115.) Optimizing Parenthood | A Guide to Leading the Next Generation - Prequel

The goal is to produce an adult that is self-sufficient, ambitious, a good human being, happy, can handle stress. And you don't do that by bubble wrapping a child and like keeping them in the basement and keeping them away from the phone. And so every parent is just trying to do it live. Everyone's just trying to figure it out, like adapt, overcome, execute the plan as the best of their ability, and then minimize those downside risks while like maximizing the potential. Just like any other leadership problem, it just so happens that the troops that you're leading are these three people who in my case look exactly like me and live within 20 feet of where I'm sitting right now. - How's it going everyone? Today's episode will feature our prequel to an upcoming limited series, optimizing parenthood, a guide to leading the next generation. Over the course of the next five episodes, I'll be handing the mic over to O2X's vice president of government, Brendan Stickels. Brendan and I had an awesome conversation about his background in Naval Aviation on Episode 50. I would encourage all listeners to head back to that episode in order to gain full insight into Brendan's background. From a high level, he spent 22 years in the Naval Aviation community flew over 50 combat missions and served as the special advisor for defense at the White House under both vice president Pence and Harris. Brendan is also a father of three kids, being that I clearly like the insights around parenthood. It only made sense that we brought on someone with firsthand experience to discuss both the trials and tribulations of parenthood, the rewards and everything in between. So over the next five episodes, Brendan will sit with elite human performance professionals across O2X to discuss routines, sleep, nutrition, physical fitness, resilience, all geared towards creating a stable household pair kids to meet the demands of the real world and to create lasting habits. Over the course of the five episodes, we're going to talk to Dr. Jamie Tartar, surrounding sleep, Dr. Nick Berenger in order to discuss nutrition, injury prevention and physical fitness from Joshua Lamont, who worked with the professional athletes on injury prevention and recovery. We're going to talk to Dr. Katie Tran Turner on resilience, who's a clinical psychologist and handles a lot of the curriculum at O2X. And then the last episode will be with Adam LaRue discussing overcoming obstacles. Adam, as most people know, is the O2X co-founder and a former Navy SEAL. So here today to just kind of talk over the series a little bit of the ideology on it. And why we decided to go this row is Brendan Stickles. Brendan is great to talk to you again. Why don't you go to trivia with me when you were up here. - I apologize, do I? - I have no excuse at all. Thank you for forgiving me. - How are you, kid? - I'm doing good, man. Good to see you as always. - Yeah, great to see you. So let's start here. Like, I kind of want to just pull up a little bit of what you sent me. I'm going to read a portion of the article that you wrote about teaching your daughter to drive. As I mentioned, former Naval Aviator, you got pretty significant experience behind. I guess like a lack of a better chance could be a steering wheel. steering wheel, some sort, cockpit, whatever. But I'm just going to read a little bit of what you wrote and then move on from there. You said in this article that you sent me, I spent the last year teaching my teenager to drive. My friends and family found great joy in the lack of enthusiasm for this parental right before I devolved into my current era as a middle-aged dad. At least you can admit it, right? - It's true. - It's an adventure. - As a middle-aged dad, I was a fighter pilot in the US Navy. I flew 50 combat missions spent over three years at sea and landed on an aircraft over 500 times. I also spent six years as a flight instructor, teaching rookie aviators how to land their jets aboard aircrafts at night. My fellow suburban lawnmowering dad's toost that coaching parallel parking between garbage cans on our tree line street would be comparatively stress-free. Well, those dads were fucking wrong. From my neighbors who have taught their child the drive, a car who should be commended for your bravery and heroism, teaching a child the drive in Maryland is way more stressful than teaching a pilot to land on an aircraft carrier in the middle east. Hilarious gives great perspective into your journey as a parent and then also kind of just like, I don't know, a little bit about like the funny challenges of parenthood, right? Like if you zoom out, actually let's start here, dude. I'm kind of going off on tangent. How long have you had kids? Like how old you're oldest? - My daughter is 18 years old. - Okay, 18. So this is from-- - She's a senior in high school. - Okay, and you learned the drive one at 16? - I learned how to drive when I was 16 years old in the great state of New Jersey and a Toyota Corolla manual transmission. - All