To Be a DAD is a group coaching circle for loving fathers. It's a safe place to tell your story, BUT you will be challenged, as you yourself will challenge. For we are men and we call each other out when we need to!
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It is a men's group after all and we're not here to cry on one another's shoulders or seek sympathy. In fact, sympathetic refuge is not an option because you know that you inwardly smile when another parent tells you their kid vomited in the car. It's comic relief to your own dirty stories, and it makes you feel better about yourself.
We share the parenting responsibility with our other halves - and some of you are single dads - and there have, honestly, been some tough times. Sleep deprivation, affecting work, uncertainty, our relationships with others, sex, golf...
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Even if you do have an outlet (beer with mates once a week), no one is really interested in your parenting woes - "We're here to drink beer." - and so you bury the emotion that resides behind the unintended facade and only let it out once in a while, in the form of a moan to elicit some kind of verbal confirmation that your life is worse than anyone else's. Then you feel better. Or stupid, because it didn't quite feel as you hoped it would.
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I (Jason) am a dad to twin 8-year old twin boys. I had a story about how tough it was and how no one really, REALLY got it, but through my own work I saw that it really was nothing more than the story I was telling myself. I'll never deny that my life completely changed when I had kids, or that I lost so much sleep that my health was compromised, but what I chose to do with those circumstances was completely up to me. Like with most other situations in our lives, we have choice, but sometimes the current reality is so blinding that it takes personal intervention of some kind to slow it all down, just for a second, and take stock. When we are able to see the wood for the trees, we can navigate our way through the forest. When we change the way we see the world, our world changes.
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It's about perspective, and when it comes to parenting, a tiny shift in the way that we approach or interpret something can influence our experience of it, turning negative into positive.
If you're struggling and you think I have all the answers, or even one, forget about it. And neither will the other dads in the group. But what you will discover is that your problems are really not as big as you thought they were, or, they're not a problem at all. That's the power of group coaching - it creates context and pulls you out of your story... opens your eyes. Even if your challenges are around unimaginable circumstances, like the health of your child (God forbid), understanding that you still have choice as to how you walk this earth, is an empowering gift, and must be used to lift yourself and those around you, while you continue to do all you do for your loved ones.
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Coaching is not teaching
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Coaching fathers is not about providing strategies that you can implement to make everything better, or giving you evidence that you can take home to your wife to prove that you were right. It's about who you are and your approach to parenting, ultimately showing up as the best version of yourself, be that a father, a husband or just a human being.
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That being said, I have been taught the world-renowned Parent Effectiveness Training and have attended several couple and group sessions with coaches that help parents be better parents, including working with our own associate coach, Gail, that works one-on-one with parents. I bring all my insights and learnings to the coaching circle.
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It's a 6-month commitment
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The work that we do serves to shift your way of being and ultimately affect how you show up as a father. Such transformation takes time and we therefore ask for a commitment of 6 months. In our experience, certain and definite change is realised over such a period, especially when the members are active participants and committed to process.
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Your investment is R1,750 per month
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We meet twice a month for an hour and a half over Zoom. The group will always be limited to 12 participants plus one coach.
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