Begin With the End in Mind to Aim Our Kids

Show Transcripts:

Voiceover:  Welcome to the Father On Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran, Lawson Brown. This is a show for you, Dad. You want to be a godly and attentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this: You are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose. Please welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson.

Kent Evans: Hey. Welcome to this week’s episode. You’ve got Kent Evans here and my good friend, Lawson Brown. Lawson, how you doing?

Lawson Brown: Hello, everybody. Hello, Kent. Good to see you.

Kent Evans: Good to see you, man. Virtually speaking.

Lawson Brown: Yep.

Kent Evans: I mean, Lawson is in Florida and I’m in Louisville. So-

Lawson Brown: It would be fun to do one of these in person one day.

Kent Evans: We’re going to make that happen for sure. So Dad, today, here’s what Lawson and I were talking about we thought would be a blast to talk about on today’s episode. Often, we are shocked and surprised when our kids are in their late teen years and it turns out they’re missing some vital piece of their personal equipment, some skill, some life habit, and they’re 17 or 18 or 19, and we’re going, “What do you mean you can’t change a tire? What do you mean you don’t know you should look people in the eye when you…” And we get to this place where we’re shocked that our kids have skills, A, B and C, but they’re missing some big other things like D, E, and F and G and H and I. And Lawson, I think often it is because as a dad, we’re a little confused about what we want as that… I’ll call it the end product. Everybody, I hope you hear what I’m saying on that. I know our kids aren’t done baking at 18 or 19.

Lawson Brown: Right.

Kent Evans: However, we do release them, to a degree. When we release them, we’re often shocked with what all they can’t do or some of their biases or preferences. And I think sometimes, while fatherhood is not a vending machine and you can’t just say, “I’m going to do X, and my kids will do Y, there are some things where, perhaps, our children have ended up, basically, right where we led them to end up.

Lawson Brown: Right. Right where are we pointed the whole time. I think you’re right. It’s not a vending machine. There is no perfect, right systematic formula that just works no matter what. You do these following things on the checklist, and everything is going to be just great. We will get to the thought process of a list at some point today, which I think is interesting. It made me think of things a little bit differently, but when you talk about start with the end in mind, that is an exercise in anything, but certainly in fatherhood, where you have to take time and give that some thought, and it helps you prioritize.

It helps you think about what is important and urgent, so therefore some timeline thought processes go into it, their age, what you’re dealing with in your family life, things that are going on with them, maybe they’re changing schools from one to the other or something like that. It does get down to some tactics at some point, but the strategic thought process and the mindset that I think God is hopeful for in us all is, “Where do you want them to be down the road?” and then work backwards. Work at some, like you said, that that end goal. Define it-

Kent Evans: Some marker off in the distance.

Lawson Brown: And so have we defined it? A lot of us are just busy day to day. We’re doing things, and do you take that time and have the conversation, have the thought process, maybe even put some things on paper and help define [crosstalk 00:03:58] defining.

Kent Evans: What is this paper of which you speak?

Lawson Brown: Yeah.

Kent Evans: I did catch the couple Stephen Covey references in there. You had the important and urgent, the quadrants. I love that. I think that was a Covey thing. May have been a McKinsey or Booz Allen thing. And then you also had, “Begin with the end in mind.” I think even though that idea has been around for millennia, I think he codified it in his book, Seven Habits. And I think a lot of guys, to put Covey on the table, a lot of guys will read that book in their business career, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and then there were 27 flavors of it. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Lawn Mowing Teenagers, all kinds of ways to rebrand that thing. More power to him.

But what’s interesting to me is we’ll do that in business, right? I mean, no guy would land in a business context. A good friend of mine is taking over an organization right now. He’s the CEO of a company, and he’s just starting. He’s on week two of an existing firm. It’s an ongoing concern. He’s not a startup, and as he’s landing, what’s he doing? He’s looking down the road a year or two, and he’s saying, “All right, where do I want membership to be? Where do I want my volunteer base to be? Where do I want my revenue to be?” He’s looking down the road a year or two, and then he’s going to work backward and build a plan the best he can, best he can, to get to that end product. And even though he’s going to have COVID or some unexpected problem, things are going to happen.

