Front Row Dads with Jon Vroman

Mark Groves is 46 years old, and the conversation he keeps coming back to happened in a car when he was in his twenties with his father.  He had gone to his father complaining about a girlfriend, and he had said something to her he is not proud of. His dad told him that a relationship is a separate entity. There is you, there is her, and there is the thing between you, and that third thing has to...

Jon asked a pediatrician of thirty-five years for the formula for influencing your kids. She gave him three words. Dr. Meg Meeker, author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, says her job is to speak to dads on behalf of their children. So Jon asked the question every man here eventually asks, which is some version of just tell me what to do. She gave him a list. Attention, affection, acceptance....

Every couple has a dance, and most men have never seen the steps written down. One of you closes the distance and gets louder. The other creates distance and shuts down. What makes it a loop rather than an argument is that each one's way of coping is precisely the thing the other cannot tolerate. Mark Groves names it, then takes it apart: Gottman's four horsemen, why men stonewall more than women...

Jon walked into a band meeting with seven things to do and walked out with one. Episode 4 of Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Jon Vroman walking the lake in downtown Austin on a Wednesday afternoon, thinking out loud. The audio is rough on purpose: traffic, wind, and footsteps are part of the deal. He recorded this straight out of his monthly band meeting, where he put bu...

She calls it puberty in reverse. It can last a decade. And most husbands have no idea it's happening.   LIVE WITH DR. HIRSCH, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8TH.  She is joining the Front Row Dads community for a live session with Q&A on how men can support the women in their lives through menopause. Free for members, and a limited number of guest passes for everyone else. Details at frontrowdads.com/menopause...

Most of us don't have a plan for our marriage. We have a repair schedule. Something breaks, we patch it, things are fine for a while, and then we sit there quietly waiting for it to break again. Lance Salazar lived in that loop. He describes a defeatist stretch where even when things were okay, he was just wondering when it was going to go bad. So he and his wife stopped fixing and started designi...

Jon's eleven-year-old had been more anxious than usual, and his wife told him why. You have been more stressed at work. He is a reflector. He picks up on your energy.  Bryan Post takes that and does something more useful than reassurance. Your son has his own part, formed long before this week. You have yours. And the moment you take his behavior personally, you lose the ability to be present for...

Nobody got married hoping to work on it. That is where Ted Lowe starts. After a long day of working hard, the last thing anybody wants is to work some more, so telling a man his marriage needs more work tends to land like a chore. His alternative is a habit he calls serious fun, built on simple accounting: you cannot make withdrawals from a relational account you never deposited into. And the hard...

Geoff Woods set a goal of thirty-six date nights with his wife, tracked it all year, and then had to admit it wasn't working. What he found instead was the idea he spent years teaching at The ONE Thing: find the one domino that makes everything else easier or unnecessary, and knock that one over first. In his marriage it wasn't the date nights. It was a cup of coffee at 5:30 in the morning, before...

Nobody claws their way out of rock bottom alone. Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at frontrowdads.com/experience Matt Aitchi...

Five versions of you are already running your marriage. The work is building the sixth. Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up at...

Every marriage is sitting on one of five levels right now. Here is how to find yours and how to climb. Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates...

Most date nights quietly die for the same reason, and it isn't love. Nobody scheduled it.   Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up...

The thing you keep telling your kid to stop doing might be exactly what they're built for. (Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates and sign-up...

Four men. Same question. Two completely different answers: is it powering through strength, or is it avoidance? Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepar...

Quick test: how do you deal with your neediness? If you just cringed, you found your enemy emotion. ( Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share, and you don't have to prepare. Dates a...

Ask young fathers how to raise great kids and you get 72 steps. Ask the old guys and you get two words: just love them. (Want a taste of what Front Row Dads is actually like? Come sit in on a live Brotherhood Experience. It's 60 minutes on Zoom with Jon and a few other dads, free, and it's the easiest way to find out whether a room like this is for you. You don't have to share and you don't have t...

"If we do not initiate our sons, they will burn down the village just to feel the heat." That African proverb is where this one starts, and Chris Bruno, counsellor, author of The Man Maker Project, and a dad who built a year-long rite of passage for his own son, spends the next twenty minutes showing what it demands of a father. This is a Deep Cut from a 2024 members-only session: what a rite of p...

Having the same realization five times doesn't mean you failed the first four.   Episode 3 of Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Jon Vroman on a walking trail near his house, thinking out loud. The audio is rough on purpose. He even fumbles an old saying mid-walk and leaves it in: "Like I said, these are unscripted mistakes and all." Jon walked this one listening to his own...

"I would say to my wife, I need to get to the coffee shop by seven, because I couldn't be hassled by the kids in the morning." For ten years, Jon Vroman has asked the questions on this show. To close the first week of Good Questions, he answers them. This is Jon in the hot seat: how the man who founded Front Row Dads would have introduced himself before it existed (speaker, charity founder, ultram...

"Do you ever lose your cool? Do you ever just yell?" It gets asked point-blank in this one, and the three answers could not be more different. Ryan Deiss , founder of DigitalMarketer, says he is not a yeller, then tells you exactly where his line is and what happened the one time somebody made his wife feel unsafe in her own home. Connor Beaton , who leads men's work through ManTalks, traces the c...

"Every decision I've ever made in my life, good and bad, has been in an effort to get my father to tell me he loved me." This one moves in three parts: the apology you owe your kids, the dance you are still in with your own dad, and the forgiveness that sets you free. It starts at a kitchen table, where a dad raising his voice over math homework suddenly recognizes the scene, because he lived it a...

Give your kids enough that they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing. That Warren Buffett line is where this one starts. You worked hard so your family could have a good life. So how do you keep the life you built from softening the kids you love? This is the first episode of Good Questions, where we pull the best questions dads have asked across ten years of podcasts and memb...

You can't force a child to make you their mentor. They choose. And most of us are quietly spending that choice on being right. That's the argument in Hold On to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate, and it's the book two dads in this community keep coming back to. In this Bookshelf, they take it from both ends. John Berardi makes the case that a child is always looking for someone to guide t...

The greatest gift you can give your kids has nothing to do with them. Episode 2 of Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Jon Vroman on a walking trail near his house, thinking out loud, this time with his dog Davy along for the walk. The audio is rough on purpose: wind, footsteps, and a dog on a leash are part of the deal. Jon has been doing interviews for the Front Row Dads b...