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Upstream of Anger
Plus: What's your parenting quadrant?
Geoff Girvitz
October 03, 2024
In partnership with
Today on Dad Strength
What's your parenting quadrant?
One weird, new trick for reducing cold symptoms
Upstream of anger
A book, a quote, a dad joke
Fatherhood
What's your parenting quadrant? In his book, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, author and academic David Yeager, breaks things down into four dominant parenting styles:
Enforcer: demands high standards but does not help you meet them
Protector: someone who guards you against feelings of failure
Mentor: someone who combines high standards with strong support
There is a fourth persona, but if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re not that guy, pal.
The matrix above may resonate if you checked out this edition of Dad Strength, where I invited you to reflect on your secondary styles and when they emerge.
One key takeaway from Yeager is that parents and mentors might not always handle things correctly BUT they have the opportunity for do-overs. If you ever feel like you have dropped the ball on a support and/or standards conversation it’s ok; nobody bats 1,000. Take a breath, call your kid over, tell them that you didn’t deliver the way you wanted, and take another swing. Your mere willingness to do this says a lot.
Coming up on the next Dad Strength call (Tuesday at 3 PM EST): How are you going to make this story great? As a dad and beyond?
Health
As we approach cold and flu season, zinc deserves a shout-out. Doses greater than 75 mg daily of zinc (acetate) have been shown to reduce the duration and severity of common colds. The effects aren’t huge but we’ll take what we can get. It’s also worth mentioning that for upper-respiratory tract infections, zinc lozenges seem to be most effective, since they deliver the zinc to the infected site.
I’m not a big supplement guy but zinc is relatively inexpensive and 20% of kids (and 8% of adults) in affluent countries are estimated to be zinc deficient.
This information was sourced from examine.com, which aggregates research on supplements without brand affiliations.
Mindfulness
You know the feeling: your anger has you right on the edge and then. Boom! You explode and now find yourself standing in the crater, looking around at all the debris.
There’s a framework that we can borrow from addiction recovery: HALT
Before you yell. Or criticize. Or otherwise react, you ask yourself, “Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired?” In other words, your reaction will probably be less dramatic if all of your fundamental needs are met.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to manage your mood upstream than in these intense moments.
If you lose it in the moment, repair what you can, be gentle with yourself, and acknowledge that you may not have set yourself up for success this time. Then go upstream by attending to your sleep, movement, meaningful connection, and exercise.
On that note…
Join me for a FREE HEALTH AND FITNESS discussion on Monday, October 7 – at 7 PM EST
We’ll talk about exercise concepts for busy dads, exercise, nutrition, and habit-change.
Ease into investing
Ease being the key word. With automated tool like portfolio rebalancing and dividend reinvestment, Betterment makes investing easy for you, and a total grind for your money.
What I’m reading/listening to
Book: A Way of Being by Carl Rogers
“Stop trying to use your speech to get what you want. You don’t necessarily know what you want. Instead, try to articulate what you believe to be true as carefully as possible. Then, accept the outcome. Assume that your truth, as lived and spoken, will produce the best possible outcome. It’s an act of faith.
But so is every other way of being.”
– Carl Rogers
A(nother) Quote
“Often, it’s other people who prod us to stretch. You hire a personal trainer because you know she’s going to push you beyond your comfort zone. And this is the same quality we value about our mentors: They bring out the best in us. You’ll never hear someone say, ‘Yeah, the best coach I ever had was Coach Martin. He had no expectations whatsoever and let us do whatever we wanted. He was a great man.’”
A Dad joke
What’s the difference between Iron Man and Aluminum Man? Iron Man stops the bad guys and Aluminum Man just foils their plans.
Take care of yourself, man!
Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com