right, and then so you're passing on your vast knowledge of driving, you know, years later. And yeah, it's just kind of a funny perspective on things. Like you spend so much time and like really high stress scenarios, teaching like young, literally this exact scenario except in the aviation world teaching young aviators have to successfully man an aircraft and then it comes down to like your most basic secondhand instinct of what you've been doing since you were 16 years old and you're trying to pass that knowledge on to your daughter and all of a sudden it's like trying to, you know, teach quantum physics. - I got very real, very quick. There was a debate in our house. My wife Katie is a second grade teacher. And so our argument was who is more qualified to teach a teenager to drive? Is it somebody whose profession is teaching children skills or is it somebody whose profession was teaching pilots how to land on an aircraft carrier? And I lost that argument. She refused to do that. So all 50 hours of practice driving, part of Meghan's test was with me in the right seat of our Honda Pilot with 200,000 miles on it. So in all seriousness, I felt in the real like driving force behind these conversations we're gonna have is that I felt like I was doing a horrible job as a dad and a parent teaching Meghan to drive. Objectively, just to be clear, she's a wonderful driver. She is like the right balance of like aggression and conservativeism, she's confident. She knows what she's doing. She knows when to swear at other people, like when to all of those things, like she's objectively a very good driver, it wasn't a her problem, it was a me problem. And about halfway through the 50 hours, I just gave up on being a parent and said like my profession was teaching people how to operate heavy machinery in high stress environments. And so since I obviously don't know how to be a parent in this situation, let me just revert to the skills and experiences I had teaching pilots how to fly jets. And then I'll pretend that this is just a student of mine. I'll dust off those skills and those experiences. And then frankly, like it made me a much better dad. It made me a much better driving instructor. It made my relationship her much more positive and it made her a better driver. So from that experience and you and I chatted about this, like hey, if that's the case that objectively, like this was my profession and I struggled at it when I was trying to do it as a parent, what other experts that we deal with, you know, two X who are experts in the field and each wide and 10 miles deep in their topic who also have children. What other experts can we talk to who might have a similar experience. And so over the course of these next five conversations, that's what we're gonna explore. - Sorry, what's your daughter's name? - Megan. - Megan, so shout out to Megan, by the way, I learned how to drive on a hot and a pilot as well. So where you got, I also failed my driving test twice. So if you pass on the first time around, you did halfway these a job. But either way, you know, it's kind of calling a young man's perspective, but it's just not something that I necessarily thought, you know, 120 something episodes into the podcast and very rarely, if ever, you know, the conversation of parenthood comes up. And if you were to throw a ballpark figure on the amount of people that you work with on a day-to-day that our parents, like, what would that figure be? Like percentage wise. - So I'll tell you this, that I've sat in on probably, let's call it conservatively 150 O2X workshops. And in every single one of those classes during the Q&A, somebody brings up a question that is clearly associated with their experience as a parent. So if we're in a nutrition class, if we're in a sleep class, injury prevention, mental performance, resilience, stress management, somebody at some point during the QA will say, I have a question, when you talk about protein intake, does that apply to a 16 year old who weighs 120 pounds? Like, when you talk about injury prevention, does that apply to a field hockey player who's coming off an ACL injury? Or when you're talking about sleep, hey, does that apply to either, like, un nursing mother, do those numbers apply to a teenager? Like, how come my teenager can't get at a bed at nine o'clock in the morning, but I also can't put him to sleep? So every one of these human performance, if you have somebody in your life that you love, not just as a parent, but, like, as an uncle of friends, and some of this is also generational, people will talk about their own parents, but anybody who has a little human being that lives in their house, you can't dive into the world of human performance and not make the connection. And that, like, hey, how do all of these topics and how all these subject matters relate to my child and then also relate to my experience as a parent? And I'll tell you that, like, when you look at parenting through that lens, the lens of being a leadership challenge, it really is, I think, the world's toughest and most important leadership