A Deeper Dive into Fatherhood, Parenting and Education with Dr. Good

Do fathers have a choice or a responsibility when it comes to their children? Bold question, right? Today, we tackle this head-on with the insightful Dr. Good, as we scrutinize societal norms and media portrayals that seem to give fathers an out, while mothers, especially single mothers, are celebrated. Dr. Good brings a fresh perspective on how crucial the role of a father is in a child's life.

We don't stop there. Parenthood is ever-evolving, and no two families are the same. Dr. Good helps us navigate the diverse landscape of modern parenting styles, single-parent households, and so much more. We examine the need for restorative practices in schools and how it can foster trust within parent communities. We also emphasize parent education, specifically on emotional intelligence, self-awareness and dealing with personal traumas that can affect our parenting.

Finally, we ask an important question: Do we have the collective will to transform our school systems? Dr. Good and I explore the success of multilingual and STEM education. We also discuss the importance of preparing ourselves for the role of parenting before having children. Dr. Good shares his experiences with Legacy Preparatory Charter, emphasizing the benefits of bilingual education and exposing students to a variety of cultures. Join us for an enlightening journey into the world of fatherhood, parenting, and education, and let's collectively make the changes our children need. You don't want to miss this.

Transcript

Byron: 0:02

Hello and welcome to our podcast series, the Father Factor Podcast. I'm your host, byron Ricks, and joining me is my co-host and good friend, josh Wombrod. The objective is to give a voice to fathers who are not able to be with their kids, mothers who are raising kids without fathers, and children who, unfortunately, are growing up without fathers in their lives.

JLove: 0:25

It take more than names to be a man oh yeah. It take more than sex to be a dad oh yeah. It take more than good to be the bad oh yeah, it take more. It take more, more, more, more more.

Byron: 0:45

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Father Factor. My name is Byron Ricks. I'm your host. My co-host today is Josh Wombrod. My other co-host today is Byron Ricks. Okay, guys, how you guys doing, good, good Doing well, Got a little airflow feeling good. So what's going on for the holidays?

Josh: 1:08

Oh, the holidays and I'm kicking it. We're getting ready to go out of town, so we're just in preparation for that, getting everything situated prepared. So I'm going to keep it real low key because I plan on doing nothing for the next 10 so days.

Byron: 1:27

So, brandon, you used that new grill, yet.

Brandon: 1:29

I have. I made some mistakes on it.

Byron: 1:31

Really, yeah. What was my invitation?

Brandon: 1:34

You know it was delayed.

Byron: 1:36

Lost in the middle.

Brandon: 1:38

It was delayed. I apologize. I'll make sure I send the next one out.

Byron: 1:42

Dr Good, our guest today. She has a holiday every day, so they just want to try it out Every day, Every day.

Dr. Good: 1:53

I don't need steak in my holidays I'm still vegetarian.

Byron: 1:58

Okay, you are listening to the father factor. My name is Byron Ricks. Why? Because fathers count. I want to read something to you real quick as brief on some research I got from the National Fatherhood Institute. Dr Good, hopefully you can comment on this for us. It says why fathers count. There is a category in social science called father absence. The absence of a father is known to researchers to be a significant factor in the success or failure of children. The fact is, fathers make a huge and irreplaceable difference in the lives of their children in terms of education, income, abuse, mental and physical health, drug use, sexual activity, pregnancy and almost every other social indicator. Again, that's something I got from the National Fatherhood Initiative. So, dr Good, as an educator, you was with us before. Thank you for coming back. How are you doing today?

Dr. Good: 3:00

I'm doing great. Thank you, Breski Yourself.

Byron: 3:02

I'm fantastic. I'm looking forward to this holiday and also, my vacation is coming up this month. My birthday is coming up this month. The wife and I are going to go to Porta Is it Porta Varda? Yeah, porta Varda for about a week on my birthday and going to stay to her birthday. So I'm looking forward to that. So, yeah, july, july is a great month since I was born.

Dr. Good: 3:27

In this month I'm giving myself a plug in my mind Okay, I know what I'm doing Happy birthday.

Brandon: 3:32

Happy early birthday, happy birthday.

Byron: 3:34

No, I want gifts. I'm at that age where I want more than happy birthday. I want gifts.

Dr. Good: 3:43

Okay, I'm not me, not me. Man, I'm in the giving away business, I'm not. I don't want anybody to give me anything except time. That's what I want for my kids.

