Most single dads never planned on becoming single. Divorce, death or separation may have left you holding the pieces and responsibility of both parenting and running a house alone. On top of that you may also feel alone with your thoughts and emotions wondering how you can or will survive your circumstances. If this is you, there is help. There’s such a thing as a single father coach who specifically works with single dads of all walks of life and you will meet him in this episode. His name is Rob Rohde.To connect with Rob Rohde or learn more about what he's doing visit: https://robrohde.com/ or Email: [email protected] of The Business of Being Dad podcast (with new episodes released every Tuesday)Book your FREE Fatherhood Strategy Call here: https://robrohde.com/book-in-a-call/Special thanks to Zencastr for sponsoring The Fatherhood Challenge. Use my special link https://zen.ai/CWHIjopqUnnp9xKhbWqscGp-61ATMClwZ1R8J5rm824WHQIJesasjKDm-vGxYtYJ to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.Transcription - Empowering Single Dads to Thrive---Most single dads never planned on becoming single.Death, divorce, separation may have left you holding the piecesand responsibility of both parenting and running a house alone.On top of that, you may also feel alonewith your thoughts and emotions,wondering how you can or will survive your circumstances.If this is you, there is help.There's such a thing as a single father coachwho specifically works with single dads of all walks of life.And he will join us here on the Fatherhood Challenge,offering hope and help in just a moment.Don't go anywhere.Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge,a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,to take great pride in their role,and a challenge society to understandhow important fathers are to the stabilityand culture of their family's environment.Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.Greetings everyone.Thank you so much for joining me.My guest is single father coach Rob Rodi.Rob, thank you so much for joining me on the Fatherhood Challenge.Hi Jonathan.Thank you.I appreciate you having me.Rob, what is your own personal story behindwhy you became a single father coach?I mean, I think like so many of us that are in this space,the story of how we got there is very personaland it is based on a lot of things that have happened to usover the course of our lives.And for me, when I became a single father,so basically when I went through my separationand then my divorce, it was difficultand there were a lot of struggles for me.I was very involved with my kids upbringing,I was very involved with the day to day,kind of household responsibilitiesand taking them to school and things like thatprior to the separation and divorce,but still when that moment came where I became a single father,it just was totally different.And I was overwhelmed and I struggled with anxietyand I struggled with being able to sleep at night.And I struggled with things like just not really knowingwhat my kids needed from me.And there were things that my wife, the girl's mom,had done just naturally in our kind of rolesthat we had established over the course of our marriagethat I didn't really get involved with.And one of those was something like, for instance,setting up play dates for the kidsand interacting with the other parentsand the other, and often cases, moms before and after school.That was all foreign to me and that was difficultand I struggled with it and I really felt like I was failing.I loved my kids, I was involved with my kidsand I was trying, but I was really not doing well.And I remember this moment with my oldest daughtersand just for a point of reference at the timethat I became a single father, I had five daughters,I still have five daughters, my oldest two were teenagersand they really did not want to hang out with meduring that time.And so we had joint parenting time.And I remember like it was yesterday, this momentwhere I drove up to their mom's houseto pick them up for their parenting time with meand my oldest two daughters refused to get in the car.They did not want anything to do with me.They were upset at me, I had made mistakes, they were,they just had a lot of anger and resentment towards mebut that affected me deeply.And you fast forward maybe a couple of weeksand another kind of this pivotal moment.Well, let me start by saying initially,I was sitting in this place of blame,this place of being a victimand really feeling like all of these thingswere being done to me and that I really had no controlover it that, you know, I love my kids,why are they not wanting to spend time with meas opposed to what my role might have been in that?And so a couple of weeks after that incident took place,I remember sitting in my bedroom all alone in the house,sitting on my bed looking at myself in the mirrorand I was, I had just listened to a podcast earlier that dayand within that podcast, the host had mentioned,he was, he was given a story regarding a leadership meetingthat he had been in and really a goalthat he felt short on and his boss had told himor it asked him, how did your leadership contributeto this result?And I'm letting that sink in for a minutebecause I use those words and looked myself in the mirrorand asked myself, Rob, how has your parenting contributedto this result, contributed to your relationshipwith your oldest daughters?And that just changed everything for me.It allowed me to go from a place of being a victimand helpless to a place of taking responsibilityand being empowered.And I'm not gonna say that everything just changedin a moment because it didn't.I was still sitting in that blame place for a while,blaming my ex-wife for maybe not painting me in the best lightwith the kids, blaming my daughters for not wanting to be with me.But that was the starting place for me taking responsibilityand eventually I was able to move into that statewhere I was able to look at myself and say, okay, Rob,what are you going to do from this point forward?What changes are you going to make?And what are you going to do specifically to workin un-mending this specific relationship,this relationship with your twin