challenge. It's something that you get to do once, you don't get to repeat. It's something where your leadership has more impact on the human being than I ever had on a sailor or anybody that I worked with. And it's the one that, like, provides you the most value. So I'm really excited to see if I'm the only one who had problems with things like teaching you how to drive. In each of those subjects, I can't wait to talk to Nick, you know, Nick's nutritionist for professional athletes and Olympians, I can't wait to talk to him about what his family has for dinner. Jamie Tartar, like, one of the world's leading sleep researchers, well, she had twins. So, like, when the rubber meets the road, like, how is her sleep affected by having two little humans in her house? And then how did she raise some teenagers? And then Katie, who's, like, obviously, a sports bike and a Brazilian specialist, well, that's all fun and games. Now, her son is, like, starting to wrestle. So what does it feel like to be a professional mental performance coach and then watch an eight-year-old go out on the mat by themselves and have to get into a one-on-one confrontation? - Two plexer, yeah. - No, it's not, so. So I really just want to, I want to pull on all their expertise, find out how they got into the subject, what they think about it, and then how that subject frames their experience as a parent. O2X's podcast is brought to you by Building Homes for Heroes. Building Homes for Heroes is an absolutely incredible organization that O2X is lucky enough to partner with. Their main mission is to build or modify homes and then give them mortgage free to injured veterans and first responders. They also provide support services to enable these populations to build better and brighter lives and reach new heights. Through partnership with Building Homes for Heroes, a variety of military, veteran and first responder populations will receive access to O2X's training and education and allow us to create positive impact on each respective organization. Be sure to visit buildinghomesforheroes.org, which can be found in the episode description and donate to their incredible cause. - Yeah, well, it's super interesting because there's two sides of the equation that you could go with on each episode, right? Like, there's the parent side of it, like making sure that your ecosystem, like you as the individual as the parent is optimized so that you can, for lack of better terms, parent to the best of your ability. And then there's the other side of the equation, which is like creating a stable household and building routines to create what's going to be, a successful human or someone that has sustainable habits is like something that's huge and creating with like kids' risk and reward. I think it's like a super, super big thing, which I'd be interested to hear Katie talk about like handling losses. I'd be curious, so not to age you, but in Megan's 18, you had your first kid at what age? - When I was 30, I'm 40. - Okay, so my children are 18, 15 and 12, Megan and then two boys. - So you were 30. So you're a grown man when you had your first kid, but like you found out you're pregnant at what point in time, like did you even prepare mentally, physically, emotionally? Like did you read stuff? What did that look like? And the reason I asked is because I know we have a lot of young fathers in the '02 action network, like Connor Friedland comes to mind. I know he just had a kid. Is there anything that you did leading up to that or that you did in like call it your early years of parenthood that you would attribute to the successes that you've had? - I mean, honestly, the short answer is no. (laughs) Just like flying in airplane and like taking the solar flight, you can do all the preparation on Earth. You can feel as prepared and ready. You can be in a stable, loving marriage, like my wife and I were financially secure, all of those things that point towards the creation of a successful little nuclear family. But when you are standing in the delivery room, holding a six pound human being, and then a day later, strapping that baby into a car seat and going home away from the nurses, there is like a moment of terror that I think is like hard to describe and hard to replicate. But at the same time, everybody tries to get better. So just like anything else, you're just learning, you're experimenting, you're doing everything from like, what it takes to make the baby fall asleep. And then I also think that like there's a whole different challenge of people who adopt or for whatever family circumstances wind up with a child is older, because the progression of going from an infant to a teenager is like a slow motion education over time. And children change so rapidly. Like my teenagers are different human beings now than they were a year ago, than they were two years ago. And so the experts that we're going to talk to, I really want to dive into that as well, because with all three of my children, as soon as you think you figured it out, one weekend later, they're a different person, you're a