Time to ponder… what colour are you today and why?

I saw something on Twitter yesterday that caught my eye...

No, it wasn't a debate about vaccinations or covid competency.

It was a woman posting about home schooling, she reflected that having the kids at home and trying to work at the same time meant the days were simultaneously both too long and too short.

I love my kids but I'd love them to be at school, learning and playing there instead of being at home endlessly defining my life by their various needs, time tables, times tables and not accepting a ham sandwich or pot noodle "a la desk" is a proper lunch.

The result is a long day that never seems long enough to "get stuff done", but long enough and disrupted enough to feel exhausted at 9:30pm and making progress on work projects is like wading through treacle. It's no wonder I haven't done my tax return yet...

But there are always positives, every Friday James Millar and I jump on Zoom and have a 40 minute chat with a new and interesting guest for the Lockdown Dads podcast. It feels like our own TFI Friday moment, plus we get to learn and share ideas with great people with something to say.

Paul Bulos, Executive, Leadership & Wellbeing Coach and publishing professional joins us to ponder “what colour are you today and why?” We dig into the benefits of lockdowns - including connecting with your kids and we touch on the importance of empathy and understanding the transition between work and home life.

Plus we discuss dad ‘presence’ - how important is secondary school transition, what does the “right train” mean to you and taking time to involve yourself in the things that are important to your children.

Tips include - it’s time for clippers, the Language of gaming and Rachel Vecht’s Circle of Control .

Contents

00:20 Lockdown birthdays are rubbish.

02:30 If you could describe how you are doing as a colour, what would that colour be and why?

02:45 Paul’s Funday Friday - energy and weather = yellow

03:15 Ian, green for Pakistan - ODI cricket tickets for the summer

04:20 James = black… I like black

07:40 Learning self awareness and family dynamics

09:15 Paul’s relationship with his daughter

I've always been really close to my kids, but I've got a lot closer and some of that's good and some of that's not so good… one of the key things that really came through that first lockdown, was my relationship with my daughter. She started 13, went into being 14. That's quite an age for young females, lots going on, lots changing. I noticed a lot changing. And just before the lockdown, I was being very honest about it, finding quite difficult.

Our connections seem to be drifting a little bit where we'd been really close before we'd done a lot of things together. She sort of flipped into that proper teenage time and she was beginning to just drift away a bit.

And then we started doing this walk, we live in West London, so we started walking to Osterley Park very early. We didn't often say that much to each other, but the content of what we started to talk about between us was, far more meaningful than they'd ever been. I think we just started to reconnect, but in a different way.

12:25 Helping children to feel safe

14:05 A higher proportion proportion of dads think that the switch to secondary school is a time when they need to be around for their kids.

15:00 How comfortable are you saying, “you know what, I can't make that meeting at 5:30” because if I don't do that, I can't get the train, which means I won't be home for my kids.

15:50 You come home one day and, and they don't come to the door. And I said, no, I can't imagine that.

17:00 The impact of missing your train - my wife knew exactly what time I'd be walking through the door at the end of the working day.

19:30 The transition between work - coming home and re-entry into domestic, household and parenting life.

One of the other things that I found quite interesting is that the children, for first time, in their life really, have seen me working, seeing what that means, what that looks like. If I ever came home from work and I was particularly preoccupied or had a difficult day, they, they never really grasped the concept of that. But now that we're around each other so much more, we have conversations in the day, much more readily around what's going on.

Vice versa for their school day. Some of the things that they're doing and getting up to and how their, some of their stresses and strains, you know, when they've had a frustrating lesson or when you know, they feel like they haven't really been heard in their lesson.

I wouldn't normally hear that stuff, but now I'm hearing it much more regularly. So we're relating in a very different way and understanding and appreciating and having more empathy for each other in a very different way.

21:50 James talks about his workingdads.co.uk building back better agenda.

23:00 Lunchtimes together.

24:00 The power of coaching - examining values and my responsibilities as a parent

25:30 Children as they've become far more cognitive in the world and they've got their own things, you really have to listen to them.

They've got something to say now, whereas when they're little, they're just looking at you almost to repeat what they need to say, but as they've grown up I think probably post 10, 11, they've really got something to say and it's worth listening to.

The speaking is his understanding that he's being listened to. And that requires reflection back to him, all those kinds of things.

27:00 My Daughter has helped me as a coach

One of the important things of being a coach is being able to be in the quiet and be comfortable in that quiet space and allowing that space, not feeling you need to fill it, not feeling you need to rescue, but providing your coachee with that. My daughter is quite quiet and thoughtful and her feelings are quite deep. They don't come to the surface. She doesn't wear a heart on her sleeve. So she's actually helped me in my coaching practice because I have to sit with that space a lot more than I do with my son.

28:30 Tips

• Home haircuts - clippers are back on stock

• Try to understand the language of gaming.

So I remember when he used to collect Pokemon cards, I would walk with him and he would talk to me and I literally didn't understand a single word he said, and and it's now happening with Fortnite. So I have now invested in the time to say to him, could you just explain what you're talking about? Because I realized this could go on a while. I can't have conversations with him that I really don't understand for any longer.

• Rachel Vecht’s Circle of Control. (former guest on the show)

  
  
  

More from Paul Bulos

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbulos/

http://www.thecompletecoach.co.uk/safe/

https://www.workingdads.co.uk/sink-swim-vital-dads-look-after-themselves/

Photo Credit: @patrickian4 via Unsplash