daughters?And so that was a big turning point in my life,but unfortunately, there's more,about four or five years after that,there was a moment where there was a series of eventsthat took place that eventually led to the suicideof the girl's mom.And so that just was another kind of punchthat they got to change my life,it changed the girl's life.And even though a lot of growth had taken place in mefrom a time that I had first gotten divorcedup until that point in time, it had been a few years.I had really began taking ownership of my lifeand ownership of my role as a parent.I had been mending relationships, I had been working on growth,I had been really striving to make an impacton the lives of my family.The rules changed at that moment,and I went from having a co-parenting partnerto being a solo parent and parenting daughterswho had experienced a significant loss.And during that period of time,after the dust kinda settled, so to speak,I was able to kind of reflect on all of these thingsthat had happened, and I just made a decision.I made a decision that I wanted to take these awful thingsthat had happened, and all of these experiencesthat I had encountered in my family had gone throughand I wanted to figure out a way to use thisto help other people.I wanted to figure out a way to use this for something good.And so that was kind of the beginning of me movingin the direction of starting my own business.And so really what I strived to do was to create a businessthat helped other fathers, specifically single fathers,by providing them with what I wish that I had hadat that point in my life,by providing them with accountability and supportand resources and tools and motivation,and all of those things and all of those pieces.And so I kinda looked back at all of the thingsthat I had done and that my family had donethat allowed us to move through all of these obstaclesinto a place of being healthy and happy and fulfilled.And I put that into, built that into a program.My business exists to help single fathersestablish healthy boundaries, build life-changing relationshipswith their kids and create a legacy,a legacy that extends beyond their career and their bank account.I know, I have friends who are single dadsand could have used this at specific times in their life.What are the biggest struggles of the dads that you've coachedand how did you help them get past their struggles?The biggest challenges that I have noticedthat single fathers face are some of the same onesthat I faced, of course.You know, it's this feeling of lossand that is a piece that nobody talks about.But when you go through it most of the time,you become a single father either from going through a divorceor a separation or perhaps from the death or the lossof a spouse, but either way, there is a significant,there is a significant feeling of lossand nobody is going to come out there and say,you know what, I'm feeling this sense of lossbut how that is going to present isthere's going to be this sense of feeling a sense of overwhelmand continual stress and drowning in responsibilities,feeling like it's really difficult to juggle workin your household chores and all your kids needs.You're also going to have this feeling of isolationand loneliness or at least that is very, very common.And also there are another common struggle that I have seenis really kind of questioning their abilitiesand questioning whether or not they are even capableof taking care of their kids.You know, a common phrase that I have heard a lot of single dads,a lot of dads to be honest, but especially single dads use is,I am just worried I'm going to screw up my kids.I just want you to tell me,what can I do right now so I can stop screwing up my kids?And, you know, in their own words they're basically expressingthat thought and that idea.And as far as what I am able to provide for themand what I am able to help them with is,it's basically kind of twofold.There it is the accountability and connection pieceby me providing accountability and supportand a sense of community.So they feel like these dads, these men's feel maybe a little bit less aloneand have a little bit more guidance and a little bit more supportfeeling like I now have someone that's walking alongside me.And really that's why I created this business is because I want to walkalongside these men during their most difficult momentsand I want to be that support for thembecause I really wish that I had had that myself.So that is one key ingredient.And then another way that I strive to help these individualsis really by providing them with a,what I call a customizable step-by-step process.So it is a defined process that is fully customizabledepending on the needs and the ones of that specific dadand their circumstances.And so really helping them lay out,these are some exact steps that I am able to takein order to move forward and improve my role as a father.What are the common stereotypes or misconceptions about single dads?Are they true or are they not true and why?This is a great question because stereotypes exist for a reasonand that is not to say that they're all truebut a lot of times at one point in timebased on social norms at that time they were trueor there were parts of it they were true.But one, a couple of stereotypes that I will say are trueis that many single fathers struggle with work-life balanceand many single fathers struggle with experiencingfeelings of loneliness and isolation.I think those stereotypes are truebut you could also substitute the word fatherswith the word parents and I think it would also be truebecause when you are a single parent you are strugglinga single parent who is working and tryingto provide for your family.The struggle of work-life balance is real.I mean that is your life and that is somethingthat you are going to battle and same thing with feeling likeyou have enough time to connect with peopleand losing your spouse and a lot of casesthat sense of loneliness is going to be real.So I would say those are truebut they're not things that can't be fixed.They're not things that can't be worked through.Some stereotypes or misconceptions that I feel are absolutely falseis that single fathers