 What he represents is patriarchy. We're here to do work as men, as patriots. There's nothing more natural than being fathered. Welcome back to the 21th Convention, 2019 Patriarch Edition of Orlando, Florida. Our next speaker is a returning speaker to the 2021 convention. He first spoke last year in Orlando at our event back in October. He is the author of The Tactical Guide to Women, How Men Can Manage Risk in Dating and Marriage. He's actually the author of several more books beyond that, too, including A Few for Women. Our next speaker is also a... He's been a clinical psychologist in Denver, Colorado for a few decades. He was one of my favorite new speakers last year, and I'm really glad he's here. He's a father of at least one. I think he might even have more kids than that. Proud Patriarch. Anyway, without further ado, please help me welcome to the stage Dr. Sean T. Smith. Let's go back, sir. Good to be here. Thank you. Good morning. Man, Hunter got me fired up this morning. How are you feeling? And how about George? George is the kind of guy you meet him for the first time. You feel like you're meeting an old friend. So I'm going to try to add something useful to this today. Maybe give you some skills that you can take home and try out on your little ones. And if you'll indulge me, I have to rely on my notes, cards a little bit because I didn't prepare quite as much as I wanted to. But in my defense, I was drunk and failed to see how that's my responsibility. So I'll do the best I can here. My wife. I make her a little edgy sometimes because I'll approach her with these questions. And she knows that I'm looking for something, but she doesn't know exactly what I'm looking for. And I hit her with one the other day. I said, what is the mothering instinct? And she said, she got kind of tense because she knows I'm after something. And she said, well, I guess it's the desire to bond with your children so that you'll keep them alive. And I said, okay, well, let's make it more specific. Let's say that if there's a mothering instinct, that there must be some kind of evolved adaptations that get passed down through our DNA that lead to certain behaviors and traits that create this desire to keep your child alive. And so what might those be? And the first thing she came up with was to create a safe and nurturing environment. And I think that was spot-on. So she relaxed a little bit. And the reason I think that's spot-on is because it's what I see among mothers. And it's what I hear in the culture is that the mother's job is to create safety and nurturance. Now, how many people here think that there is a fathering instinct? I do. You don't hear much about it, really. You hear a lot about mama bear. You don't hear much about papa bear besides that toilet paper commercial. But I think that there is a fathering instinct. And I think one part of that is the instinct to provide. And this is something that's been under attack in our culture. It's called patriarchal, it's called hegemonic that we go out and we kill things and we bring it back to the cave and we feed our families and we become sort of a leader in that regard. And that is seen somehow as a slight against women in certain quarters. But there's an interesting paper that came out just earlier this year in this handbook called the Paul Grave Handbook for Male Mental Health came out of England. Chapters in that books talks about the fact that just the act of providing, going out and killing something and bringing it back, that that creates a series of neuroendocrine responses within the body that lead to other behaviors that create bonding between father and child. So that's clearly one aspect of the fathering instinct. Another aspect that I've noticed because a little bit about me, as Anthony mentioned, I'm a clinical psychologist. I started off a long time ago just working with anxiety disorders because I like working with anxiety disorders because it's a very clear fix to them and so a high success rate when you work with anxiety disorders but also over in my career I got really interested in relationships this male-female thing and what makes it work and how to fix that. So over the years there is this certain point of tension that shows up in my office on occasion between mothers and fathers. The tension between safety and risk. I think another second big part of the fathering instinct is to allow our children to experience some of the friction in the world. And that's what I want to talk a little bit about today is that innate understanding that fathers seem to have that we have to push against something to get stronger, to build character, to build resilience. It's sort of like astronauts when they go up into space and they don't experience gravity and they're not pushing against the earth. What happens to them? Well, they're muscles atrophy. Their bones become less dense. It's a real problem. It can last for years. It can dog them for many years after they come back to earth. And fathers seem to understand instinctually that our children need to push against something. They need to experience the world whereas mothers are generally trying to protect them from the world and this is the tension that I see showing up. We seem to understand better than they do that pushing against the world creates character and it creates resilience and it creates courage. I