So you may not be able to control exactly where you end up. But man, I see some dads who they have an idea of where they want their kids to end up, but it’s simply tactical. And what I mean by that is know how to tie a bow tie, know how to do an interview, or have a LinkedIn profile or know how to… whatever those tactics are, and they’re not bad things. It’s not that they’re bad things. It’s that if given the choice between maybe my sons knowing how to go and do a job interview well versus having them be able to do a word study in scripture, I’ll take the word study in scripture, right?

Not that I have to choose because I’ve got 18 years. I can probably teach them both things. But for me, what I want to end up with is I want to end up with a kid who at 18 or 19 who loves the Lord and who loves knowledge and wisdom. And so for me, some of that is just about reverse engineering, and we’re great at it in business. We just don’t tend to bring some of that stuff home sometimes. What do you think?

Lawson Brown: I think you’re right. It doesn’t feel quite maybe natural to apply it or like, “Ah, shouldn’t be doing that. Maybe I should be just following a Bible study or trying to figure it out on my own through prayer, but having a goal… Like you said, what is a goal that you have for your child, and do you discuss that? Do you review it? Do you check progress? Do you break it down into what elements you’re talking about? That sort of thing is something that I guess looking back on my own life, as we got into this topic, just you and me kicking it around a little bit beforehand, is I’m fortunate to have two girls that are doing pretty doggone good. Can I look back at my, at my 10 year strategic plan for them 10 years ago and say, “Yep, they hit right where we were aiming”? No, not a bit. I also want to say, too, that not every choice your kids make came down to something you did or didn’t do.

Kent Evans: Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Especially the older they get, right? I have kids who are 21, 19, 17, nine and six. In reverse order, I have a certain amount of control over their decisions. Six and nine-year-old, I’m almost in total control. Kind of, not really, but sort of. A lot of influence, heavy influence. And the 21-year-old, yeah, he’s on his own. He’s married. He’s doing great. And what I’d like to do for the dads listening, if you’re a dad listening to this, here’s what I don’t want you to hear what Lawson and I are saying because I don’t think we’re saying this. If we are, Lawson, I’m going to blame it on you. You’re wrong, because this is definitely not…

But what we’re not saying is you create this rigid 15-year step-by-step, every moment plan and it’s always… It’s like the Von Trapp family. Everybody has a whistle, and they all come and stand in the ascending order. Hold on. That’s not what we’re talking about. What I’m talking about is let me give some examples. I think tangible examples would help us maybe describe what we’re not talking about. Do you say to yourself out loud, “Man, when my kids are old enough to vote, they’d better vote fill in the blank, fill in the blank.”

Lawson Brown: Right.

Kent Evans: Republican, Democrat, libertarian, offbeat party, they better not vote at all, they better vote all the time, whatever, whatever.

Lawson Brown: And then if they don’t, what did I do wrong?

Kent Evans: Exactly. Well, that’s the thing you’re after. You’re after, “I’m a hardcore Democrat, so I’m going to crank me out some more hardcore Democrats. That’s what I’m trying to get my house,” or “I’m a hardcore Republican, I’m cranking me out some…” Let me just list a few of these, One is, are you focused on making sure your kids vote a certain way? Never have a tattoo? They become famous. They make a lot of money. They go to a church within a certain denomination. They ace all of their finals. They get a certain ACT score. They can balance their checkbook perfectly. Is that what you’re after? Because here’s what’s really interesting. You may scratch your chin and go, “Well, I mean, some of those are important to me and some of those are not as important to me. And there’s probably some I didn’t think of or mention.” But what’s really interesting is that’s often how we parent.

We’re parenting toward an end destination, whether we say it out loud or not. So for example, I was talking with a friend of mine. This was a few years ago, several now. His kids are older. When he was first starting to make school choice decisions about his kids, and he was trying to weigh, “Well, do they go public, private, homeschool, Montessori, traditional, etc.?” He’s weighing all his options, and I said, “What is your driving objective?” And he goes, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, as you’re weighing these choices, what’s your driving objective? Is it to find the least cost option? Is it to have them get the best education? What’s your driving objective?” And he thought about it for a minute and goes, “I guess it’s to have them have the best education.”