Byron: 3:50

Well, time is a good gift. Time is the best gift actually you can get, okay. So, dr Good, what do you think about the statement I just read that fathers are instrumental in the lives of children, in the areas of their success, their education, their income, etc. Etc.

Dr. Good: 4:10

Well, yeah, it makes perfect sense that a father in the home, or at least in the lives of their children, on a consistent basis, would make that child healthier mentally and physically. There's no question about it. I just I'm wondering how it is that we don't work harder to make our men feel like they need to be in the lives of kids, because that's why I see that some men father children and don't feel that urge to be part of their lives, and so they don't feel that connection.

Dr. Good: 5:00

They don't feel that connection like the mom, we need to push the value of that so that people are expecting any male who fathers a child to be part of that child's life. And right now we sort of give them a pass, don't we?

Byron: 5:19

I don't know that we give them a pass. That's a great question, because give them a pass is, though we somewhat support it, and I don't think that society supports it. I think it's become an epidemic that we don't quite know what to do about it, how to handle it.

Brandon: 5:37

Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I do see the validity in what Dr Goode is saying in terms of supporting it, because it's almost encouraged and we talked about this on previous episodes where you see this idea of being a single mother as something to be praised, so which logically would mean that we are supporting an absence of fathers. And even when you look at content from TV and film, you see an intentionality behind depicting the father as either incompetent or aloof, disconnected. There's always the father who is not involved in the child's life and trying to figure it out, while the mother is kind of shying him for not being involved and he's trying to get right. You see that depiction quite often through our content. So I think there is some validity in what Dr Goode is saying there.

Byron: 6:40

Wait a minute. So you're saying Dr Goode stated that she felt like it was condoned, or?

Dr. Good: 6:50

Well, we're not saying go forth and father children. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that we haven't made fathers who have fathered children Somehow, we've not made them feel like they're responsible. We've given them a choice, often that they should be responsible and be connected.

Byron: 7:14

So who's given them a choice? The mother given them a choice. The legal system given them a choice. Society given them a choice Society, I think.

Dr. Good: 7:22

Yeah, I think along with that, I think that yeah, I agree Absolutely. I'll give you a perfect example. It used to be that when a female got pregnant in high school, let's say that it was an embarrassment the parents were just so embarrassed they took the girl and sent her to the aunt in another state to have the baby and give the baby a production, because they didn't want anybody to know. That's just not done.

Josh: 7:50

We don't have that anymore. What I think that's the problem, honestly, is that's where they If anyone wants to blame the father, I mean okay, whatever, but I blame the mother too, or the parents of the mother, especially when they're young, because oftentimes you got my daughter pregnant. You won't see that boy no more. Right there, there's a separation of the father and the child.

Brandon: 8:14

Yeah, but that's I think. What you're saying, though, is supporting Dr Good's point is that there is a systemic issue in terms of, ideologically, how we view the importance of a father's presence in the life of the child.

Josh: 8:34

Right, but we're holding the father responsible. I think he's responsible for oftentimes what he didn't have nothing to do with. The angry mama drama is one of those things.

Brandon: 8:42

I don't know if Dr Good presumed responsibility on an individual.

Josh: 8:45

I think that she's saying at a society at large has Made it okay for the father to abandon, but how many times does the father actually abandon, versus the father as being a child?

Brandon: 8:55

I know a lot of dudes that abandon their kids.

Josh: 8:58

Oh, I do too, but I also know a ton of women that make it impossible, so I don't think it's a mother-father thing.

Brandon: 9:04

No, but that's not what she's saying, though.

Josh: 9:05

She's not saying mother-father, she's saying society at large collectively Right I get that, but More accepting of the phrasing of the father's ability to walk away puts more responsibility on the father. But there is a combination. There was two people to tango, to had his baby, and oftentimes we can't from a judgmental place, from the nosebleeds, we can't say, oh, this person or that person from society. Yes, society has made it easier to hold men more accountable for walking out on the father's and there's a ton of young girls that it's okay. They're victimized for being single mothers and the reality is both people have a responsibility. She would agree with that though.

Josh: 9:52

No, that's what I'm saying, but my disagreement was the father putting it more so on the father's yeah, I don't know if she was assessing more blame on one or the other, though.

Byron: 10:02

Yeah, I don't think so either.

Dr. Good: 10:04

I think that we as a society have tolerated practices that we didn't used to tolerate, and this is how it's played out.

