Key Takeaways
- Patience is often a father's biggest challenge, especially with toddlers who want constant attention
- Children mirror their parents' emotional responses - your calm creates their calm
- Being the youngest child can create selfish tendencies that make fatherhood more difficult
- Practical strategies like using headphones during baby meltdowns can help maintain sanity
- Sitting with angry children without trying to fix them teaches emotional regulation
- The parenting filter: "Do I want my kids to grow up and do this?" guides better decisions
- Breaking generational patterns requires conscious effort and self-awareness
After examining what they learned as sons in Part 1, Chris and Tilghman turn the spotlight on themselves as fathers. Their honest self-examination reveals the daily struggles, failures, and breakthroughs that define modern fatherhood.
The Patience Problem
Tilghman opens with brutal honesty about his biggest challenge: "The number one thing is patience on my part." As a father to his first child, now in the demanding toddler phase, he faces the constant tension between a child's needs and an adult's limitations.
The scenario is painfully familiar to most fathers: "Daddy, come do this. Daddy, come do that. Daddy, come do this. And sometimes... you'll go do something and then you're just like, 'yeah, you know, hey, buddy, we already played for 45 minutes on the Legos, okay, I got to get up and go cook dinner.'"
But Tilghman recognizes a deeper issue contributing to his impatience. As the youngest in his family, born during his parents' financially stable years, he admits: "I always got everything I wanted... So with the patience aspect, it's like, man, Tilghman, you're selfish, dude."
This self-awareness becomes crucial for growth. Understanding the root of impatience—often selfishness disguised as legitimate adult responsibilities—allows fathers to address the real issue rather than just managing symptoms.
The Mirror Effect of Parenting
Both fathers discovered a fundamental truth: children are mirrors reflecting their parents' emotional states and responses. Tilghman shares a wake-up moment when his son began showing impatience toward his mother: "That's when I was like, yep, he's watching."
The revelation extends beyond obvious behaviors. Tilghman's road rage became his son's vocabulary: "Like somebody will cut us off. I'm like, 'oh, bro.' And then like when a car's not going fast enough, he goes, 'come on, bro.' He's in the back seat. I'm like, oh gosh... You're raising a road rager."
Chris experienced similar patterns with his three-year-old son's anger management. When his son screams at the top of his lungs, Chris admits: "There's been times I've yelled at him and just said like, 'I am so sick of you yelling.' And there I am, I'm doing the thing that I don't want him to do."
This mirror effect works both ways. When parents practice patience and emotional regulation, children absorb these qualities too. "As I've been working on it... he's become more patient. He's become more patient himself... there's less hitting, there's less biting, and there's less impatience on his end too."
The Selfishness Shock
Chris describes fatherhood's first major revelation: the complete destruction of self-centered living. "The distinct thing that I remember from having my first child was, my Lord... life is not all about me and my wife. Like, I don't even get to sleep all the time."
This transition from self-focus to child-focus creates unexpected emotional responses. Chris recalls feeling "rage" during those early parenting days: "I could feel it in my heart of just like, I am raging mad. Like I'm so angry. Why am I so angry?"
The anger often stems from the collision between expectations and reality. New fathers expect to maintain some control over their lives while adding a child to the mix. The reality—complete disruption of sleep, schedule, and personal time—can trigger intense emotional responses.
Chris's solution during overwhelming moments: "I'm handing the baby off to Catherine, like I have to go walk around the block... I'm so angry. Like I can't deal with it." This recognition of personal limits and willingness to step away prevents worse outcomes.
Practical Strategies for Crisis Moments
Both fathers have developed tactical approaches for managing their most challenging parenting moments.
The Headphones Technique: Chris recommends using headphones during baby meltdowns: "If you need to be there and you also need to be calm, pair of headphones... It just helps you maintain your cool. You can attend to the needs of the child properly." The key is using them to maintain sanity while remaining present, not to disconnect entirely.