Quality. Educational quality was what was driving his decision. And I said, “Super, super. Not a bad objective. I’m not against it. I’d rather my kids be smart than not smart.” However, I said, “Well unto what?” And it was like I was asking him in German. Neither of us speak German. He goes, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, let’s say your kids all get an A+ education and they come out with A pluses. They’re all 4.0. It’s the best educational option you can give them. Then what?” And he goes, “Well, I guess it opens up a lot of opportunities.” And I said, “Well, wait a minute. What do you mean by opportunities?” And he goes, “Well, I think if you get higher education, you tend to make more money.” And I said, “Ah.”

Lawson Brown: That’s right.

Kent Evans: Ah, here we are. Here we are. Your educational choice is driven by their future economic position. And he just stopped, and he’s a good friend, and he goes, “Dang. I never really thought of it like that.” And I said, “I’m not saying that’s a bad idea.”

Lawson Brown: Right.

Kent Evans: Look, I run a nonprofit. I love rich people. They donate to our nonprofit. Let’s be real. If you’re out listening and you’ve got a ton of dough, I’m 502(c)(3), man. Send us some of it. I’m a fan.

Lawson Brown: That’s not the evil.

Kent Evans: It’s not bad.

Lawson Brown: He’s not creating an evil empire, right? Yeah.

Kent Evans: Not at all. But he and I both arrived at the conclusion roughly at the same time. We tend to put our kids into educational pathways to maximize their financial outcomes. Ah, okay. That’s not bad. Again, dads, don’t turn this podcast off just yet. I’m not saying, “Therefore, you don’t love God.” That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is if we say that out loud, it’s important we recognize that because guess what? Our kids figured it out. Our kids figured it out. And that’s not necessarily a bad. However, there are some trade-offs, right? There are some trade-offs. You may end up being able to afford that educational path for them, but it means no family vacation every year because the money just isn’t there. No problem. Again, I’m not saying this is good or bad. I’m not judging the choice. I’m saying let’s acknowledge the trade-offs because I think, Lawson, what we often do, we’re leading someone to a place, I’m not totally aware that’s what we’re doing.

Lawson Brown: You just said all that very, very well. As I’m listening, I’m also thinking that also doesn’t imply that you’re taking for granted, that you’re putting the right amount of priority and discussion around what may be a bigger, more main goal would be, which is for them to be a follower of God, to grow into a faithful friend and husband or wife, whatever. That was one topic that you had, that discussion with him about. And it was because he was in a decision between schools that doesn’t negate the fact that he may have also, and many of the listeners, all four of them that I think our audience has grown up to, that anybody listening to anything like this would say, “Yeah, but that’s not the only thing I’m trying to teach my kids, for crying out loud.” That was just a question of the moment.

And I had another thought, and I don’t want to lose it before the break. Nobody sets out to say, “My end goal for my children is I’d love one day for them to be just completely hooked on drugs and lost in the street or be an awful, abusive, horrible father. That’s my goal. That’s my goal is to raise these people up, and one day I’ll go visit them in prison.” My point in that is this is not a planning exercise as much as it is a “Let’s think about it and talk about it more openly.”

And like I always say, go and ask God, ask for help, surround yourself with people that are like-minded and are also open and willing to sharing what goals they have, what vision they have for their family, what vision they have for their kids. And then maybe, yeah, there are some specific things to focus on. Just like if you want your kid and you see them, they have a special interest in baseball and actually have some talent or a special interest in architecture or whatever, and that’s their thing, then encourage that, too. But you also can’t just approach it from a standpoint of, “Eh, things are just going to work out. I’ll just assume the world is just going to help take care of this,” because the world will not. This culture is the opposite.