Byron: 10:13

Well, yeah, I talk about in my book being called a bastard child because I didn't have a father and that was just a horrible term that I had to come to deal with and it was terrible for me to go through that and have to deal with that, because I had absolutely no input on maybe in here. But today you have women who have three or four or five quote unquote bastard children, if you will. Yeah, mike, but I want to clean that up though. But they're not bastard children at all, just a label that society put on those poor kids. Those poor kids had nothing to do with their own birth, so why should they be labeled that? But they were back then because of how society looked at pregnancy outside of marriage back then. So I'm not saying it should be that extreme either. Yet the tolerances for fathers not being in the household is greater than it was then. Now some would blame the federal government. You know, depending on what community you listen to, some would blame the federal government, especially in black communities or African American communities, because if you, they would not give any assistance to black people if a father was anywhere around.

Byron: 11:42

I remember dating a girl I was 15 or 14, whatever it was. And one day the social worker came by and her father's shoes were like right there in the room and she just panicked and she went to the door and she said you got to have my father's shoes. I'm like what the hell is going on. And so I remember grabbing her shoes or running around the house with her father's shoes trying to figure out what to do with her father's shoes. So I went out the back door and I just threw her father's shoes in the garbage can.

Josh: 12:13

No, I mean, but that's real, because I interviewed a lady years ago. She was doing it, perfect for sales, she was just, she was it. But she didn't want to do it because she would have lost her benefits, because she made too much money and therefore the difference between making that money in childcare and no childcare assistance would have broke her. So she chose not to.

Byron: 12:38

But I don't want to use, as Martin Luther King said, I don't want to use that as a crutch or a bell out either. Because, to your point, Brandon, and to your point, Dr Good, the question is still on the table for me and we're going to get to this more in depth in another segment. But what is it? Why is it and maybe it is society that the man, the husband, the father, the kid doesn't have the same commitment to that kid that that mother does? And why is it okay? Because society, now what allows that to be okay.

Josh: 13:17

So, I would say this here's because women own the baby. It's the woman's baby. That's how society sees it.

Brandon: 13:30

No, he's right about that, though that is definitely a part of it. You see that play out in the courts. You see that play out again in just the banter. This is my child. I'm not going to let you see my child. If you act up, I determine I'm the judge jury of your behavior and whether or not you're worthy of seeing this child. But if the mother behaves poorly, there's nobody saying you can't see your child.

Josh: 14:01

Right. So here's the other thing. In the African American community, Average father doesn't know or realize that they have the rights to that child too. They just don't know.

Dr. Good: 14:16

And one of those rights that I learned from Byron when he was on my podcast and we were talking about this, was that Mothers must still allow fathers to visit their kids, even if they're behind on child support. Right, right, that is there's not understood out there and the fathers don't understand that. So they, you know they hear mom say no, you can't visit until you catch up on your child support, and he doesn't visit, instead of saying oh, yes, I'm gonna, you know, call a lawyer, if you don't let me see my kid exactly.

Byron: 14:47

Well, they put they equate the Visitation of the child or interacting with the child, or connecting with the child with a monetary price. And that is not that. It's a a paternal Connection that should be there. And yet I'm for taking care of your kids all all the while. I'm not saying they shouldn't do that, but that has become so in a twine. When the man can't do it, then you got some who won't. But I'm talking about those who can't for whatever reason. There's a monetary Number put out there and then they can't see their kids or they don't see their kids because of that, that's.

Josh: 15:28

That's how unfair these courts are well, take the number out of it. I know people who have Set up to take their kid for Christmas afternoon, because the kids spent Christmas morning with mom. Well, mom, they having such a good time now they decided, hey, now, how about you get them tomorrow?

Brandon: 15:47

Oh, yeah, exactly, and then it's, it's becomes.

Josh: 15:50

It's at the discretion, oftentimes, of the mother and what she feels.

Brandon: 15:54

Exactly it. There's. I think I don't know if I told this story before, but I have a friend of mine who there was a court order for the exchange, the drop certain location and the that drop-off location was determined, you know, years prior to this point in time where I'm telling now, and both of them lived Close to each other in the same city and the mother chose to drive 45 minutes, 50 minutes South, to drop the child off at her mother's house. Okay, to make it inconvenient for him and to take less time, as opposed to just saying, hey, we live down the street, we live five minutes from each other, but instead I'm gonna drive this kid 45 minutes Okay away and make you drive to a part of the city where you don't live to make this exchange, and then I'm gonna come late, robbing you of your time. These petty things.

