Men And Parenting: Why We Appreciate The Role Of Mothers With Co-Host Rob Smith

Parenting is tough for anyone. Mothers worldwide are praised for their strength and decision-making abilities in different aspects of parenting. What about men? They show up, listen, and love the women that raise their kids because the mothers' job is pretty much the hardest on the planet. Join your host Ryan Weeden as he welcomes a new co-host, Rob Smith to discuss men and parenting. Rob shares how he tries to find his role in being a father and be a successful business leader at the same time. They delve into how men do their best to help in ways they could, and how women can't be replaced in the world of parenting.

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Men And Parenting: Why We Appreciate The Role Of Mothers With Co-Host Rob Smith

How are you doing?

I'm doing good. I'm feeling good. I have had a CELSIUS but I started. I just cracked it. You got one, too. I held out until the afternoon. Although you, I don't get a real crash from this. I wanted my afternoon caffeine and I wanted it to be a CELSIUS.

This is my second one.

I've already had a coffee and a workout drink. I'm pretty jacked up. For those readers that are reading and not watching, because it's not video. Rob is looking like he's in space. He looks like he's floating. He's moving his arms around and he's waving them all over the place very slowly, like in slow motion. I'm looking at the lag like he's high.

It looks like I'm trying to do an action.

Have you ever smoked pot, Rob?

I think back in college.

It wasn't a memorable experience.

I didn't get the effects from it. Maybe I could have been, “This is not good at it.” There's a high probability of that, but I didn't get what I was looking for or expecting at the time. You're in college and going out and getting a case of natural light was like that was the golden goal. You'd save up all your college dollars to go out and get what we would call the beast.

We went to this place in college where it was nickel beer night and they came in these little plastic cups, but you'd order a tray of drinks and it would cost you like $2.50 for 40 beers or something like that.

Had to move because it was slammed.

It is hard to be fully present and get anything done when you're dealing with kids.

You could not move in there, but that's where everybody was. That's where you wanted to be. You wanted to make sure you could get in there and get serviced because it was probably pretty hard to actually track down somebody to serve you but that place was nuts. This was in Florida State days.

You bring back memories because it's funny how much you save your money and when you're in college. For those that have been a part of it, you’re going to relate to this. You have only so much money you got and you got to choose between these two necessities in college, food, and alcohol. It's a tough choice for how you're going to supplement your money. It's almost as if that's the actual finance course for you right there. I got it down to a system. I'll never forget this to where I used to go off and I would buy two packs of spaghetti noodles because they equal two pounds.

Two of the long packs are like the long cardboard packs.

I would buy the actual tomato sauce. It was $0.99, Hunt's tomato sauce. I got two packs of spaghetti for $1 and Hunt's tomato sauce for $1. $2 I was able to eat tons of spaghetti and last for 2 to 3 days. It was brilliant. I could eat on $6 for the week.

Pasta is such a savior during college.

They say carbs are bad as you get older but let me tell you when you're younger, carbs are a lifesaver.

Nothing bothers you what you eat when you're in college. If you have a decent active lifestyle, you can eat pretty much whatever you want, or at least I could. I don't want to say that because the whole freshman, 15, or 20s is real. I think it's mostly from drinking too much because there was something at Florida State every single night like, “Monday is salsa night.” On Monday, you got to go to this particular place and Tuesday is flashback Tuesday or Throwback Thursday. All these Sunday and everybody goes here on Friday. There were no down nights.

Who says they don't teach you planning in college? You're already planning. They're teaching you planning.

The challenge is waking up to go to class and actually learning something.

God bless my parents for me being in school at that time, because I know I was a headache and a challenge for them. You don't realize it at the time. You think life's golden. You think, “I got it all figured out. I'm twenty years old. I don't need my parents' advice because I know what I'm doing. I know what the world's got for me. I know what I'm going to be. Bring it on world. You're invincible. You can't get hurt. You don't have to stretch when you warm-up or workout. You're ready to go,” only to fall flat on your face several times. I remember my father. He would say, “I know I don't make a lot of sense to you now, but someday you’ll understand me.” I'm like, “Dad, can you stop it with your lectures? I got this figured out.”

You think you have it figured out after college. You think you're going to jump into a great job after that. You think you're going to start to make good money, make a salary and one of the worst things that could ever happen to you in a college kid's mind is I can't make it. I got to go live with my parents and I have that boomerang effect. I got to go back. I did that. Once I graduated college and failed as an actor, I moved back home twice. I talked about this at Hero on stage. I'm like, “If you want to feel bad about yourself, after failing in the world, go back and live with your parents.” I did it twice. I think at 23 and then at 32 or something. That did not go well for my dating life.

You got to imagine you're living on your own. Put yourself back in that moment for a second and you don't have your parents around. You can walk freely through your place or whatever. You don’t have to worry about worrying the world. You suddenly moved back into mom and dad's and there are probably rules of some sort back in the place. No more walking around in your whitey tighties.