want to tell you a little story in this regard. I want to tell you about a friend of mine that I went to high school with. He and I have been buddies for 30 something years now and this is one of my favorite stories and he tells it better than I do. I'll do my best with it but I want to tell you a little bit about our relationship. One of the reasons that we connect is because our fathers were very similar. Our fathers were older gentlemen when they had both of us and they were similar in temperament and they were very big personalities but they were not the kind of fathers that were prone to giving a lot of guidance. When you see the beginning of the old Andy Griffith show where they're walking down to the lake together father and son and he's imparting some kind of wisdom that you can't hear because somebody is whistling that that was not our fathers. They were great fathers but that was not them and the only reason I say that is to illustrate the point that my friend and I didn't get a lot of training and so that makes the story about him all that much more poignant because clearly what he did with his children on a particular day came from instinct. Came from his DNA. Here's the situation. He was this was about 20 years ago he had a couple of kids ages like 6 and 7 and so when you're 6 and 7 what are you doing to go out into the world into preschool and kindergarten there's all this new structure and all these new rules that you have to try to contend with as your little kid and he noticed that there was a little contention developing between him and his kids. A little bit of adversarial relationship because what was happening is the morning routine was getting a little bit competitive. The way it usually worked was mom would go to work really early and then he would gather up the kids and drop them off at school then he would go to work. He had to be at work at a certain time and so the tension that was developing was that the kids were starting to get resistant like they were starting to him and Hall in the morning they weren't getting dressed on time they weren't brushing their teeth on time and it was starting to encroach on his professional life because he was starting to run the risk of being late which would threaten his ability to come home with the prize at the end of the day and as he saw this developing this tension he had a wonderful intervention and when you think about well let me tell you what he did first he went to them one morning actually it was one evening the evening before one morning and he said we got a new plan for tomorrow the plan is that I have to be at work on time and so what I need for you from you kids is for you to be dressed and in the car and ready to go at 7.30 because I'm going to leave at 7.30 and I hope you're with me but if you're not that's okay you can stay home and it probably won't be a very fun day for you because I don't know what you're going to do for lunch and your teachers aren't going to be very happy with you but you'll get through it and so next morning rolls around and he had even explained you reviewed the clock with him like this is what 7.30 looks like we got the minute down here and we got the hour hand right next to it it's a different kind of clock it has a 7 and a colon and it has a 30 so he explained all of this to them and he said about 7.25 you probably better be on the way of the truck so next morning 7.25 rolls around and guess who's not ready to go the kids are not ready to go they're testing and when you think about the world from a kid's point of view this makes sense because they're thrown into this situation called life and it's very confusing and they're trying to piece it all together like apparently you're supposed to fold your clothes and put them in the drawer but then apparently when your friend steals your toy you're not supposed to bite them and all of these rules seem kind of arbitrary and so it makes sense that they would test and try to find out what's solid and what isn't so the next morning they're testing and they're trying to find out what's solid and what isn't and is my friend going to be solid that they're not ready and he says gosh it's getting kind of late are you two coming with me oh yeah yeah we'll be there they're really not attending to the urgency of the situation 7.28 they see him grabbing his backpack and walking out to the car and he's ready to leave them now is he really going to leave them no he's smart what he did was he has a neighbor around the corner we didn't have cell phones but he had a neighbor around the corner who loved his kids so if I come knock at your door at 7.32 tomorrow can you go over to my house and make sure the kids are okay and we'll work it out from there so he had the safety net in place and he was ready to go so they see him walking out to the car now suddenly it's starting to get real their testing is yielding a result and the result is that dad is serious like he's actually going to leave us here and it starts to register and they start to get kind of activated and agitated and they start to get on their emotion and he sees that they're starting to spin out of control a little bit because he thinks they're actually they think he's actually going to leave them which he is and they don't know what to do because they're not dressed and they're not ready for school and my friend says well