Strong Fathers, Strong Kids with Meg Meeker
This might be our best episode ever here on The Dad Edge! Dr. Meg Meeker is a pediatrician, mother, and bestselling author. As the country’s leading authority on parenting, teens, and children’s health, she has been featured on all major media. Meg Meeker is also the host of the Parenting Great Kids Podcast and offers a wide range of online courses for parents.
Dr. Meg says fathers have been undervalued and belittled in today’s society, yet statistics show how crucial dads are to the development of both boys and girls and their potential to become a happy, healthy, successful adults.
It’s time to own our roles in the lives of our sons and daughters.
Parenting great kids is hard but simple. Meg Meeker tells how we can take an active and consistent role in our kids’ lives in just minutes a day. Whether raising sons or daughters, Dr. Meg explains how we can show up best as dads by embracing and following our male instincts.
“You are wired with everything you need to be a good dad.”—Meg Meeker, M.D.
Meg Meeker
Meg Meeker, M.D., has spent more than thirty years practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine and counseling teens and parents. Dr. Meeker is a fellow of the National Advisory Board of the Medical Institute, is an associate professor of medicine at Michigan State School of Human Medicine. A popular speaker and bestselling author of several books, including the national bestseller, STRONG FATHERS, STRONG DAUGHTERS; THE 10 HABITS OF HAPPY MOTHERS; and BOYS SHOULD BE BOYS.
A popular speaker on pediatric health issues and child-parent relationships, she is a frequent guest on nationally syndicated radio and television programs. She works with the NFL Fatherhood Initiative and spoke at the UN in 2016 on family issues. Dr. Meeker lives in northern Michigan, where she shares a medical practice with her husband, Walter. They have four children.
Parenting Great Kids
Parents are trying to navigate children through a world they themselves don’t often understand. America’s Mom, Dr. Meg Meeker, the country’s trusted authority on parenting, teens, & children’s health, offers practical insights to help parents simplify. The pediatrician, mother, & best selling author engages with experts & parents to take on relevant issues, answer real questions, & provide simple hope & encouragement to every parent.
What You’ll Learn
- Fatherlessness is the biggest problem in our country
- Your presence as a man and father has enormous impact in your household.
- Why Dr. Meg encourages dads to “get the big stuff right.”
- Why it’s important to bring your kids into your world, like bringing them to work
- In our culture, dads are belittled and often portrayed as morons. Moms are typically shown as having to take the lead, and not really needing dads for any meaningful role in the family except as the provider.
- What is fear-based parenting?
- Think about how your kids see you to inform the way you show up for them.
- How to be a good dad after a hard day
- Expecting yourself to be 100% engaged as soon as you get home is unrealistic.
- It’s okay to take a half an hour to transition from work to family time.
- How to keep a connection with your kids in simple, 5-minute gestures
- Kids don’t need a lot of time and energy. They need quality.
- You’ll never meet a more forgiving person in your life then your kids because your kids need you. If you make a blunder trying to connect with them, it won’t bother them as much as it bothers you.
- Teaching kids to be affectionate, attentive, and good listeners
- Why and how you should express yourself to your kids, especially when things aren’t going well. Tell them if you had a bad day. It teaches them that they can have a bad day and still have a good evening.
- Why you set yourself up for failure if you try to engage with your kids as soon as they get home from school
- Why the best time to talk to your kids is at bedtime
- Kids often don’t know how they feel. You have to help them explore their feelings.
- Boys connect better by doing activities together.
- Girls connect better with talking.
- Dads need to pull kids into what they like to do, but dads also need to get into their kids’ worlds. Get on their level and do what they like to do.
- Parents shape who their kids become. Every time you surrender your role as the male figure to a coach or teacher, your kids are being shaped by them instead of you.
- Limit extra-curricular activities. Your kids want more of you and less stuff to do.
- How sports and extra-curricular activities can backfire your parenting strategy—when parents come to every event, the child feels that the only reason they get attention is because they are performing.
- You have to have family time—like family dinners—at least twice a day, preferably four times a day.
- When you have tension with someone in the family, you need more time with them, not less.
- What to do when your daughter is becoming a teenager and wants to distance herself from you.
- How much to control in your daughter’s dress and dating life
- Your tone, manner, and voice are the standard of what male trust and respect will look like for your daughter all her life.
- Every girl wants more healing from the relationship with her dad or more time with her dad.
- How to give sons freedom to become their own men (and not try to make them into little copies of you)
- Boys will develop strong character by their dads being a good example.
- Make your kids know that you are there to link arms with them wherever they land.
Trust your instincts. You have male instincts, not female instincts. Good. Use them.—Dr. Meg Meeker
Meg Meeker’s Links
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