Kent Evans: Somebody who’s listening is going to Google this and find it. Maybe we’ll do it during the break and come back with whoever said this, but somebody said, “We don’t reproduce what we teach. We reproduce what we are.” And I can’t remember who said it. I think it was a modern author, and “We don’t reproduce what we teach. We reproduce what we are or who we are.” And I think what’s interesting is for a lot of the dads, what we’re going to do on the other side of the break, so Dad, if you’re listening and you’re still with us, what we’re going to do on the other side of the break is we’re going to walk through and help you reverse engineer some of these ideas, even in some ways arbitrate, to your point, Lawson, about it’s not the only thing. Man, there’s probably like 40 things I want to be true about my kids when they leave my house, right? It’s a lot.

Lawson Brown: Right.

Kent Evans: They can take a bath. There’s a lot of-

Lawson Brown: High bar. Very high bar.

Kent Evans: A very high bar. If you can fog a mirror and take a bath, you are allowed to go into adulthood. Congratulations, son. Chip off the old block. I do think it’s important. And again, there’s some weeds we can get into, right? One weed we can get into is are rumble strips off the road here. One is, and this isn’t perfect, it’s not an exact science, things change, God’s sovereign, he’s in control, we’re not in control, et cetera, et cetera.

Lawson Brown: Right, right, right.

Kent Evans: Second thing is there’s no fatherhood formula where it’s just one plus one equals two and you just input good stuff and your kids are perfect. You’re not a perfect dad, your kids aren’t perfect kids. However, sometimes we use all that as an excuse to not do any of this, and I think that’s equally crazy. So let’s address that on the flip side of the break.

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Hey, thanks for tolerating that amazing interruption. Whatever we just talked about, we rotate in these different mentions in between the show, go do it like right now, man. Do it, whatever it was. I didn’t know what it was, but go do it. It’s that important. It’s that important. All right, dads, here’s the controlling idea for the back half of this podcast, and hopefully it was the controlling idea for the front half. Begin with the in mind. Begin with the end in mind. Begin with the end in mind.

Lawson Brown: For what?

Kent Evans: I’m just trying to reach [crosstalk 00:17:57].

Lawson Brown: What is the end? What is the end?

Kent Evans: Well, let’s approach it, Lawson, in the form of a question. Let’s ask Dad, if you’re listening to this podcast, here’s what I would love for you to do. You might be driving. You may be on a train, commuting into work. If you have access to something you can write down with or type into, I think this will be a fun exercise. And the exercise is basically this. If you have kids… If you don’t have kids, why are you listening to this dumb podcast? I keep trying to… I’m like. Okay.

Lawson Brown: We’re trying to run you off.

Kent Evans: We’re trying to. Gee whiz. What are five things you want to be true about your children when you release them to college or into adulthood? What are five things you want to be true about your children as you release them into college or adulthood? And here are the parameters. I want to take off the table basic hygiene. I want to take off the table. I want them to not be in prison, whatever that is. The five most important things. The five big, big rocks. If you go, “Man, if I could just have these five things be true about my kids when they go to leave my home, I would feel like I helped them get ready for adulthood,” because here’s the proposal, right? The proposal is you’re going to be able to list these five things, and there may be 10 or 20 or 50. You may have a longer list. Get with your wife later, come up with a whole lot, much longer list. And then the question then you’re going to have to ask is, “Are we steering them toward these five things?”

So I’ll give you an example that I think a lot of guys who would be listening to this particular podcast might put on their list that we might inadvertently not be steering our kids to. One is I, personally, I’ll just say it by way of my own personal story. I really want each of my kids to know and love God’s word. It’s important to me that they know what’s in God’s word, again, not flawlessly or perfectly yet. Not that we will on this side of heaven at all, but that they know it. They know the basics, and that they love it. They fall in love with it. They have a Psalm 119 mentality about scripture where they’re up at night, they’re pondering it, they’re meditating on it [inaudible 00:20:16].

Therefore, therefore, if that is to be true of my kids, when they’re released into adulthood, what do I do from zero to 18? It starts to inform a lot of choices I might make along the way. Again, I can’t perfectly engineer this, and that’s the last time I’m going to caveat it. We can’t perfectly engineer this, but what do we want to be true about our kids? And I want you to start rolling those around in your head, and Lawson are going to kick a few around to get your wheels turning. Lawson, what are a couple, as you raised your two daughters, what are a couple of things that either are true now and you go, “Whew, man. Glad they got there anyway, in spite of me,” or you look back and go, “Man, this was always true. I had this on the radar ever since our kids were young.” What are a couple for you?

