and stuff and it's like i didn't really

24:02 want to deal with that either so i think you know in the toddler stage i don't think that meal time has to be so strict um i think you can try to do it but you know it could be something too where the toddler just has a small snack because they ate you know multiple times throughout the day and i think that's fine too i think you know different children are different um i don't think you can all put them in

24:28 all one box so as far as you being overwhelmed that part of it i think is just by letting letting go a little bit letting it go of the rigidity that you have to have your toddler eat at this time you have to eat it at this time and if that's what you're talking about hopefully you know that helps um wow lots of stuff coming in now so bap bap jab how did you handle being a

24:59 first-time dad balancing work wife and your own hobbies and personal time um my wife and i had very good communication that i will say and i think during my son's initial when he was first born i was working a lot i was running a company and you know she my wife took on a lot of the the burden of the role and and we had discussions about it there was a couple of times where she felt like i needed to back off

25:29 and i did so and so i i think it was just having that communication um openly and so you know i don't i i in my course i call it you know work life harmony because all these things working together um i didn't have a ton of hobbies per se but a personal time but i exercise my wife exercise so we would switch off going to the gym and you know i would watch my son and then she would watch

25:55 him and we'd switch off and then we eventually you know got stuff into the house so that we could work out of the house and one person would watch the child while the other would you know exercise it you know it's just communication um i mean at least if you have a partner that's where the communication comes in um yeah eric said so me and the wife both work from home we had staggered schedules until recently as her position

26:19 changed and my schedule changed yeah yeah i mean you've gotta just every situation is different so you got to coordinate that and and but scheduling things is really helpful sometimes it just doesn't you know you don't stick to the schedule um hey abinth sorry if i'm not pronouncing it correctly hey a three month uh three month year old now awesome um

26:52 after feeding i've heard from our parents it's best to put him on the shoulder and tap him on the back but he's sometimes vomiting what can we do to prevent that well it depends why your parents are telling you to tap on the shoulder typically the reason you would do that is because you're trying to get their gas they may have gas and so you're trying to burp them um that can be a way um but i mean i know

27:22 for us my son spit up a lot you know there would be times where we wouldn't even do anything and sometimes that could be that he was being you know he was too full he was overfed um what i would suggest is if there is a lot of vomiting uh you might want to check with a pediatrician you know that's that's more of a dietary it could be a dietary need you know all babies have spit up

27:51 but if it's a vomit or something like that i would check with a pediatrician or doctor and make sure that everything's okay sometimes people are allergic you know the babies are allergic to something and so they'll vomit um so that's why i said you want to check with the doctor to make sure that everything's okay and then they could probably help you um yeah so jerry this is a very common thing jerry's ass i've been feeling

28:18 overwhelmed lately with everything i'm overworked at work and when i come home i just want to relax but i have to deal with my toddler and pregnant wife yes you do and here's the thing um that i think men don't realize is that let's say your wife is at home with the toddler and whether she's pregnant or not but she's with a toddler all day you've been working all day

28:51 and you come home and think i'm not saying this is you jerry but many men think that they should be relaxing because they worked all day you know this is kind of the traditional idea the man comes home you know hey puts a drink in his hand gets the newspaper and just gets to relax reality check is your wife was working all day if you don't think that taking care of a toddler or baby or anything is hard work

29:23 i invite you to stay home from your job and take care of that toddler or baby the whole day i found this out very specifically because i did that and i had such a great appreciation for the times where my wife stayed home and my wife then worked part time and then went back to full time and but i realized because i had thought of it that way as well and so the truth is is that when you get home

29:51 it's then 50 50. you then are both responsible for the child and so you know there can be things where you could schedule you know you could schedule and say hey on tuesday i want to be able to do this what could i do on monday so that maybe you have it sometime to relax or you have some time to do something else look at your work and why you're getting overwhelmed um you know i don't say

30:16 necessarily change jobs but are there things about your work or the attitudes about it or how you approach it that you might be able to reduce your overwhelm and you know overwhelm like stress and anxiety is happens because our reality doesn't meet our expectations so you want to figure out what is it about your expectations that is different from your reality and you may have