Byron: 16:53

That happened, but but are those the exception?

Josh: 16:56

I would say no. I would say the exceptions.

Byron: 16:59

Nowadays is common decency so you say you think that happens more often than not absolutely.

Josh: 17:06

I mean, I got plenty of male friends or people that reach out to me that are fathers and Whether they are fighting we're fighting for the marriage to the bitter end or still trying to fight to be in their kids life and oftentimes it comes down to the mood or Whether they're compliant with what their ex-wife baby mother wants, and if not it's a problem. Now I'm not saying that all women are not trying to generalize, but we're trying to give some perspective and for those fathers that are going through that, it's still not an excuse to not be there. Drive that 45 minutes at 50 minutes to get your kid. That's gonna be part of your love story with your child. You know that's. That's just part of it.

Josh: 17:46

So I'm not letting those guys off the hook, but what I am saying is that when a child is not equally a man's from the perspective of society, it makes it incredibly challenging for a male to fight for the same rights, to still have, that's, the equal freedom to their child. And so when we talk about whether be male, female, whatever interaction is, the child needs both parents right, and so Denying a child one or the other parent is detrimental. I mean it could even be. It sets them up for all of the Disadvantages, and dr Good then has to create programs to to try to help them out.

Byron: 18:30

Right, because that manifests itself in schools, in this kid in school and you were talking about you left off, did you last time here? And we were talking about programs that Successful schools are using now to help combat some of the challenges of Not just single parent kids, but but helicopter parents and parents who don't all types of parenting Today, because parenting today has changed.

Dr. Good: 19:01

It has very much so. So at legacy, when we noticed that it was little black boys that were being sent to the office more than any other gender and ethnicity, then what I started doing was not only starting mentoring programs with Professor freedom, and then we also had a girl group at the Plano school, but we started restorative practice. Restorative practice is a social justice System of having kids be self-accountable and, interestingly enough, it was started in Minnesota 20 some odd years ago and it was done with youth in the social justice system and Then, because they were so successful with it, it spread. So one of the things that they do and and how it impacts Staff and kids, because bringing in restorative practice is as much about changing the adults Mindset as it is the kids, because the adults a very first thing adults want to do is to punish. It is unfortunate that we have to retrain the adult brain to be less instinctively Punitive and then we have to put in their hands tools to help them manage the system with kids so that over time they become believers in it and and being punitive is off the table once we get the adults correctly trained.

Dr. Good: 20:41

One of the things that is done in a restorative practice system is to meet every morning in a circle and have the kids. Let's say it's Monday, and every Monday you have the kids come and show you with their fingers how they feel One is fantastic and a four is terrible. And so when you have students show you that on Monday morning, you quickly know who your problem kids are for that day and how very quickly you know who to start focusing in on during your classwork time so that you can get that three or four down to a one or two. So now you've trained teachers to be responsive to the feedback that you're getting from kids about the type of weekend they had, which might have been really good or might have been really bad, and so it puts the teacher on notice and then let's say third graders hit, that's third graders hit as in punch.

Dr. Good: 21:47

Parents hate when we tell them that is age appropriate behavior and it is our work as parents and as teachers to move them away from that behavior into their less.

Byron: 22:03

Okay, I want to stress this a little bit. Okay, your question is coming up, but I want my audience to hear this Third graders hit or punch and that's totally appropriate for the age. Is that what you are?

Dr. Good: 22:19

develop developmentally what they do and so we know as parents at home, for example, we say stop hitting your sister, stop hitting your brother right, Stop hitting the dog.

Byron: 22:33

Right.

Dr. Good: 22:35

At school, we have restorative questions that are there to address the harm being done to somebody in our community, and so, instead of the teacher saying something like stop, stop hitting him, or I'm going to send you to the principal's office, what you train teachers to do is to get with the person that was hit and the person who hit, and then we start asking a series of questions what happened? What were you thinking at the time? What have you thought about it since that time? You know, are you sorry? You're hoping that they're sort of remorseful? Who has been affected and in what way? How could things have been done differently? And what do you think needs to happen next? Now, again, they sound hokey, but used over time, especially with our young kids, and use consistently every year in the school system. What happens is that kids start self correcting and they start apologizing when they do something impulsively. Because kids are impulsive, they say, oh my God.

Byron: 23:39

So you sort of make them think about what they were feeling at the time they struck that other kid.