different person in the world in a different environment. Like their influences become more their friends, you're fighting all of the wars that are well documented. The wars against screen time, against bullying, against like pressure, against all these catastrophic, whether it be drug abuse or self harm, all of these things that terrify you as a parent, the mission is constantly changing. So looking at it through that O2X lens of leadership is going to make these conversations really fun. - Yeah, and I also think there's an element of to your point, how much influence technology has on kids, where do you draw the line as to like, let's talk about your oldest for a second who's 18 years old. You know, I had a really great relationship with my parents where I felt like almost like growing up that they were overbearing, it's not the right word, but I grew up in a strict household right. And then the second 18 rolled around, my parents got married at 19 for reference, but like, it was totally hands off. It was like, they let me do my own thing, it was like, own decision making, all that. When it comes to trying to influence your kids into creating these habits or just being, college is being a good person, where exactly do you draw the boundary of being overbearing and how exactly do you try to influence their action? - So I wrote about this in the article you referenced at the kickoff, is that it's easy in an academic environment to say that it's good to learn from your mistakes, right? You become a successful adult by making as many mistakes as you possibly can that don't kill you, that you can continue to learn from. In my experience, teaching Megan to drive was the first time I had to articulate to her that there are some mistakes you don't get to learn from, that if we roll this car on the beltway, 500 people are gonna die in the state of Maryland while driving a car, and so those people don't get to debrief their mistakes and get better and try it again. Everything else on that, I think that my wife and I have a high tolerance for error, that we encourage our kids to be independent and free thinking, chart their own course, pick their own classes at school, make their own decisions, and then we try to give them as much leashes we can so that they can safely operate in the world, but then develop those lessons. That being said, I think probably your parents, there's a couple things that we draw hard lines on, that constant dinner table debates. Our kids charge their cell phones in the kitchen, including my 18-year-old daughter, who lives in, I'm like, look, you live in this house, I don't know what to say, we value sleep, and you gotta go to bed, and so you gotta charge your cell phone. So that's like a constant, yeah. - Yeah, it's always, it seems to always be the phone, right? Like even if, right, I grew up with whatever a flip phone like NVTouch or something, I forget the name, chocolate or whatever, those names are like back in the day, who knows that, like the building keyboard and everything, and it felt like I had a phone, but I didn't, 'cause it was constantly taking away, right, like so. It feels like there's a constant point of contention over certain things. Where do you think that point of contention is in 2025? And do you think it varies between boys and girls? - So those are two great questions. I think that there's a lot of interesting stuff written on this right now. There's a guy by the name Richard Reeves who was a scholar at Brookings during my time there, and he is an institute now on the development of men and boys. I might be misquoting that, but he's written a book about this sort of lost generation of young men. Where I think the perception is that girls are challenging to raise as high schoolers when in actuality over the course of the last 20 years for a variety of different reasons. Girls are gonna be 70% of the valedictorians in high school. This coming year, more women will go to college than men, and they're less likely to commit crimes, wind up in prison. - Be functioning, you'll just be functioning members of society. It's better human beings, like across the board, they're just better human beings. And so I am sensitive to that. At the same time, there's well-documented charts about the instances of self-harm after the creation of the iPhone, and after the popularity of Instagram, that the fact that we're not having a national debate over that on a daily basis is absolutely terrifying. And you can pound with that the fact that like over 50,000 people are gonna die of opioid drugs in the next 12 months, which is more people than we lost in Vietnam. And so like there's all these sort of downside risks that as a parent are absolutely terrifying. At the same time, what's the goal? Just like any other leadership problem is just so happens that the troops that you're leading are these three people who in my case look exactly like me and live within 20 feet of where I'm sitting right now. So it's a wonderful, wonderful blessing and chance to have. But I do think that O2X can contribute to the body of knowledge on human performance on leadership and how that relates to the experience as a parent, but also to the experience of like raising those little humans into successful adults, however you define success. - Yeah, just before I know our intention was to make this short, but you have Megan, did you deploy after that when she was born? Like did you, just because I feel like that's important to throw in this prequel episode, call Spade a Spade a good amount of our populations that we work with will end up being separated from their kid, whether it's days at a time in a fire department or if it's months at a time on deployments or just for deployed or something like that. So did you deploy after having kids and what struggles does that come with and then is there ways to influence without being directly present? And what challenges came with that? It's a loaded question. - I mean, that's like the most important question. I think that there's an intrinsic contradiction to being in the military and being in public service and being a parent. So if somebody were to come in and offer me $10 million right now, do not see my children for a year. That's like a funny bar room conversation. Maybe a billion dollars, I start thinking about it. It's like, yeah, where do we draw a line at the prequel then? - Where are you? - Until I'm not that great, like I'm being honest. But no, in all seriousness, like let's say $10 million. Hey, I'm gonna give you $10 million, but you gotta move out of the house and you're not gonna see your kids for a year. I wouldn't take it, right? Like that's like my joy in life comes from being with them and my last deployment when Megan was in second grade. I think my kids are in second grade, kindergarten and two years old, I walked onto the ship and I walked off seven months later. And to your point, like the boys, especially were young enough that they couldn't read, so I couldn't like write them emails. And so I really, I think that they like forgot about me while I was gone. And so everybody's happy to see me when I got back. But like when you're a two year old to go seven months without seeing your parent is an enormous sacrifice. I think that children are so resilient, it's actually harder on the parents and it is on the kids. And there's obviously plenty of people who face more adversity as a parent than both my wife and I. So like I'm not trying to compare it to the experience of either losing a parent or like being in the foster care system. There's all sorts of adversity that is worse than ours. I'm not trying to compare it. But it is an enormous, enormous challenge. And then it's stressful on the parenting team as well. Because when I was gone for three months, Katie set up a routine with the kids. And then all of a sudden the Disney real dad shows up and I break the routine. I don't know where the laundry goes. I'm like, I just want to hang out with the kids but I don't want to discipline them because I've been gone for seven months. There's all sorts of other stresses of parent that is a very big deal. And for the O2X community, I've come to really appreciate the first responders, the police and firefighters because for me it was binary. I was either gone on the aircraft carrier or I was home. But to talk to those men and women who show up on the scene of a car accident and will use the jaws of life to extract a teenage driver. And then 10 minutes later go home and walk in the door and have to change a diaper or like go walk in the door and like see their family. That level of stress, that tension between your responsibilities as a public servant and then your life as a parent, I think is even more challenging and probably traumatic than my experience, which was hey, when I'm on deployment, I'm gone and I'm doing the work on behalf of the country. And then when I'm home, 80% of my focus is as a fan and man and a dad. I really respect the members of the O2X tactical community who live that life for a sustained period of time and then do it in those shorter iterations. But it's 100% a challenge. As I mentioned, we are going to record five separate episodes coming up, one with Jamie Tartart, one with Dr. Nick Barron, your one with Josh Lamont, one with Dr. Katie Tran Turner, and one with Adam LaRue. Please be sure to tune in, gain some insight from Brennan Stickles, who outside of being a parent has such an incredible background and such incredible knowledge to pass on to parents and otherwise, maybe it's parents to be, please be sure to tune in and we are looking to forward to rolling this out over the next few weeks. So any last words? - Nothing, thanks so much for the opportunity, Joe. You said I bar as far as podcasts to the scale. So I'm going to try to deepen my voice and be a little more sensory into the microphone. But I just can't, just can't smoke a pack before or maybe someone might be giving you a little edge. (laughing) - Yeah, please be sure to tune in. Dude, I'm fired up to listen to 'em. And yeah, look forward to it. Thanks, Bill. - Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. (upbeat music)