Positively Dad

If you'd ask Jon and Brittany Brooks they'd tell you their life is awesome. Great marriage, successful business and a new baby girl. They'd also admit that the last year has been a "beautiful disaster." Jon and Brittany joined us to share their story of the last year and all they've learned about balancing family and business.

If you’ve been listening to us for a while, you know that learning about others, understanding diversity and getting to know people from different cultures, religions and backgrounds, is important to us as a family.

Saadia Faruqi is the author of the popular Yasmin children’s books and her mission is to educate others about different cultures, religions and people.

The Yasmine books are about an Muslim-American girl navigating second grade and Saadia’s goal is to teach us that we’re more the same than we are different.

It’s important conversation for parents too – Saadia says there are so many misconceptions about Muslims in America – mostly because of the September 11th attacks. She says we can do more to get to know each other.

New dad Glen Bulloss couldn't figure out why he wasn't happy after he became a dad. What was supposed to be an amazing time in his life didn't feel like one. It turns out he, like many new parents, suffered from postpartum depression. Yes, dads experience it too. One study says it's actually just as common with dads as moms.

Glen listened to an earlier Positively Dad episode called When Dad is Depressed where we talked with Indiana University's Dr. Erika Cheng about postpartum depression. That's when Glen realized he needed help.

Glen joined us to tell his story and share how he hopes to help other families.

You can support Glen's Trailblaze Challenge here.

Parenting isn't easy and it's making you unhappy. One study says 73% of parents were happier before kids. Woah. Happiness for parents is complicated and we found an expert to help. KJ Dell'Antonia wrote the book on it, How to Be a Happier Parent and she joins us this week for a conversation with dads.

The entire world was shocked with Sunday's news. Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash in southern California. Since then we've heard so many stories about how important being a father was to Kobe. One man got an up close look at Kobe the dad. His name is Russ Davis and he's the head coach of the women's basketball team at Vanguard University. Kobe often held practice for his daughter's team at the Vanguard facility. We talked with Coach Davis about his relationship with Kobe and what he learned from him as a man, coach and father.

We're just about a month into a new year. How's it going? Chances are you planned to make some changes in 2020, yet most people fail to pull off those New Year's resolutions.

Pastor Mike Ashcraft was curious on why so many fail and decided to change things. Instead of focusing on a resolution he chose to pick just one word for the year. A word that would represent what you'd like to see happen. He's shared this idea with his church for years and even turned it into a book. We talked with him about how selecting one word in 2020 may help you and your family.

Kelly McCann made a major shift when his daughter was born. He gave up the big career to focus on being a dad. Now, this dad of four is both - a great dad and a successful business owner with his wife Leah. He shares how he changed his focus and began living his life by design.

Sexual harassment is real and it’s happening earlier in life than you think. A recent study says more that 40% of middle school students said they’ve been victims of sexual harassment. That along with the #MeToo movement prompted children’s author Barbara Dee to write a novel called Maybe He Just Likes You. She takes a look at harassment and #metoo through the eyes of a seventh grader.

We're releasing this encore episode as a follow-up to last week's conversation with Tony Porter from A Call To Men. While men are making progress in supporting women, there is still work to do.

It’s an important conversation for all parents and one Barbara says we must have and an issue we must address.

What does it mean to be a purposeful parent? Father of two, Ladd Gasparovic believes he knows and he says it's important in raising his kids. This week he shares how all of us can be purposeful with how we engage, support and spend time with our families.

Dads, it's time we have a real conversation about fatherhood and manhood. Are we truly being the best we can be or are we falling prey to old stereotypes? Could we be causing harm without even realizing it? Are we really supporting our partners and children?

We'll answer these questions in our conversation with Tony Porter, CEO of A Call to Men. Tony gained massive attention after his 2010 TED Talk at TEDWomen. It's been watched nearly 3 million times.

We talked with him about some classic traps of manhood and how we can truly make a difference in our families and the community.