Front Row Dads with Jon Vroman

Fatherhood is a series of windows that open and close. The one you're leaving usually never opens again.

For years we've been asking guests on this show some version of the same question: what do you wish you knew before your first kid? For the last day of NEW DAD WEEK, we pulled four of the best answers and put them back to back. No commentary, just four dads who've been through it telling you what they'd want you to know.

You'll hear from Ryan Levesque, Michael Dietrich-Chastain, Farhan Rizvi, and Matt Baudro.

Free field guide for the whole week at frontrowdads.com/newdad.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Ryan Levesque: fatherhood is forever, and it's a series of windows that close. Remember to remember.
• Michael Dietrich-Chastain: expect reactivity from everyone, don't take it as an attack, and the hard roads are temporary. Stay in the "wow."
• Farhan Rizvi: have grace on yourself. Being a dad is like baseball, where a great batting average is in the .200s.
• Matt Baudro: step back and figure out who your kid actually is, then come alongside them, instead of trying to raise a smaller version of yourself.

THE FULL NEW DAD WEEK:

Part 1: Listen, don't fix (Jason Kreidman)

Part 2: What no one tells dads about postpartum (Suzanne Yatim Aslam)

Part 3: Put your wife first (Steve Olsher)

Part 4: Sleep survival (Mollie Eastman)

Part 5: This one.

You're exhausted, so we made this one short.

Two things worth your tired attention. First, a nearly free trick for kids' bedtime that works with their biology instead of against it: no arguing, no negotiating, just light. And second, a genuinely kind word for couples who've been short with each other lately: sleep-deprived people are not their best selves, and that's not a character flaw.

This is part of NEW DAD WEEK, five short episodes for expecting dads and dads in the first year. Free field guide for the whole week at frontrowdads.com/newdad.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The light trick: dim the house an hour before bed and watch your kids drift upstairs on their own
• Why light placement signals a child's body that it's time to sleep
• The 90-minute wind-down: big lights off, low lamps on
• Grace for the sleep-deprived marriage, and why weathering the season is the actual strategy

This one came from a longer conversation about sleep, circadian rhythms, and why sleep is a skill you can build. Hear the full episode: frontrowdads.com/431

This is part of NEW DAD WEEK, five short episodes for expecting dads and dads in the first year. Free field guide for the whole week at frontrowdads.com/newdad.

We asked what advice he'd give a new dad. His answer had nothing to do with the baby.

Steve Olsher's advice for men entering fatherhood is to prioritize your wife, above the kids. It sounds backwards, especially when there's a newborn in the house who genuinely needs everything. But his reasoning is hard to argue with: the most important relationship in a family is the one between mom and dad, and when the two of you are off, the whole house feels it. He also makes an uncomfortable case that nearly every conflict traces back to one thing.

This is part of NEW DAD WEEK, five short episodes for expecting dads and dads in the first year. Free field guide for the whole week at frontrowdads.com/newdad.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why the strongest thing in your family is the relationship between the two of you
• What happens to couples who let the whole dynamic become about the kids
• The long view: one day they leave, and you're either with your best friend or a stranger
• Why 99 times out of 100 the fight was your fault
• How selfishness quietly runs most conflict, and what to do about it

Hear Steve's full conversation at frontrowdads.com/199.

Suzanne Yatim Aslam had postpartum depression after her son was born, and in this conversation she tells dads exactly what it looked like from the inside, including the part almost nobody says out loud: for a while, she blamed her baby for ruining her life. Her husband didn't know. She never asked for help. She just kept saying she was fine.

This is part of NEW DAD WEEK, five short episodes for expecting dads and dads in the first year. We built a free field guide to go with it: the main points from every episode plus prompts you can actually use. Grab it at frontrowdads.com/newdad.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• "Depression is its own character in your brain, and it tells you lies"
• What it feels like to blame your own child, and why that's the illness talking
• Why "I'm fine" is the most dangerous sentence in your house right now
• Why she needed her husband to advocate for her when she couldn't advocate for herself
• What NOT to say: "enjoy it, it goes so fast" and "at least he's healthy," and why they make a drowning mom feel worse
• The systems that actually helped her recover: solo days, therapy, and a daily mid-day break
• Fix it or feel it: the four-word question that tells you what she actually needs

A note: this episode discusses depression and mental health honestly. If you or your partner are struggling, please talk to a doctor or a therapist. In the US, you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and Postpartum Support International is at 1-800-944-4773.

Hear Suzanne's full conversation at frontrowdads.com/341

Your wife is struggling, and everything in you wants to solve it. That instinct is the problem.