are not capable of beingas nurturing as single moms.I simply do not believe that to be true.And I think that that stereotype came from years and yearsof moms and or I should say fathers and mothersplaying certain roles within the lives of their families.And while it might be true that certain characteristicsand certain emotions come more naturallyfor one individual versus the other,I would not say across the board that it is alwaysmom versus the dad in terms of those characteristics.One other stereotype that I would like to put an end to for sureis that moms play a more important role in the livesof their kids and fathers.Yes, this breathes a lot of hope.Absolutely.And the other piece of that is that it can be a learned characteristicit can be a learned quality.And I think that that is a limiting beliefthat a lot of people have is thathowever you are today as a parent is how you will be forever.And that's simply not true.I mean, that is what personal growth is all about.And we have the ability to develop these qualitiesand to really focus on these areasthat we feel that we want to improveand we have the ability to make improvements in them.And as you said, the way that that nurturingmight come across for me versus for youor for a mom might be differentbut it doesn't make it less meaningful or less impactfulin the lives of their kids.The last episode I did was on paternal postpartum depressionand it was fascinating to really delve deeper into that topicat some of the causes of that, some of the symptoms as well.And one of the things that made its way into the discussionwas this misconception by dads that motherssomehow just magically have it all togetherthat they go into the pregnancyand they go into motherhood with this instinctthat is just somehow there of what to do and how to do things.And I have had several mothers come on this programand confirm and tell me that that is a lie.What mothers have done differentlythan what you may be seen is that they recognize,okay, I don't know anything.And so they take initiative, they read books, they study,they go to meetings, they ask questions of other peopleand they get into these social circlesand share an exchange knowledge.They do something about it, they're proactive.And so this breeds hope into dad relationshipsbecause dads can do the same thing.This is a learned behavior, a learned thing,not something that's instinctive.- That's a great point.I mean, that's speaking to the intentionality of itand really kind of making a decision that this is whatI know that this is important for me and my role as a parentand I will just expand on this just slightly further,if you don't mind and that's that,there are two aspects to parenting.And if you break down the parenting pieceand the role of a single father and a single momand I think that there is the analytical approachand there is the emotional approach.And the analytical approach is the approachwhere you are establishing systems and processesand structure in order to create this sense of stabilityand security for your kids.And that is extremely, extremely important.And it leads to things like having habits, establishing kindof habits or chore duties or bed times or curfewsand all of those things are important for kids to have.But that's only one piece and the other pieceis the emotional piece and that's the piece that allows youto connect with your kids on a deeper wayfor your kids to feel heard and seen and valuedas they are and to fill a sense of connection to youas the parent.And I think that I'm bringing this upbecause for single parents,they have to fulfill both of these rolesand they have to sometimes learn the aspectthat has not come as naturally to them.And it doesn't mean that it will always bethe emotional side that they have to learn.It could be the analytical side.Maybe they've been that emotional supportand now they need to learn about how to createmore structure for their family.But both sides are important and I think that speaksto how difficult it can be for a single parentto try to create that whole experiencethat allows their kids, puts their kids in an environmentthat gives them the greatest chance of thriving.- I've seen single dads who look like they're alwayson top of things and they have their act togetheris what I'm seeing just a front or kind of single dadreally haven't figured outand get to that place where his role is a well oil machine.- Well, I would say in my experience that it is not a facadethat you can actually or absolutelyas a single father or single mom get to the pointwhere your life, your family structure runslike a well oil machine.But I just want to caution in that we are,we often what we see on the outsideis not really a good indication of what's going onon the inside.And so if you really kind of like lift the curtainand kind of look behind the curtain,there is often other things therethat maybe we don't see.- Besides your coaching service,are there any resources you would recommendfor dads to help with things like time management,motivation or even mental health?- Yes, you know what?I think for the purpose of this conversation,I'm going to keep this very simple, simple and easybecause I feel like simple and easy is repeatable.It's easier to be consistent and consistencyis where the magic happens, right?It's whenever we do something on a consistent basis.So these might seem really simple to you in your audience,but I'm going to throw them out there anyway.So we all have a smartphone these daysand your smartphone can be a great resourceto you as a father, as a single father.You can, my suggestion is to take your smartphoneand take your iPhone or whatever you haveand use it today to block off time for your kids,to block off time for your familybecause there's a saying, right,that what gets scheduled gets doneand I'm not sure why it is that we are so willing to scheduleall of these other external kind of meetings and appointmentsand job responsibilities,but we don't put the same emphasis on our family life.And so I block off, I mean, I put it in my calendarand I time block time for my kids and time for my familyand sometimes I'll do this weeks in advance.So I encourage you to do that.I think that can be a great resourceand taking that same phone that you have,you can also, I would also encourage you to do somethingvery, very simple, set a daily alarm that goes offat some point where it will go off maybe during your lunch breakor maybe in the morning, as you're getting ready for work,whatever that might be, that is a reminder to youto just send a simple text to your kids.Just send something simple to let them know, hey,I'm thinking about you, I love you, hope you have a great day.That is as simple as it comesand it can make a tremendous impact.