Fathers are so important in our lives and today we have a special guest to talk to us! Moshe Moeller is joining us all the way from New York! Moshe leads a few incredible programs in his community, including one called HERO Dads. He chats with Hilary and Jen about how dads have not always been involved in parenting studies, and how that is changing. He talks about what skills and resources his program supplies, talks about the importance of fathers in a child's life, as well as give us great resources for us as listeners!
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Rather Read than Listen? Transcription Here:
Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hillary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast. We are excited to have you guys here today. We have a special guest, and we are so excited that he has joined us. As many of our listeners know, we are stationed in Utah and this guest is joining us from New York. So, I think you win the contest, you win the prize for being the guest, that correct me if I'm wrong Jen, has been the farthest one away so far. I'm so excited to have you here. This is Doctor Moeller.
And I'm going to let I'm just going to turn it over to him and let him introduce himself a little bit and just to briefly introduce what he does and the programs that that he is involved in in his area. So, I'll turn it over to you.
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Thank you. Thank you so much for having us, having me and my name is Doctor Moshe Moeller. I am a licensed clinical psychologist and I work primarily at Montefiore Medical Center, which is a large hospital system in the Bronx, NY. And there I'm an attending psychologist, and I'm also an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. We have two programs that are grant funded, I’m the associate program director for both of those programs. One program is called supporting healthy relationships which is a couples program. The other program is called Hero Dads, which is a responsible fatherhood program. Now both of these programs are funded by the administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance. And currently we are for our couples program. We're in our fourth round of grant funding and for our father program, this is our first round of grant funding and we're really excited that we were able to get that a few years ago. So, as I said, I'm a licensed clinical psychologist. I graduated with my PhD in clinical psychology in 2018. With a large emphasis on fatherhood in my graduate studies and my doctoral dissertation was also in the area of fatherhood. So, I've been studying fatherhood and parenting for over a decade now, and I've been working with parents and dads for that time as well. And I also specialize in couple's work. I specialize in some trauma substance use. And obviously, fatherhood and parenting as well. I have some specialized training in couples therapy, so gotten method, couples therapy and also emotionally focused couples therapy, which is EFT of Sue Johnson and some other trainings of course for fatherhood and couples. And also, I'm very psychodynamically oriented with my way of doing therapy, but I'm also very integrative as well. So that's sort of my professional snippet, if you will. I'm also a dad myself. I have three children. My son is 10. My first daughter is 8 and my other daughter is about 17 months now and I live with them. My wife in Stony Point NY. And yeah, I think. I think that's. That's it for my intro, we think.
Hilary: Well, it sounds like we have someone here with a wealth of knowledge, so I am thrilled that you get to be with us. And I think for our podcast today, we're going to focus in on that Hero Dance program and so tell us a little bit more about what that program is. Who is involved in that program time commitments? All the things.
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Sure. Yeah. So hero dads is so hero is actually an acronym hero stands for healthy, empowered, resilient and open. And I'll get to those things once I explain the program. So this program is primarily for fathers who have partial custody or don't have custody of their children. And we serve primarily that in the Bronx and so these fathers are generally men of color and a lot of them again, don't have custody of their kids. They may have multiple children from different relationships. And so fatherhood and parenting for them can be a real struggle and sort of unique in their, you know, with their challenges. So we provide a quite comprehensive program which includes like the relationship parenting education. But it also includes financial and employment education as well, because a lot of these dads either are unemployed or underemployed. And a large emphasis in this healthy marriage responsible fatherhood grants is Family stability and that includes financial stability and mobility as well. So, our program. Is essentially 6 months long. However the core part of the program is 4 weeks and in these four weeks dads joined either a morning session or an evening session for Monday through Thursday, depending on their schedules. And in the mornings so each morning or each evening, you'll have a workshop and they alternate between relationship parenting workshops and financial/employment workshops. We also call them financial empowerment or job ready. Yes. And so do you have those facilitators, the facilitators, for the for the relationship parenting workshops are facilitated by mental health professionals, so either psychologists or mental health counselors. And we also have a large student population. We have a large training component in our program. So we also Co facilitate with a doctoral level or master's level student. And then we are partnered with an agency called Fed Cap, which is a pretty large agency around it's they cover, I think about 28 different states. And they're also located in the United Kingdom and Canada and they are in a workforce development program and they provide those workforce development curriculum and they also help with job placement ,with getting them ready to get their jobs and also really help them launch their career here. So each dad is provided with a parent coach so they could be one of those facilitators. Those mental health professionals, or someone who's not facilitating but we have on staff and so they get parent coaching at least three sessions and then they also have a resource coach. As well, three of those session. Those are, it's sort of like case management, but we don't call it case management because we don't want them to feel like they're case to be managed. So we use this coaching terminology, which is similar to sports terminology, which is more like we're here for you in whatever capacity you need to be there for and so we also provide the resource coaching session. Which are if they need access to legal support. We have partnership with Good Plus with a Good Plus Foundation which provides baby items like cribs and strollers and diapers and wipes, things like that. If they need any of those items, if they need health insurance, if they need ID, if they need you know any other type of support, so you help provide them. And so the program is free of charge. The program is also offered in both English and Spanish because in the South Bronx we have a large Spanish population and participants can earn up to $450 worth of incentives for participating. They also receive incentives for getting placed in a job and then also for retaining that job after 30, 90 and 180 days. So they have, there's a there's a large, there's a large monetary reason to join, but I think most of our dads actually join to be better parents. A lot of our dads grew up in single family homes, sorry, single parent homes or had children when they were very young or didn't have a dad themselves, so didn't know don't know how to do parenting or they've seen it but they didn't have really good models maybe. And so a lot of