Welcome to NEW DAD WEEK. Five short episodes for guys who are expecting or in the thick of the first year. We're starting with Jason Kreidman on the skill that matters most early on, and it isn't tactical. It's empathy, which he calls the single biggest game changer in how he parents and how he loves his wife. He also lands on four words that will save you an enormous amount of grief: do you want me to fix it, or feel it?

We built a free field guide for the whole week: the main points from every episode plus prompts you can actually use. Grab it at frontrowdads.com/newdad.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why the number one thing a new dad needs to hear isn't tactical, it's "you're not alone"
• Everyone feels like they're the only one who doesn't get it. Everyone.
• Empathy as the game changer, and what it actually looks like in practice
• "Do you want me to fix it, or feel it?" and why asking beats guessing
• Why "what can I do?" often doesn't help, and what to do instead
• The neighbour rule: don't ask what food they want, just bring food
• Meeting your wife's love language at a higher level than you think is reasonable

Hear Jason's full conversation at frontrowdads.com/101.

There are two lessons available when something in your life keeps hurting. One is to get tougher. The other is to walk away. Most men only ever get coached on the first one.

WHAT THIS IS

This is the first episode of something new we're calling Walk With Jon.

No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Just Jon Vroman on a walking trail near his house, thinking out loud. In his words:

"What I don't want to do is stand at my desk anymore at my expensive microphone and try to record the highest quality show. I thought, if we were friends and on the phone and talking to each other, it would sound like this. You'd hear the wind in the background, the crunch of the rocks under my feet. It wouldn't be the highest quality audio, but it would be authentic. It would be real. You would be with me."

So yes, the audio is rougher than what you're used to from us. That's the point. No edits, no stops, no re-records. His words again: "just mistakes, back steps, corrections throughout." In a world where you can't always tell what's real and what came out of a machine, these are his unfiltered thoughts as he walks.

He also asks for two things up front. That you send feedback and tell him what you'd want him to think through out loud, because he's a verbal processor and this helps him as much as it helps you. And that you allow him to change his mind later, because that's what growth looks like.

WHAT HE'S THINKING ABOUT THIS MORNING

He calls it the nut-kicking line. Picture standing in a line where you keep getting kicked, and a coach beside you saying the lesson is resilience. Toughen up. Build grit. Focus your attention somewhere else.

Sometimes that's exactly right. But Jon's point is that there's a second lesson almost nobody coaches, which is that you're allowed to step out of the line. Learning to let go, to say no, to move on, is also a lesson.

He works it through his own three ultramarathons, one of which he thinks genuinely hurt him, and then through marriages, business partners, employees, and kids of divorce who say they wish their parents had separated sooner. Both paths have beautiful stories. Both have regrets. As he puts it: "All of it's true."

The question he lands on isn't which one is right. It's what you'd hear if you got quiet and honest enough to ask yourself.

IN THIS WALK:

• Why he's recording on a trail instead of at his desk, and what unfiltered is worth right now
• Why he reserves the right to change his mind, and why that's growth and not flip-flopping
• The nut kicking line, and the two very different lessons hiding inside it
• His 52-mile walk-run in 2006, doing it again in 2007, and the anniversary run ten years later that cost him
• Whether ultra-endurance events serve your body or only your mindset, and where David Goggins fits
• Ben Greenfield trading hard training for long walks, and what shifting seasons looks like
• Where this shows up for real: marriages, business partners, employees, and children of divorce
• Why he believes there are no bad decisions, only decisions, and that even the hard ones come with blessings
• It's okay to not be okay, and even indecision is a decision
• The Hoffman Institute method his friend David uses: asking your emotional body, mind, heart, and spirit separately, then integrating the answers
• Jon's four core values: truth, love, respect, responsibility
• Front Row Dads turning 10, and heading back to Philadelphia where it started in 2016

Jon reads every reply. If something here landed, or if you think he's wrong about it, tell him. He'd say the disagreement is as useful as the agreement, because it shows you what you actually believe.

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Front Row Dads is a brotherhood of family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. Nearly a thousand men have come through the community in our first ten years. To learn more, go to frontrowdads.com.

Most men think attraction is something you do. It's something you are.

Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, gives about as direct an answer as you'll get: the feminine is highly attracted to a man who's comfortable in his own skin and knows where he's going. From there he gets into why your own thinking is the thing sabotaging you, why time away with other men comes home as attraction, and why a marriage with no tension or space in it slowly goes flat.