30:47 the expectation that you should just be able to like go to work and relax or have you know just enjoy yourself and do it and maybe you could change your attitude and to be able to do that um or you have to sort of change your barometer and know and say okay stress i'm going to be a little stressed at work because of this or that and then i know when i get home i'm going to have this and you have to just

31:10 kind of compartmentalize it and it is you know the toddler time when you have a toddler and if you have pregnant wife or you have a baby or whatever it is not an easy time it's just not um i don't think that it's easy for any parent regardless of whether you're a stay-at-home parent whether you are uh you work and then you come home it is just a time where the child needs so much attention and oftentimes our spouses might need

31:38 attention or you might need attention or whatever it's a very very difficult time you know for me zero to five was hard really hard and i will say it gets easier you know my kids are now 12 and 14. they're really i mean when i come home from work the only stress really is that you know something might not be clean you know but the kids it's it's not something where it's like i've got to make sure that my child does this this

32:07 this or this you know and that's just because over time things get a little bit easier as they get older so you know one of the things too to maybe think about that is this isn't forever um it may feel like it but that overwhelm and no you're not alone everyone feels it um [Music] and and you know i had a friend actually this was some good advice that they had um they talked with their their wife and

32:36 said listen i need about it was like 10 10 minutes 10 15 minutes to decompress when i get home you know it's kind of like um if you've ever not watched mr uh roger's neighborhood you know he comes home takes his shoes off and so literally this guy who kind of dressed up for work would come home close his bedroom door change into more relaxing clothes change his shoes put on a relaxed shirt and like meditate for a couple minutes

33:05 and just breathe relax and just have a second to unwind and so none of the family and his wife like he kind of went in the side door or whatever and they just kind of knew not to bother him for 10 or 15 minutes this is was his time and he also agreed that during that time he could decompress he could just come into the house relax and then be present and be ready and for him he said it worked amazingly he he

33:35 then could come into the house greet the kids everybody's happy he can talk blah blah whatever and he was good to go so for him that worked that might work for you that was a long answer to a short question um let me see any others right before i go wow there's a lot of stuff coming in here um let's see uh chef jeff wife's giving birth in two weeks any tips for the delivery room

34:07 yes um watch the video on the channel that's gonna be the best way to do it watch the video on what to do in the delivery room that's the best thing you can do is look for that um gary gonna be a dad in march company gives three months of paternity and able to split up paid time off any recommendations on how to strategize pto not really everyone is different with that um i personally you know i mean it's great that your

34:38 company gives you that um i think that might be something to discuss with your wife partner significant other um to see how that's the best to do it i don't necessarily know that i have advice for that um anthony hello uh let's see just wanna make sure i'm getting to anybody eric you're welcome good to have you here jerry you're welcome chef you're welcome chef jeff um

35:08 so i want to just let you guys know um yeah again i i mentioned it before um there's some opportunity um if you like you know you subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed to the channel to to the dad university channel please go do that um you know certainly you know that's something you want to do but the other is the membership um the difference with the membership and you can pay what feels good in other words

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36:31 member only chats or uh member only broadcasts and so for that um you know you can get more attention however you want to say it but it's also supporting dad university so i invite you guys to do that i appreciate every one of you um just enjoy the content subscribe love it and um anybody else has questions go ahead and post them um post them on the comments here and i try to get to as many as i can

37:02 sometimes there's a lot and sometimes that can be difficult but i try and um i do read them all or at least somebody in our office does and so we we try to we try to respond as much as possible and those responses almost all of them on youtube are me i like to personally respond to those but occasionally if you know there's just some generic question i may not get to it so with that i want to say thank you to

37:28 everybody enjoyed this i will try to do more i know bap chap you've said this live streams we have to do more of them i i will try it's uh it's hard in between as you all know um you know i'm a dad i'm a son to a sick you know to parents who need extra help um i'm a husband you know i i'm an entrepreneur um i i like to do my own things and i

37:56 have you know i exercise i do things so it can be very overwhelming and so adding another thing you know building this membership has been rewarding but overwhelming you know um if you if you see the you know the youtube videos and all of this it's it's wonderful i love doing it um but it's it's a lot and so just got to keep going keep doing it so thank you to everybody hope to see you soon

38:24 uh and we will see you next time take care oh