Let’s talk about the pros and cons of that. The pros of moving back home are there's food on the table usually if your parents cook and if they decide to feed you. My parents did so that was a pro. I ate pretty regularly. That was incredible. I had clean sheets often because my mom would do a lot of the laundry. There was always somebody there that cared about you and drive you places if you didn't have a car. That first time I moved home, I didn't have a car because I was moving from New York City. I didn't have a car. It was pretty pathetic.

The second time I moved home, it was a different story. I felt I had was defeated. The cons are I was trying to date and anytime I would bring a girl back or over to the house, I'm like, “Just so you know, my parents are here.” You’re going to know right away if this is going to work out. "Are you cool with meeting my parents the first time on the first date because I have no choice?"

Did you flip this and say, “My parents live with me?”

I don't know how you can flip it. I was also living not only in the guest room at one point but the dining room. The blow-up mattress. I didn't date much. I mostly drank away the pain. What is this episode about?

I'm not sure. You were making me reflect back to me. I had it rough. I grew up in a gated community. It was tough.

It's a segue because you and I talked and we’re like, “What's a good topic to talk about?” First of all, let's shift gears again. Our first blog together and drop. If you're reading this, when you read to it a week later or so, that would've been in the past, but you did your first podcast ever and you sound much better now because I made you get a new mic and a new computer. You sound like a pro.

You have changed me, Ryan. I'll tell you what. I don't know where to begin. You took me by the arm and you said, “Come on, son, let's go.” Look at me. I moved up in the PC and the mic world.

It was not a PC. It's a Mac.

I moved up into a Book.

Sometimes we become so needy as men. We want that recognition for just changing a light bulb.  

I looked over to see the man who is paying attention because she's not even paying attention. This is how well she tunes us out.

She knows how tunes. Good for her too.

Probably Chelsea, too. It tunes you out when you start talking too much, “It's Ryan again, it's Rob again.”

Chelsea hates it when I sing. She thinks it's absolutely brutal so I hope that whoever hears us in the beginning, that they actually so see the light.

I think it was mostly me because you were singing for a minute and then I pressed record and then I lost you. When I went into that one solo part, I think I forgot to add you into the actual side-by-side screen. It cut you out but I kept going. I'm a performer now. I'm an entertainer. I've learned a lot about identity and how it can work with our mindsets on things. If we identify something, we're more apt to do something. If we say, “I'm an athlete.” I'm more apt to go exercise regularly. I'm more apt to go to the gym more regularly, as opposed to saying like, “I would love to be in better shape.”

Not identify me as somebody as athletic because if I'm athletic, I'm owning that identity. It's part of who I am. Does that make sense? I'm going now. I'm identifying myself as an entertainer and that gives me much free liberty to be out there all the time and not worry about being judged because I'm an entertainer. If I sing and I sing terribly, that's okay because I'm going to get better. If I don't, it's still entertaining. I don't know what that accent was.

If they're looking at you in any way or form, you are entertaining. That's what it's about. Whether it's good, whether it's bad, it's still attention that's coming to you as an entertainer. That's the way it is.

Before I jumped into that, we were talking about, “What are we going to talk about? Why don't we talk about parenting?” This is all going to be from the male's perspective. Any women reading this, which is pretty much our entire audience, they're going to be like, “I can't wait to hear this.”

Two guys and a dumb plan. Ladies, sit back and let us teach you.

We just lost more people right there. From the male perspective and then we'll have to get somebody on here that is of the female perspective to set us straight but what we talked about is in last several days, I've been MIA because Jenny, my wife, she took, this is for readers, you obviously know, but she took time off to spend a girl's weekend with her best friend, which is also the godmother to our children. They went and had a great time and I was home alone for the first time with the kids by myself.

I started to realize and appreciate her role. Not that I didn't appreciate it before, but it is hard to be fully present and get anything done when you're dealing with two amazing kids. They're needy and I know I'm needy on top of that. Nothing was about my needs and I was still trying to live my life according to my rules. The whole talk we had earlier about college life and the party mentality that we had. I still have at times and too often at times, that I still try to live in that. I've had this whole identity crisis where yes, I'm the CEO of a company and it's a very successful company, which is blessed to have that, but I'm still trying to find my role as a father and also a business leader and still find that piece of me. I'm still lost.

I can feel you. It's funny, you can speak to it. See I have older kids. I have my kids young and now they're older. You're going to be able to speak about that younger and what it's like. I can talk about what I've been through. As they get older, in us as dads, first of God bless our wives or fiances everything because we couldn't do it without them. God bless those moms out there that are stylists, that they manage the kids and they manage the house. It’s truth be told. Let's say how it is. Why would they ever want to marry us? God only knows. We can get a tornado maybe.

That being said, I guess we we’ll talk specific to this industry for the most part. It's a challenge. The kids, when they're young, you're constantly going in your career and you feel like you have that obligation to your career, which we could probably relate to some of the women's stylists out there, to where you've got to devote so much time to that to make an impact, whether it be, financially, socially and educationally. There are so many different facets of this industry that we got to take part in.