FREE THIS WEEK: We built a companion field guide for the whole series. It's the main points from every episode plus copy-and-paste prompts you can drop into ChatGPT or your journal to actually do the work. Grab it at frontrowdads.com/niceguy.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The one-line answer to what actually attracts the feminine
• Why your thinker is your biggest enemy, and the practice of being where your feet are
• Why time with other men is wired into you, and how it makes you more attractive at home
• Emotional tension, space, and keeping desire alive in a long marriage
• Scheduling sex and what really happened to spontaneity
• Filling your bucket by getting away, and coming home as someone she's curious about

This is part 5 and the last of a 5-part week with Dr. Robert Glover. Also this week: Nice Guy Syndrome and shame, boundaries for men, decoding your wife, and brotherhood and male isolation.

Hear Glover's full conversation at frontrowdads.com/464. His book is No More Mr. Nice Guy.

Everyone is talking about the male loneliness epidemic. Here's the less comfortable version: a lot of it is self-inflicted.

Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, gets into what actually keeps men isolated, and he doesn't let anyone off the hook, including himself. He talks about the father wound underneath why men don't trust other men, why some groups of guys go deep for years while others quietly fall apart, and the fear of success that keeps a man consuming information instead of doing anything with it.

FREE THIS WEEK: We built a companion field guide for the whole series. It's the main points from every episode plus copy-and-paste prompts you can drop into ChatGPT or your journal to actually do the work. Grab it at frontrowdads.com/niceguy.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why the loneliness epidemic among men is largely self-inflicted
• What makes some men's groups thrive while others fall apart, and the one guy who determines it
• Fear of success and "the comfort of the nursery": why men with all the information still don't act
• The father wound at the root of why men don't trust other men
• Needing a hall pass to go see your friends, and the year and a half it took him
• The three reasons men actually show up to a men's group: accountability, support, or just to be

This is part 4 of a 5-part week with Dr. Robert Glover. Also this week: Nice Guy Syndrome and shame, boundaries for men, decoding your wife, and attracting the feminine.

Hear Glover's full conversation at frontrowdads.com/466. His book is No More Mr. Nice Guy.

His wife said he hadn't told her he loved her all day. He had screenshots proving he'd said it five times. He kept them to himself, and that was the whole lesson.

Part three of our five-part week with Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, and probably the most immediately useful one. Glover draws the line between a factual statement and an emotional statement, and makes the case that when your wife says something that seems provably unfair, the accusation was never the point. The trigger you feel is the signal.

FREE THIS WEEK: We built a companion field guide for the whole series. It's the main points from every episode plus copy-and-paste prompts you can drop into ChatGPT or your journal to actually do the work. Grab it at frontrowdads.com/niceguy.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The candle story: why knowing this and embodying it are completely different things
• Why patterns live in your nervous system, not in what you've read
• Regulating in real time: what he did when his wife made a jab in the park
• Jon's own account of trying to stay calm through a hard conversation about school
• Ground, breathe, open, get curious: the four-word checklist for any conversation
• Emotional statements vs. factual statements, and why taking the bait always loses
• The "I love you" screenshots, and the apology that came two days later on its own

This is part 3 of 5. Also this week: Nice Guy Syndrome and shame, boundaries for men, brotherhood and male isolation, and attracting the feminine.

Hear Glover's full conversation at frontrowdads.com/518. His book is No More Mr. Nice Guy.

You think boundaries keep people out. They're actually what lets people get close to you.

Dr. Robert Glover, best-selling author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, runs a full crash course here, and it starts somewhere unexpected: how a lack of boundaries quietly wrecks a man's friendships with other men, not just his marriage. He didn't learn any of this until his thirties, when a therapist laid a string on the floor and started pushing him backward to show him how much ground he gives away.

FREE THIS WEEK: We built a companion field guide for the whole series. It's the main points from every episode plus copy-and-paste prompts you can drop into ChatGPT or your journal to actually do the work. Grab it at frontrowdads.com/niceguy.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why boundaries aren't about changing other people, they're about changing you
• The string on the ground exercise that exposed he had no boundaries at all
• Why men were never taught this: growing up, the powerful just got to do what they wanted to you
• Why wives are relieved, not offended, when their husband finally stands up to them
• Ending a years-long best friendship, and why it pushed him toward real brotherhood
• The "Ouch" technique, and how to defuse a bad mood with a boundary
• How to spot a professional boundary invader (usually somewhere in your own family)

This is part 2 of a 5-part week with Dr. Robert Glover. Also this week: Nice Guy Syndrome and shame, decoding your wife, brotherhood and male isolation, and attracting the feminine.

Hear Glover's full conversation on boundaries at frontrowdads.com/465. His book is No More Mr. Nice Guy.