Dr. Good: 23:46

Yes, yes, it makes them more self reflective, it makes them more self aware of how they were feeling. And sometimes you might say you might hear a child say well, you know, I just wasn't feeling well this morning and when Juanito did that, it just set me off. Okay, well, is it Juanito's fault that you weren't feeling well? No, so what do you need to say to Juanito? And so there's that discussion.

Dr. Good: 24:12

And so when you start implementing this sense of community and self awareness and the harm that you are causing to people in our community, that, over time, you don't want to do, it's a beautiful thing. And here's what I'll tell you in our play no school, which used to be a third white, a third black and a third Hispanic, over time, using restorative practice to our teachers, learned how to manage kids that campus switch to predominantly black. Imagine that because other families you know who were talking to legacy African American families said oh, that's a safe environment for my child, because African American families look for safer school environments, don't they? And so having a school that has happy African American families because their kids are not being punished is beautiful, and it caused a change. It caused us to become predominantly African Americans.

Byron: 25:14

So when done right and consistently, that's a legacy, present preparatory in school in Plano, texas, which I am indeed the president of the board of that school, by the way. So Dr Good abandoned me, but that's okay.

Brandon: 25:33

No.

Byron: 25:34

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Brandon: 25:36

Dr Good, I have a question. You made a statement earlier in terms of just how we get to a place of better understanding with methodologies around parenting and how we discipline the children, and you made a statement about better educating the parents, and I have a question for you Is it the school's responsibility to educate parents on how to parent their children?

Dr. Good: 26:06

I will tell you that it shouldn't be, but it is Okay If a well run school will own that. Okay, we shouldn't have to do a lot of things in schools, but we have had to feed kids breakfast and lunch and send weekend backpacks full of food. We have counseled, we have set up mentoring programs. We shouldn't have to do any of that, but we do because we acknowledge the need for it, and that's what good schools do. So when parents are looking for a good school, it shouldn't only be about the test scores. It should be about you know how many kids what's your, what's your discipline data look like. And those are okay questions that parents could ask administrators. Now, administrators might be a little bit surprised to hear parents asking that, but it shouldn't be a secret. If you have great discipline data, because you, frankly, don't have a lot of kids sent to the office you should be very proud of that, and so yeah, I guess I guess, Dr Goodman, I'm raising the question because you know the things that you mentioned.

Brandon: 27:22

I have no issue with right the discipline data. You know all the testing and the scores and the curriculum that surrounds the student experience. My, my issue is that where have we failed as a nation to where we have individuals who need to be provided with so many research on how to parent their own children? The school teachers already have their hands full with educating the students during a school day and they already underpaid, okay. And so now we're feeding children, now we are providing counseling services before trauma and on top of that, now we have to give parents tools and resources on how to better parent their own children that they had with free will. This is a problem, you know, for me as a nation, that we don't have a greater accountability, that we're out here just making babies and dropping our kids off at school and saying grow my child, when there's not, there doesn't seem to be an accountability on the parents to pour into their children before they even arrive at school.

Josh: 28:31

Some parents don't have anything to pour into their kid, though.

Brandon: 28:34

So I got, but I'm not talking about some parents.

Josh: 28:37

I get accountability thing, but it's just with high emotional intelligence tend to do extremely well in life and a lot of times it's not taught. So at what point do we stop throwing money at those that are struggling and actually resource them? How do we counsel and help parents get past their own trauma and depression? And some of them are just exhausted from work. So I'm not taking a defense with this, but I'm just saying that we have to step up as a people and meet the need, because there's nobody else that's willing to do it, other than people like Dr Good, those schools, because we're talking about just cycles and cycles and cycles of trauma. It was no end in sight until somebody disrupts the process, and it sounds like that's what Dr Good and them are doing with teaching emotional intelligence as a real disruption to the cycle.

Dr. Good: 29:26

So there is a solution. It's just. The solution is with our politicians. Unfortunately, everything has been politicized. Our school systems all depend on the whim of our legislators and our governor. So what would need to happen is that we as a people would have to group up and decide. We've had enough and we want them to fund mental health and better parenting resources in our schools. And we want, we want, we want, and if you don't give a time, I vote you out.