- This next question might be a little uncomfortablefor some dads in the audience,but I still think it's vitally important to discuss this.Is there a time and a best way for a single dadto handle dating with respect to the emotionsand feelings of his children?- Yeah, this is a hot topic and I will say thatin my experience, there definitely is not a one size fits allanswer to this and the research would actually support thatthat it really depends on so many factors.For instance, what was the nature that caused youto become a single father in the first place?It's gonna be very different if that situation wasthe death of a spouse versus going through a divorce.It also might be very different if it involvesif you are raising young children or infantsversus raising teenagers.And so I'm not trying to skirt this question,but I'm trying to give context to the answer.And in short though, I would say that it is pretty well,it is pretty well received that taking your timebefore entering into a dating relationship,following separation or divorce is recommended.And in particular, looking at your familyand ensuring that your family has reached a pointof relative stability and that your kids have reacheda point of having this new routineand all the new changes that have taken place in their lives,kind of dialed in and a little bit more systematizedversus everything still be a new and chaotic end up in the air.But the two main things to look at is,one, are you ready as an individual to start a new relationship?And two, are your kids ready?And that first question, only you can answer.That second one, I would recommend having,depending on the age of your kids,having age-appropriate conversationsthat are honest and open.And then also kind of really having in mindwhat it is that you would need from a partner,whether that partner is someone that you're datingor someone that you're getting serious about.And in particular, some big red flags are individualswho do not show flexibility based on your parentingschedule or individuals who strugglewith the commitment level that you are showing towards your kidsand how that is affecting them and that relationship.Those are a couple of kind of red flags,as well as of course the interactions that take placebetween the person you're dating and your kids,which I would strongly recommend waitinguntil you know, you've reached the pointwhere it is a pretty serious relationshipthat has a potential of turning into something more long term.Rob, how can dads listening get a hold of youwith any questions that they haveor get set up with a coaching session with you?- Yeah, thank you for asking.I actually have a podcast as welland the name of my podcast is The Business of Being Dad.And I release episodes this yearI'm releasing episodes every Tuesday.And so that is a great way to get a hold of meor to really find out more about my work and my styleand to just kind of get to know my personalitya little bit and what I have to offer.But within each of my episodes, within the show notes,there are links on there to my website, my email,and to book a free coaching call.And so I would encourage people to check out the web,I'm sorry to check out my podcast to subscribe to it.So it kind of drops into your files every Tuesdayand then reach out to me.I would love to hear from you.I have a commitment at this point in my businessthat anyone who wants to talk with me, I'll talk with.So feel free to reach out through emailor to book that free coaching call.And just so that you know, the free coaching callis a no pressure, no sales call.And what I do is I basically run people throughkind of the first part of what would be my first coaching callif they moved into a full program with me.But this, the purpose of that free coaching callis to just get an idea.What is the biggest obstacle in your life right now?What is your top need as a parent,as a single parent, or as a father?And to just take a look at thatand for you to be able to leave that half hour callwith at least one actionable item,one actionable step you can take to make progressin the towards that goal.And just to make it easier, if you go to the fatherhoodchallenge.com,that's the fatherhoodchallenge.com.Go to this episode, look right below the episode description.I'm gonna have the link to Rob's podcast there.So you can go click on it.It'll take you straight to his podcast.And from there you'll be able to access his website,his email and any other means to be able to reach out,connect with him or book a coaching call.As we close, what is your challenge to dad's listening now?- My challenge to all of you listening nowis the same challenge I gave myself.On that night, that transformed my life,that changed my life.I challenge each of you to look at yourselfand to ask yourself this question,what kind of man do I wanna be?What kind of father do I wanna be?And what am I going to do to start headingin that direction today?- Rob, it has been an honor and a pleasureto have you on the fatherhoodchallenge.You've given so many gold nuggets of wisdomand experience to a lot of dads in the audienceso I know need it badly.So thank you so much for that, Rob.- I really appreciate the opportunity.Thank you.- Thank you for listening to this episodeof the Fatherhood Challenge.If you would like to contact us,listen to other episodes, find any resource mentionedin this program or find out more informationabout the Fatherhood Challenge, please visitthefatherhoodchallenge.com.That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.[ Silence ]Support this podcast at — 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