Lawson Brown: I want them to believe in prayer and be able to really feel like and know that they’re communicating. We’ve done some of the modeling of that, where we pray as families and it’s not rote. It’s not the same thing around the dinner table every time at 6:30 PM. We’ve talked about it with them. It’s been a joy to see, especially as my older is really moving out and going on her own, how often she references letting go and knowing she’s not in control and praying for God to steer her heart into his plan, that sort of thing. I had to learn it. I learned it at a late age, mid to late 20s when I really understood what prayer was, and it changed me, changed my life. I think prayer, really understanding that that is your complete connection to the creator that loves you more than any parent ever could.

Kent Evans: Were there moments as a dad when you said that explicitly, like out loud, “Hey girls, when you’re older, man, I want you to be women of prayer. I want you to love prayer. I want you to know how to communicate with God,” or were you trying to affect it not through osmosis, just through example and through modeling, or did you sometimes have just an explicit conversation about, “Hey, man. Mom and I were talking, and there’s one thing we really would love to be true about you guys”? How’d you all approach that?

Lawson Brown: No, we didn’t. I was learning as I went, as an older person becoming a new Christian.

Kent Evans: You didn’t have this podcast. If you’d had this podcast-

Lawson Brown: Think of what it would be now.

Kent Evans: Wow.

Lawson Brown: No, I didn’t. You come across some people that I feel like, just being real. I don’t think it is. I’m very structured and very proactive in business. But no, we weren’t. I mean, we did talk. We’ve been a very, very communicative family, just in general. Audrey has been great with it. She has, probably more than me, to be honest, but yeah, no, I didn’t have a start with the end in mind kind of a thing going, and then therefore break it down into a list like we’ve been talking about. My list would have been, “Be a good person-”

Kent Evans: Productive member of society.

Lawson Brown: I mean, sorry, but it was sort of vague.

Kent Evans: Not a total hoodlum. Some real high bars, right?

Lawson Brown: Yeah. I think God’s done all the work.

Kent Evans: Yeah. Well, in a sense, it’s like magnetic north in a sense where you were keying that anyway, whether you said it out loud or you said, “Begin with the end in mind,” you were aware of it, and over time it probably filtered through. I bet if we had your daughters on the podcast, they would say, “Oh yeah, my dad always modeled prayer.” In fact, here they are, Lawson. We’ve invited your daughters. No, I’m just kidding.

Lawson Brown: I had thought about, yes, and I do think dads ought to sit down and put a list together. And what do you want to be true? What do you want to know is going to be the case for your kids? If you could do it, put that down, write it down. But also what would your kids say is on their list, on their own list for themselves? And I think that’s a good way to have a heart-to-heart. If you’re wondering, “I don’t know how to approach this,” get your list together and then find the right time. The moment will happen naturally. Go to prayer with it first and ask for some help there, and then carve out some time, just like you would in any other business scenario where you have a review on what is the goal, and ask them, write down what do you want to be true of yourself when you’re 15, 20, 25?

Kent Evans: I’ve asked my boys, even when they were young, I’ve asked my boys when they’re fighting, the whole sibling arguments and fights that you’re going to have when kids are younger, I’ve asked them before, “Hey, what kind of relationship do you all want when you’re 25 or 30? Time out.” They could be 11 years old. We’ve had this conversation and I’m like, “What kind of relationship do you all want when you’re 25 or 30?” And they’re like, “Well, a good one.” And I’m like, “Awesome. So then every time he says something, you’re going to come back with a smart Alec response? Is that the building block that’s going to get you?”

And accidentally, I mean, I couldn’t have said this out loud probably, but I was trying to get them to begin with their own end in mind and think about that and start planting seeds now because here’s what you and I know for sure. And you mentioned this when we were doing the pre-work on this episode. We may not have a specific list of what we want to be true about our kids yet when they’re 18 or 20, pick an age, but culture sure does.

Lawson Brown: Yep.