Dr. Good: 30:03

But we don't do that. We're too scattered, and until our political will gets fiercer than their political will, then Nothing's going to change. Now I'll give you an example of political will from our standpoint, and that is in Texas. At least, the Uvalde parents have been beating down the door of those legislators for gun control change. Right, they've made a little bit of impact not enough, unfortunately, because we're a red state. But over time, if they continue that and if they continue to encourage people to vote out those who do not want to do gun control change and it actually happens, then it sends a message that politicians must pay attention to the political will of the people. But until we group up and make ourselves the Owners of the political will, we're not going to get change.

Josh: 31:02

So do you think change is possible with that statement, knowing that so many people are after Self?

Dr. Good: 31:10

I Again I'll use it while they as an example, if they continue doing what they're doing, which is beating down the door consistently Wanting just a cup. I think they only want two or three things. They want the gun laws to change to 21. They Want to make it harder, I think, to be able to get to buy a firearm, and there may be something else, but they're very, very consistent with their message. If they can get enough people Saying that those same things to their own legislators over time, and if it doesn't happen they're voted out, then the message gets understood by politicians.

Brandon: 31:52

I don't know how that, I don't know how that changes, though, the efficiency in parents, you know so. You know I'm dr Good, I know that you're, of course, a master of the understandings of developmental psychology and you know I had the privilege of taking that in college and you know I studied Eric Erickson in Piaget and Maria Montessori and understanding Childhood development and the different things that happens within each stage of development. But I was intentional about learning those things so that when I had kids, I understood when they were at the certain age, so that I had the appropriate amount of knowledge To help them through that particular phase of lifespan development. And I don't, I don't see a collective desire of Our society to educate themselves before they have children, and so I don't know how changing the political landscape is going to better equip parents with the tools they need to parent and raise their children with effective methods. Because by the time the kids get dropped off at school, they they come with a litany of bad habits and issues.

Brandon: 33:05

And me, being a parent of three at different ages, I've got, you know, 1713 and 10, and so I volunteer at schools and I see the behavior of these young people, and it starts in the home. You know, and so I. How do we, how do we fix that? How do we solve the problem of a what seems to be a negligent approach to the importance of pouring into your kids good ways of doing and thinking before they even walk into a school building?

Dr. Good: 33:36

Again, I think the onus is on the school, and and again, getting enough resources from the politicians is an important part of that to fund these Parenting classes. But let me also put out another. Shouldn't the churches be helping us more?

Brandon: 33:54

I don't see this is not a Christian nation, though, so I don't know yeah.

Dr. Good: 33:58

There's a church on every block, around most places. So how about? How about the churches take helping us out?

Byron: 34:04

You know. You know what I think. I, first of all, I think that is a question that Does not have a single answer. Number one I think that schools, and especially, I know, legacy charter does, and get involved in that. I think that there are some churches that they do get involved in that. Yet you know the old adage you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

Byron: 34:31

I think a lot of what you are at the question you ask, brandon, about the the onus being on parents, you have to want to be a good parent. You have to understand what being a good parent is. I didn't know what a good father was, but I knew what a good father wasn't, so I worked on not being that father. Also, you said that you read books and you did things to educate yourself About parenting. Well, so did. I. Was our perfect parent, not by the stretch of imagination, but I'll continually try to improve and do better, and that is something that has to be innate In that parent. And then you talked about Brandy. You're one of your.

Byron: 35:17

Your things you talk about is Generational curses, generational. You know, if a person hasn't had a good father or a good mother, then they don't know how to be a good father and a good mother. So this question has many Avenues by which we can address it in order to get to this one place. I don't think there's a one answer. I think that dr Good has a piece of that answer. I think I've had a piece of that answer. I think church is a piece of that and I think all of that. Now we can lay out and say, well, what about the God factor? Yeah, but that's another whole Argument. But I just do not think in itself your question has a single answer solution. It's multiple, I agree.

Brandon: 36:05

I don't know if I was looking for a single answer. I wanted to. I wanted to hear you know the perspective and to see what these solutions are, because I I don't want to sound defeatist, but I don't know if this nation has the fortitude to be able to solve a lot of these problems. I think that is. I think it starts with these kinds of discussions and conversations and getting into harder Dialogue about these things, but there doesn't seem to be a willingness to want to change. There seems to be a level of contentment with the way that things are.

Josh: 36:40

I mean, that comes down to People don't like I agree with that.

Byron: 36:44

No, I agree with that but I.

Josh: 36:45

People don't like to acknowledge when they're wrong. People don't like to confront themselves. That is true.