The Sitting Strategy: For toddler tantrums, Chris and his wife developed a new approach: "When he's angry, we like go and we sit with him. We're not trying to change his mind. We're not trying to make him feel better, we're not trying to punish him... We just literally sit there and we're available."
This strategy teaches children that emotions are acceptable while providing comfort without reinforcement of negative behaviors. "He'll be screaming at us and say, 'I go away.' But just to sit there and be like, 'I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to try to force my will upon you. But I'm here.'"
The Boundary Approach: Setting clear emotional boundaries helps children learn appropriate expression: "If you're going to be angry, if you're going to scream, you can't scream at us like this. Like you need to go outside, like go into your room... It's OK to be angry... but you can't just scream at us."
The Parenting Filter
Tilghman offers perhaps the most practical daily tool for father decision-making: "Before you decide to do something, think to yourself, do I want my kids to grow up and do this?"
This simple question serves as a behavioral filter for everything from road rage to work habits to conflict resolution. "Just pretend that your kids are in the back seat of the car. Pretend that they're with you sitting next to you and just pretend like, 'Hey, do I want to do this? Because I know if I do this, they might want to do this. They're watching me.'"
This filter works because it shifts focus from immediate adult desires to long-term character formation in children. It acknowledges the reality that children absorb more from what they observe than what they're told.
Breaking Generational Cycles
Both men recognize they're repeating patterns from their own upbringing while working consciously to break negative cycles. Tilghman notes: "That's just kind of the kind of responses that I was used to growing up with as well. And that's just kind of been embedded in me too. So in my mind it's normal, but then my wife is like, 'Hey, that was kind of harsh.'"
The work involves constant self-monitoring and course correction. Success isn't perfection but rather increasing awareness and faster recovery from mistakes. "It hasn't been perfect... there's still times where I'd much rather just like do my thing... but you know, as I've been working on it, it's like, he's become more patient."
Chris emphasizes the ongoing nature of this work: "I'm right now in all the successes... I'm also making deep failures that I'm going to need to work through with my kids one day."
The Universal Struggle
The conversation acknowledges that not every father starts from the same place. Some had absent fathers, others experienced abuse. Chris offers encouragement regardless of starting point: "No matter where your starting point is on the road, no matter how broken or in distress you are right now as a father... there is a way back to joy. There is a way to be good again."
This message recognizes fatherhood as a journey rather than a destination. Whether someone is "60 years old and you've done the damage already and you're recognizing that and you're trying to repair" or "just starting out and you're holding this baby and trying not to lose your ever loving mind," improvement remains possible.
The Slow Game of Change
Both fathers emphasize that positive change in parenting happens gradually through consistent effort rather than dramatic transformation. Chris notes: "When you just keep your cool and it's so hard to do, but when you keep your cool, it's the slow game. They actually start to keep their cool."
The key insight: small, consistent improvements in parental emotional regulation create exponential improvements in family dynamics over time. Children learn emotional skills not through lectures but through modeling.
Finding the Way Back to Joy
The conversation introduces a family phrase that captures the essence of emotional regulation: "Find your way back to joy." This applies to both children and adults who get "out of joy" and into "crisis mode."
Rather than demanding immediate emotional compliance from children, this approach acknowledges that emotions are normal while providing tools and support for returning to positive emotional states. It models for children that adults also struggle with emotions and need strategies for regulation.
The Rookie Mindset
Despite their experiences, both fathers maintain humility about their parenting journey. Tilghman reflects: "I'm a new dad, right? So I'm a rookie at this. I feel like a lot of us are still rookies at this no matter how many kids you have."
This rookie mindset prevents the pride that stops learning and growth. It acknowledges that each child is different, each stage brings new challenges, and expertise in one area doesn't guarantee success in another.
The honest examination of their fatherhood struggles serves not as discouragement but as encouragement. These real struggles with real solutions provide hope that other fathers facing similar challenges can also find their way to better relationships with their children while breaking negative generational patterns.