All this time, you're focused so hard in that area and it demands much time from you that you still got to remember that you're a mom or dad. You got these children at home that rely on you that are going to follow in your footsteps. You have to lead the right way, be a good role model and do all the right things. You hope that they raise them up and they go down that path that we all want to have that golden or the yellow brick road that they follow but let's cut it straight. As guys, we think we always have it figured out but thank God for the woman because we're a tornado.

This is really an, “I appreciate women episode.” That's what I think we were getting at.

Our readers are starting to go, “Oh my God.”

Subscribe.

This is coming raw. This is raw from us. As guys, you can interrupt me at any time, but we think we have it figured out. We think we can do it all. That's who we are.

We want to fix everything too. If there's a challenge, we want to overcome it. We want to fix it and we want to do it fast.

When a lot of times, we need to do is listen and engage. Even though we know that we still try to fix everything and overcome those challenges as fast as possible, that's not what we need to be doing.

We can fix a light bulb. I fixed a light bulb the other day and I felt accomplished. It was one of those long tubes, fluorescence in the bathroom and it was challenging, but I did it. Jenny said, “Did you feel good about that?” I said, “Yes, I did.”

We need a female perspective to set us straight in our role as a parent.

For a moment there too, when you completed that task because here's the thing. You knew how to do that. That's a man thing. You think that's a handyman thing and you're going to impress your wife. She's going to be impressed with you. As soon as you put on that light bulb, you're stepping off that ladder and you're expecting these rockets to shoot off, the flares, the stars and the applause and all you hear is crickets.

Once you're done there, there's another one in the other bathroom and that needs fixing too.

We're building it up in our head there that we saved the world. Meanwhile, our wives, fiances are in there being parents. They were the real superheroes and we realized how maybe needy we are as men. We want that recognition for changing a light bulb.

It was a long light bulb. It was the fluorescent tube and there were two of them. It was challenging. I had to remove the plexiglass thing and it was the bathroom. I changed it one time when we had these tile countertops and I made the mistake of stepping on at one time the countertop and it cracked a little bit. She doesn't know about that. Don't say anything. Amanda's taking notes right now. She is listening. We're going to get her on the show.

Did you make her sign an NDA and a non-disclosure agreement for me whatsoever?

Yup, right before the start of the recording.

Thank God because, as you know, this is all false, it’s not true. In a nutshell, we as men look for an area to always be that hero when in reality trying to be a parent and we can only speak on behalf of as a man, we don't hold our wives or our fiances as you would say in the guy term, it's not jock. They own that world and we can only hope to be somewhat as good as they are. We don't even recognize what they go through to put up with us.

It reminded me of was like Chris Rock Special I saw a while ago and he was talking about how he gets no respect and you know how he always says, “No respect for my kids and my wife, I had no respect, for what I do every single day. I want to come home one day and have my kids say, Daddy, thanks for knocking out the rent last month.”

Again, that's the man and that’s what he thinks.

Thanks for these lights over my head. I love being able to read at night.

That’s how we think. Again, that's us as the man has taken off our superhero cave coming back saying, “Flip on that water. It works. Give some recognition.” In reality, let's cut it straight. We're men and that's what we are supposed to do. We were seen to be the rock, the provider in that sense for the woman. We're supposed to take that ease off them because they take that exact ease off of us with the children and so forth.

If we're the rock in the rocks, scissors, papers contests. Women are paper. They're like, “No, I'm covering you rock. I got you.” You think you're so cool, I'm going to cover you up. You're not that you're not that cool. You’re not that's strong. I hate to say this, but I only have three minutes left. I know we talked for such a long time, but I thought we were going to get done faster and I got a 3:30 call. I got to jump on. We can always make a part two, but I think we pretty much already summed up men and parenting. It's hard. We don't get it. We do the best we can. We show up. We listen, we love our women and our mothers because their job is pretty much the hardest on the planet.

Hats off to these women and to my fiancée, Chelsea, for taken me on. It's a blessing that they’re taking us into our lives just like your wife takes you into her life for everything they manage with the children and everything. It's bar none for what we put up in this industry. It's hats off to all the hard-working women stylists out there that do that can go home and still a mom to their children when reality as dads, we're grateful and it's awesome.

That's Rob Smith for you, everybody. He's one of the new co-hosts here because it's not as fun to do it alone all the time. It's fun to chat with him and get this friendly banter back and forth. If you like this episode, which I hope you do, then please screenshot it and tag us @Ryan.Weeden. What's your thing? There's an underscore somewhere. I don't remember where. Do that and make sure you tag @RobSmith____ with four underscores after. Should we end this with a song?

Here's how we're going to end it. You started. I'll finish it.

What's another song we can do terribly.

I liked what we started, that love and feeling. That was really good.

I'm channeling top gun. Taps on the shoulder quickly.

When does it start?

Thanks for reading, everybody. Good podcast. Talk to you later. Bye.

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