Byron: 36:52

Well, what is also true I believe I'm sorry is that In order for you to to address an issue or problem, you have to identify it. Yes, know that, you have it and that's what I was going. Okay, that's why I was going because you know people don't.

Josh: 37:09

If they're not looking for what, the, the root cause of the problem is, they're not going to find what, what the problem really is. It's going to be the, the plethora of things, the, the actual, the symptoms of the problem is what they're typically battling, not the actual problem, which requires you know what you see to your point, accountability, and requires confrontation.

Byron: 37:31

You know what I'm gonna. I'm gonna end here With this and then you all can have a final comment. But I am from the era and Dr Good making relate to this, I don't know. I'm from the era of when you had to be home before the lights came on. The street lights came on.

Josh: 37:47

I'm from that era, okay there was no era to Kind of, but.

Byron: 37:54

My rule is a damn. That's where I'm going with this. Okay, because there was a group of us we had to be home. There's a group of us that was out there. There's a group of you and we were in the house looking out the window at you guys can't Damn. Look how much fun that looks. Stay out, you know. But but today that has flipped. You have more kids out Than in well, depends on where you live.

Brandon: 38:22

If I go outside in the suburbs, there's not a kid around in sight. They're all on devices. Well, I'm not the concept of it.

Byron: 38:29

I mean, you see, we couldn't even been on a device at a friend's house when the light came on. You had to be at home.

Brandon: 38:36

Period, we all gonna have any devices, dad.

Byron: 38:38

Well.

Brandon: 38:46

We had TV.

Byron: 38:46

You know, we had TV we had TV and we had more fun. We used to play it high and go see what's the game. You throw the ball. Hey, dodgeball, dodgeball, that's right. Stick ball, stick ball.

Brandon: 39:00

Yeah, I had five real Stages to imagine we had imagination we could had.

Byron: 39:05

A stick was a gun. You know we had imagination. You kids Go to the TV for Matt. I mean, what are you kind of little games for imagination?

Brandon: 39:14

They got all kind of things. I mean, but that's, that's the biggest thing man is.

Josh: 39:18

Which what you're saying, though, is the accountability, the love, the love factor. Your mama loved you, so, therefore, she knew she needed to protect you. You need to be home at this time. Some I'm not saying that others didn't love, but the concept of the protective protective discipline and, as I said, you know, no talking back.

Byron: 39:38

Sometimes I have to look at my own grandkids and go Y'all gotta go home, y'all gotta go home. I, I can't do this oh yeah and it's not that they're Disrespectful, because I won't allow that, but they have enjoyed a verbal freedom. Did that make sense?

Brandon: 39:59

Yeah, that I didn't, which I don't think is I don't think we can talk about it. We're around a time with that. I don't think that's necessarily a negative. I think there are ways that your parents thought about the interaction between parents and children that was flurry, flawed and, uh, it was very.

Byron: 40:18

Now, now, now you're doing a star song, we don't.

Brandon: 40:23

That's just overcorrection. They was right, right, like there's there is. They were excessive in some of the things that they the way they treated children was was wrong.

Byron: 40:30

I believe that that's probably true In some cases, many cases, but that wasn't true in my mom's case. Um, so see, we are against it now.

Josh: 40:40

I mean, we're talking about my final statement and then we got to wrap up right is what we're dealing with? Is we're dealing with the human element, all right, which is unpredictable, right? The human element has. You know, anybody with kids, especially more than one, can say that their kids are not exactly the same. They think differently, they act differently, they're bold in different areas, and that's the human experience as well. So, you know, my daughter and I's son would be like, oh man, yo, my daughter's experienced, in which that we had to take out, surf the table just to get to that place, right, right? So each person is different, each individual, each parent, each child, you name it. So the solution, like you said, there's no specific, because everybody has our own filter and view of the world and what happened to them or happened through them, and it's our choice to Decide do we want to make the change be the change or continue to Allow what's happened to our families happened to us? Great, great.

Byron: 41:35

You know what we're not gonna. I need five more minutes because what I didn't do Is get dr Good to talk a little bit about the body work that we did. Uh, with legacy preparatory charter, I met dr Good I forget, maybe it was 2011. I want to say yeah okay, and and um, we went down to the state board of texas. Yeah, actually was called.

Byron: 42:02

That was the state board of texas, texas school board texas school board and we had an idea for the school. In fact, I didn't have the idea. I was brought in Dr Good was there when I got there as the administrator. The educator put together curriculum and and we were able to secure a charter for the school. And, um, we started the school in three churches and now we have two campuses. But, dr Good, where I like for you to pick up, because what intrigued me With you is the curriculum that you had developed for the school that included, um, spanish and chinese, and stem Talk a little bit about that dream. So, um, which has become a reality.