Kent Evans: Culture. Sure does. There are forces at play in our culture who want certain things to be true about your children, right? And it’s not all necessarily evil. They may want them to be Netflix subscribers. Call that evil or not. They may want them to be Nike shoe wearers. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of culture’s objectives are inherently evil.

Lawson Brown: Right. That’s right.

Kent Evans: But some are right. Some of those are, “We really want your kids to be hooked on fear. We really want your kids to be dependent upon someone else to think for them.”

Lawson Brown: Right, right.

Kent Evans: Whatever those things are. There are some dark and ulterior motives, and that’s part of what we’re fighting as we talk about this topic, aren’t we?

Lawson Brown: Yeah, and they’re really good at it. Culture is really good at it. They have their A game-

Kent Evans: Well funded.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, well funded. They know all the best marketing and communication methods, and especially now with the ability to communicate in a very personalized way all the time into their face and ears, music, social media, images. It’s just nonstop. And so to combat that… I wouldn’t use a different word. It is combating that. And you’ve got to make the effort to carve out some meaningful time, not just a little snippet here and there. If I could go back in time, that’s definitely something that-

Kent Evans: Yeah.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, it’s going to happen naturally to a degree. But if you really want to be purposeful about it, then get your act together and get your thoughts down, know where you’re going, and then that’ll give you more confidence as a dad. I’m thinking about it now. My girls, they’re not grown and gone and done. We still have a lot of runway ahead.

Kent Evans: Sure. Yeah.

Lawson Brown: I’m applying this myself. This has been really good for me, too.

Kent Evans: Yeah. Well, that’s the whole reason we did this episode. It’s actually just an intervention for the Lawson Brown family. I’m glad you came along, sucker. You didn’t ever see that coming, did you? Man, for sure, we never stop. You never stop being a dad. You never stopped trying to influence your kids, even though it takes on very different complexions when they get older. I have a friend, John Blumberg, who’s an author and a leader, and he says, “You don’t tend to run from your values. You tend to drift from your values.”

I love that idea is that you almost never just go, “You know what? I used to think A, B and C. Today, I’m going to go D, E, F,” and you just turn a 180. That’s not normally what happens. Normally, you just get a little off track, a little off track, a little off track, and over time it’s like you’re heading from Dallas to New York and you find yourself at the end of your trip in Miami and you go, “How did I end up here?” Well, you didn’t actually try to go to Miami. You just got a little bit off over time and you just kept drifting to the right, and then before you know it, you didn’t end up where you planned on ending up. I think as dads, again, we can’t control it, but we sure can envision it.

Lawson Brown: Look, I know we’re running out of time, but it also has spurred an idea with me, with my girls, to talk about, “What do you want to be true of your husband?”

Kent Evans: Whoa. Bam.

Lawson Brown: What do you want to be true of your children?

Kent Evans: Mic drop.

Lawson Brown: See what comes to these conversations.

Kent Evans: Well, and for that matter, man, go play this podcast episode. I don’t think we said anything in here your kids can’t hear. Hop in the car, throw this podcast episode on, let us yap at them for 20, 30 minutes and see what comes out. Dad, listen. Here’s what Lawson and I hope for sure is true. What we hope is that today’s episode has been helpful for you, has been encouraging, and it hasn’t made you feel like you’re doing it wrong, even though you’re probably doing it wrong, like we all are. We’re all doing it wrong to a degree, but we hope this idea of beginning with the end in mind will unlock something for you.

Go to the Lord in prayer. Make your list of a handful of things you want to be true about your kids when they go to leave. Checklist with your wife, see if you all are in alignment. Have your kids do a list. This could be a very practical exercise for you and your family to do as you lead your families. We hope it’s been helpful today, and for Lawson Brown and Kent Evans, we’re signing off. We’ll see you next week.

Hey Dad, thank you for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. And if you really liked it, please consider doing three things. Number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcasts, or just call the person up and tell them to listen in. Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically. That helps us as well to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. And finally, review this podcast. Leave us a review, good or bad, wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at manhoodjourney.org or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

Voiceover: You’ve been dozing off to the Father On Purpose Podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. Now, wake up. Head over to fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a godly, intentional, and not completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose.