Fatherhood - Striving Together
"Fatherhood - Striving Together" is a podcast dedicated to empowering fathers to lead their families with wisdom, strength, and faith. Hosted by three Christian fathers, including two pastors, the show explores the challenges and joys of fatherhood, offering practical advice rooted in biblical principles.
Each episode delves into essential topics like mentoring the next generation, building strong marriages, and guiding children in a rapidly changing world. Whether you're a new dad, a seasoned father, or someone considering fatherhood, this podcast is your companion on the journey of raising a family that thrives in faith and love.
Join us as we strive together to build homes on a solid foundation, where each member is nurtured and guided to live a life devoted to Christ. Discover insights, share experiences, and be a part of a community that believes in the power of fatherhood to shape the future.
Fatherhood - Striving Together
BONUS: Real Connections Over Digital Distractions
Can a beloved hobby become a hidden time thief, pulling you away from the most precious moments with your family? On this episode of "Fatherhood Striving Together," we promise to reveal how even the most enjoyable activities, when done excessively, can turn into unproductive habits that negatively impact family life. We explore various examples, from overeating and excessive drinking to hobbies like boating and hunting, but what stands out most is the conversation around video gaming. While a casual gaming session with your children can be a great way to bond, dedicating endless hours to gaming, particularly late into the night, can be detrimental. We'll share insights on cultivating a balance that prioritizes meaningful family interactions over solitary pursuits.
In our journey to understand the impact of excessive hobbies, we delve into the complex relationship between video games and parenting. Listen as we recount personal stories of discovering old Nintendo Wii games and the sheer joy they brought to our kids, only to confront the necessity of balancing digital triumphs with real-world activities. We'll advocate for more physical and enriching interactions, whether it's taking a leisurely walk or building Lincoln Log structures with your children. We'll also tackle the widespread allure of games like Fortnite and make a poignant case for encouraging more tangible, offline experiences. Join us as we navigate these concerns and aim to foster more authentic connections and activities within the family.
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you're listening to fatherhood striving together, hosted by kyle cox jason schuler and chris virgilio.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, let's, uh, maybe maybe wrap up with this thought then. All right, so we've talked about personally things that we've kept and things that have faded into obscurity. How about looking outside? And it might sound like we're being judgmental, but this is a time to be speaking the truth. In love, I guess, are there hobbies that we see other dudes doing as dads and as husbands that probably just need to die.
Speaker 1:I think anything that you do in excess can become a bad thing. I think the scripture is pretty replete with examples of such things, but, like you know, I love to eat, but if you constantly overeat, that's a bad thing. Yeah, I mean, you talk about people. We don't have to get into the topic of drinking, but there's a big difference between a drink here and there and someone who can't handle it and they've become an alcoholic and they die of cirrhosis of the liver at some point in their life. So I think you can take anything in life that's enjoyable and pleasurable and brings you happiness, such as a hobby, and the excess of that would become a bad thing.
Speaker 1:I love to get on a boat with friends of mine that have boats or jet skis, but if I'm doing that every day of my life, I think it's a bad thing. People that love to fish, people that love to hunt if your life is consumed by that, I think everything can be done in moderation, and when we do it in excess, it's dangerous. I think everything can be done in moderation, and when we do it in excess, it's dangerous, and so I think there are a lot of things like that that need to probably take a lower rung on the priority ladder than they do. I don't know. What do you think? What's something to you that you feel like?
Speaker 2:I totally agree with what you just said. So it's like, if you pick one, it's like well, yeah, you can say that about anything. I think the one that bothers me probably the most is when I watch guys playing video games and I'm thinking like, okay, there's a difference between sitting down with your kids and playing you knowden against your son or mario kart or whatever right, and having a fun, you know, together the family's doing it versus the dad who I'm not kidding you like I'm visualizing this one guy and he won't listen to this. So I can I'm not gonna say his name, but I can describe in detail do like we.
Speaker 2:We went to their house and they had this is in virginia, so we were coming back into town. We called them up. It's like hey, we're in town, just say hi. They're like oh yeah, so we want to see your new house. And so we go out to their house and it's beautiful. It's really big. They got a big family, so they need the space. It's awesome. They got a lot of land. They have a pond at the bottom of their like hillside it's really cool, right, right, the base of some mountains in virginia.
Speaker 2:It's awesome, right. And then, like, we get to this point and at this point I hadn't actually seen the husband yet because he was doing something and, uh, the wife has taken us on a tour, oh, and we get to this room that is above the garage and it is a just big old room, open space, and the whole space was dedicated to this one side, where there is a table with multiple monitors, this big old, fat, comfy chair. He had a gaming chair, a gaming chair and a headset.
Speaker 1:Headsets, yeah.
Speaker 2:The whole thing. And then he came in and it was like hey, guys, and I'm like hey man, what's up and cool. And then he says something like what do you think of the setup?
Speaker 2:And at that point in my life, guys, I'm thinking to myself setup and at that point in my life, guys, I'm thinking to myself how do I not embarrass him or myself slash, jeopardize any relationship we have with what I want to say? But I'm not going to straight up tell him it's cool, because I don't think it's cool, I think it's really dumb. Right like that's where I was. I just think like that's so hard for me to watch. You know, and again, a little bit of video games. Here and there a guy blows off steam, had a hard day at work, goes in place of video games.
Speaker 2:I'm not, I'm not talking about that. I just think like, if video games are your hobby, I just really feel like that is such a I'm gonna just say it hot take, you can do a hot take meter on this podcast, hot take number one. I feel like that's just a childish thing to do and I just feel like guys have to grow up from gaming. Yeah, cause I just think it's it's, it is a literal time vacuum. It sucks you down.
Speaker 1:And how many other things could you be doing with your family, for your family or even for yourself, that are so much more beneficial than sitting there, getting on, live and playing with people halfway across the world and doing things that don't matter that, that's just my hot take on it I think when um, I don't disagree with any of that I think when you're you're playing you know, madden with your kids, or Call of Duty or whatever with a group of people or your kids or whatever, and it's family time I think those things can be done in moderation it's the guy that's like okay, I've put my family to bed, we've played for a while, now everyone's asleep and it's 2 am and I'm still going hard to try and get to this next level.
Speaker 1:I think that's a point when you've got to be like what are you doing? What are you living for? You're costing your family the time, the money, the energy, the apathy that it would take. I mean, there's so many things with that. I didn't grow up playing a lot of video games. There's so many things with that. I didn't grow up playing a lot of video games. The extent of my gaming life was really Mario Kart. I got into Super Mario Kart and maybe a couple other games here and there. But if you were to tell me, okay, for the next hour we're just going to play video games, I'd be like, oh man, what a drag. Why did I come here?
Speaker 2:This is not what I want to do.
Speaker 1:Whereas other people would be like we only slotted an hour for this, this is, we're just getting started after that. And so I remember going to kids' birthday parties when I was a kid and you know, 007 Goldeneye came out and it's like, oh great, what else are we doing? Yeah, that's it, that's it Wonderful, yeah. So I think you know this is a principle that I think is so true in life is so many times what we as adults do in moderation, our kids will end up doing in excess, and I think that they learn those things from us. And so if, if my son sees dad playing video games for two hours, then to him that's justified, that that he can do that for as many hours as he wants.
Speaker 1:You know how it's like when you're raising kids that are just learning to talk and just learning what words are good words and bad words. If I say one bad word one time in front of my kids, I've now condoned that word to be used by them at any time, for any frequency, in any context. And so what we do in moderation, our kids are going to do in excess more times than not, and so I I feel like as a parental example, if for no other reason. We should kind of take notice of our priorities, what we're doing and what we're what we're communicating to the next generation. And I'm not anti video games, I'm not.
Speaker 2:And if that's?
Speaker 1:if that's your thing that you do with your kid to connect, um, good for you.
Speaker 2:But if you're getting three and a half hours of sleep at night because you know you have a rash on your ears because of the headset you're using in your gaming chair it's like, okay, let's reassess our life choices here and your role is to build up those around you and create spaces and places for your wife and your kids to thrive and to grow. And when I see people playing video games a lot of them now like you're in a fake, virtual, synthetic world and you're building something there. That's why guys come back to do it. Right, because there's this rush of adrenaline and dopamine that hits the brain that says I've accomplished something Right, so that tickles and that really appeases how a guy, a man, is wired.
Speaker 2:But you just spend all this time, sometimes money, building something that isn't real, and so that's why it bothers me more than the others. Like guys have golfing habits that probably should die, right, because like you don't need to go golfing every weekend with your buddies when your wife is at home with four kids trying to keep them at soccer and baseball and play and dance practice and she's shuttling them around and you're out there hitting 18 with the boys right, like that should die. But I think, like the video game one, just as a general one, bothers me more because I just see guys who have the ability to be more than they are and they're building a fake world and giving into fake things when there's real people right there who could benefit from what they could build in their life.
Speaker 1:And I think that when it comes to golf, like you're at least hanging out with other dudes and you're having real conversation, yeah, real relationship, and there's a time limit, there's a cap on golf. When it gets dark, like you're done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sun goes down, you're done there's no relationship, there's a time limit, there's a cap on golf. When it gets dark, you're done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sun goes down, you're done, but there's no relationship, there's no connection, there's no physical connection with gaming and there's no time limit, like if you want to go 24 hours straight and you have the bladder to do it, you can do it.
Speaker 2:Or a catheter Everything in life you can tie back to an episode of Seinfeld.
Speaker 1:Or a catheter, everything in life. You can tie back to an episode of Seinfeld, but there's this one where the pizza place is closing down and Jerry and George go and they see the video game Frogger the arcade game in the corner and.
Speaker 1:George has still got the high score, so he tries to buy the game. And he buys the game and they're like, well, as soon as you unplug it, it's gone. The overhead shot of costanza going across, yeah, yeah, and he, he, you know he. But that's that's how men are wired, is we're accomplishment driven, and it's like I gotta get this high score, I gotta get this level, I gotta beat this game. And then you do it and it's like well then, what, what have you accomplished?
Speaker 1:yeah like what do you have to show for what you've spent all this time?
Speaker 2:doing my kids. We have a Nintendo Wii, that's all we have. My son is saving money so he can buy a Nintendo Switch, which then I then tell him. You know, I have to take you to said store to buy it. And I'm not going to do that right now because I just see how kids I with students, so I just see how they get enveloped in video games so much, and I just try to don't want my kids to become that. But so we have nintendo wii and they went to mckay's which is, if you don't know, like the use bookstore, use electronics. I could get lost in mckay's. Mckay's is an experience. We could do a whole podcast on mckay's and write that down, chris next time we need to talk about.
Speaker 2:Do you, are you?
Speaker 1:are you familiar with mckay's? I am not oh next brother, next time we record, that's where we're starting on mckay's, or mckay's for dummies or something like that story. So we can close out, but let's, let's go to mckay's next time.
Speaker 2:So anyway yeah, like we went there and found some old, used nintendo wii video games for like two or three dollars a pop, and so they bought like two or three and you know, like my son's playing like Madden 2011 where I'm like talking about guys who are right now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame that he's like playing with them on the Wii and I just I'm trying to not be a jerk to him about it, but I do see, like I'll come home from work and if he played he played for like an hour or something or got some video game time for after he did his homework. He'll be like dad. So I did this awesome thing. And he's like telling me the story like it's real and then like just to reframe it for him and again, maybe I'm just being too sarc, dad, at this point, but I'll say, oh, that's great. So so a digital fake person accomplished something for you, so that's awesome.
Speaker 2:You, you hit a button and this guy ran, but so you made some ones and zeros happen, he's like, and he just rolls his eyes, but but I think, like him again, sarcasm aside, what I'm trying to do, the tactic is is dude, that's awesome, but it's not real life, so like it's a cool story, but it's not something that you need to go tell your friends about when you go go to school the next day. I was playing Madden and I did this. Okay, that's cool, but it's gone. But you know what? How many students do that when they come in? I mean, right now it's like fortnight, just as somebody who works with young people, it's all about what they accomplished at Fortnite, or hey check out these skins I got on Fortnite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, check out my skins or the V-Bucks or whatever. They call them Wild, but yeah, so video games just need to die, not a slow, painful death. Pull the plug, just rip the Band-Aid, get rid of it, stop playing them. Dads, fathers, husbands like, have have to take a walk with your kids go have yeah, go outside, or, you know, do a puzzle. How old do I sound saying that? But just do something pretty old, build something that is actually physical.
Speaker 2:Get the lincoln logs out yeah, get out the lincoln logs. Yeah, come on. But I just think that's something for me, that it really bothers me when I see other guys and yeah, somebody's out there is gonna be a gamer they're gonna get super self-defensive and I'll become their least favorite person on this podcast and they'll be like, yeah, that guy's a jerk and he's judgmental. But you know, so be it. If maybe somebody puts down their controller after hearing this, then I've won.
Speaker 2:So that's all I got guys, I'll be the bad guy on this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're the bad guy, right, totally Gamer hater, gamer haters.