Dr. Good: 42:57

I, I was a college professor. I didn't say that in my earlier. I was a college professor for both um, online and face-to-face teaching teachers who wanted to get their masters in different areas, and so I was privy to a lot of research. Right, when you teach college courses, you read a lot of research so that you can know what to get to your audience, and the research was telling us, even back in 2011, when I wrote the curriculum part, that kids of color, kids from poverty, succeeded in project-based learning environments that included STEM, science, technology, engineering and math. And also I knew from being a bilingual teacher and being raised in Latin America, where Spanish was my first language, that we needed to not only teach a second and third language in our case starting in kindergarten, because that's when the baby brain is most open to other languages but we needed to continue it so that we would graduate kids from poverty areas, from families of color, with the successful tools that some of the neighboring schools had not used, and so we've been very successful at doing that.

Dr. Good: 44:19

And you know, it's a thing of beauty to see an African-American third grader or fourth grader speaking Chinese or speaking Spanish during the assemblies or the parent nights and such, and because I knew that that was just so good for the brain.

Dr. Good: 44:39

I mean, the brain is capable of so much more than what we actually allow it to do, and so few schools challenge kids in ways like that. We have a very Americanized consciousness of English only and being a closed culture to other cultures, and so, with being able to offer this to our students, it was a life-changing experience for them, especially when we brought teachers from Spain and Puerto Rico and they would do presentations and bring their culture, their food and so forth and have the kids talk to people from the other side of the world. You know, kids who have never been out of their neighborhood, except maybe when Professor Freedom's bus tours to the museum. So giving the experiences to kids who otherwise wouldn't have them is life-changing. You know, in addition to the counseling, in addition to the mentoring, that is needed to be done because these kids do come from generational poverty or generational trauma, and so all of that needs to be handled with finesse, while teaching them well enough that they can pass the state test. So that's why schools so, yeah.

Josh: 45:59

No, it's so simple it's. I mean it's not simple, but at the end of the day, the biggest thing that I hear that is being taught to that child is confidence and self-belief, because now they believe they can overcome language barriers, they can overcome the social norms. You've created confidence in a child and self-confidence is the word.

Dr. Good: 46:22

And so many of these kids go on to college when in fact, none of their family went to college. So first-time college goers, and so those are the kind of successes good schools have, and they're life-changing Alrighty. So thank you for the opportunity to bring that.

Byron: 46:40

Well, Dr Good, we Well. Thank you. We appreciate you coming to join us on the Father Factor. God, it's just so much more we could do. You're such a rich an experience and, as I said, I've enjoyed working with you over the past 10 years or so and I mean we could talk about that. That's the whole show in itself. We used to meet in the Starbucks. We used to have our board meeting in the Starbucks and the music was playing. And Dr Good asked me when they turned the music down. They said, no, you're in Starbucks, but we were able to secure a million-dollar loan if you will. And the rest is history. Yep, the rest is history.

Dr. Good: 47:30

My last word to y'all is pay attention to your schools, Be supportive of your schools and advocate for them with your politicians. Over time it can make a difference.

Byron: 47:43

Okay, thanks again, dr. Good, thank you. Gentlemen, I am going and ladies, I am going to get ready to sign off here. I'm looking forward to tomorrow Anybody inviting me over.

Josh: 47:55

I was waiting for my invite.

Byron: 47:59

Yeah, you got this Exactly I got to see a new patio.

Brandon: 48:04

Yeah, exactly.

Byron: 48:06

Let's go to the lake.

Brandon: 48:06

Yes, let's go to the lake, let's go to the lake, dr.

Josh: 48:08

Good, we want to. Let's go to the lake, okay.

Byron: 48:11

You've been listening to the Father Factor. I'm your host, byron Ricks. My co-host, josh Warnbrough, shotgun with me.

Brandon: 48:19

Brandon Ricks.

Byron: 48:20

And remember you've been listening to the Father Factor why? Because fathers count. Fathers, all your children are equally yours. Till next time, hey, thank you. This is Byron, the Father Factor Podcast. Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, subscribe and share and tell us your thoughts. We'd like to hear from you. Perhaps you can be on our show. And to the fathers out there, remember all your children are equally yours.