our dads joining are joining really to be better parents for their kids. There are some that are joining also to get jobs or employment. But a lot of them really have this motivation to be better dads and that's why we're here to really help them get there so let's get. So I'm just going back to now healthy, empowered, resilient and open which stands which is what heroes comprised of those are the main 4 themes that we help use for our curriculum and it's throughout the program. So healthy we talk about being healthy is not just physically healthy, but emotionally healthy, mentally healthy, environmentally healthy, spiritually healthy and financially healthy. E is empowered, so that's helping the dads feel empowered by their role as a dad and knowing the importance they have in their children's life and that they have the abilities to do what they need to do as a parent. R is resilient and as many of our dads who may have had, you know histories with trauma or of substance use, maybe incarceration or any type of difficult histories. We are able to help them recognize their resiliency and able to bounce back no matter where they've been, where they've been, they can always become stronger in the future. And lastly open is that's open to new ideas, new concepts, new feelings being more emotionally aware and expressive, and also learning open to new communication skills, especially with their Co parents, which with us we have a large emphasis on navigating Co parenting relationships because for a lot of our dads thats a huge struggle. So that's sort of in a nutshell here. One other big part of your dad is that we have something called Dad League, which is the ambassador program, which graduates from the program get to join. Who we feel that are good models for other dads. They've shown particularly good using their skills and good modeling. And so these tests they join, we have, we have support groups every week for current dads and graduates and so they joined that. They also help. Recruit other dads. They help with the family events that we have at least once a month and they help coordinate that and you know eventually when they they're different levels in that league. And eventually the goal is for them to Co facilitate these support groups and also have more of a direct mentorship role for all of our dads, so that's your dads. And your dad has been like. I mean, when I went on internship, people asked me like what? What do you, where do you see yourself in five years or 10 years? What do you want to be doing? And I've always stuck to what I wanted to do and which was different than a lot of other people, which was I wanted to be part of a father program or have my own father program, which was my dream, but I didn't realize that a few years later it was going to come true. And so, so, so thrilled to be unfortunate, to be able to be doing what I'm doing.
Hilary: This program sounds amazing. There are so many things I love about it. I love the longevity. I love the support group aspect. I love the fact that you're tying in that financial aspect. This you are doing it right like this is the ideal setup and I applaud you guys for that. It sounds like you're doing amazing work. Let's talk. Now I'm intrigued because fatherhood education in general, you correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like it's a fairly new trend to family life education and so talk about maybe some of the hurdles that you guys have to overcome with stigmas associated with dads and kind of breaking that myth that dads don't necessarily need to be as present in their child's life as maybe a mom does have you seen that?
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Well yes, so fatherhood research in general has been lacking, but over the past several decades, a lot more Father research has been disseminated and a lot of the theories and the original understandings of parenting had to be restructured or thought about differently or again. Because a lot of that early research and theories were based on the mother child relationship and so for example, attachment theory, John Bolby did not have a father in that theory originally. It was the mother and the child, you know, Winnicott had the mother child bubble, and the father was on the outside of it, so those were the original, some of the original theories, right? And so later on, like John Balby actually in the 80s, I think it was he. He restructured his theory to include any caregiver to establish that secure attachment or insecure attachment with their child, including the father, something that we've really tried to make sure that we do when we show videos or representation of parenting or dads, we wanna make sure that we have the right media and information, that is directed it for Dads. For example, if you if you if people know the still faced experiment where right the mom is still in the baby is trying to get the attention. So we showed there's they we did it also with dads and so we show that one with dads and you can see the same results that happen with moms also happen with dads. So a lot of, however, right. That being said, a lot of parenting theories and techniques still apply for dads. Like authoritative parenting by Laura Bauman, right, that is a key concept that's across parenting. It's not just for mothers or fathers and so that's actually a really important piece of what we do in our program. So, authoritative parenting, I guess to listeners know what the right you probably guys have probably covered authoritative parenting or.
Hilary: To a to a degree, but it wouldn't hurt just to do a quick summary, if you will.
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Yeah, so quickly authoritative parenting so we talk about four different parenting styles. The way we get our four different parenting styles is based on 2 main variables, so we have the warmth support and let's say nurturance on one side, 1 variable, another variable is the control aspect or limit setting consequences boundaries, right? And so each of those variables you could be high or low on those. And based on that that gives you your four different parenting styles. So for example, if I'm high on warmth and nurturance. And also high on control and limit setting that gives you authoritative parenting. That's actually what we're looking for. Now, once you drop, let's say, the warmth, but you still have a lot of consequences or limits that gives you authoritarian, which is more of that strict more disciplinarian type of approach. More like old school parenting. Then you have the opposite when you switch right? So a lot of times people grow up in authoritarian households. They're like, I'm not gonna be like that. I'm gonna be the opposite and so they don't have a lot of rules with them, but they have a lot of nurturance and love that gives you permissive parenting style. And that's where like. OK, allowing your kids to do a lot of things without, you know, raining them in? Also not so great. Lastly, when you have low levels of both you don't really have rules, but you also don't have nurturance or love that gives you neglectful parent or uninvolved parenting. So again, so what we're looking for is authoritative. When you have a high level of both, and the way that we actually do this in our program, we teach it but we also model it for our dads because a lot of our dads. Haven't had that type of parenting. And so we, for example, if a dad comes late to his session or misses they don't earn the full amount of incentives that they, you know, cause we're trying to increase participation and so they tell their doctor's appointment. They had a job interview or whatever. And we say, wow, that is amazing that you're able to take care of yourself, that you have a doctor's appointment. Really, really great. And so we show that's our validation showing that we care and we are concerned and then we say and also these are part of the commitments that you made in the program. And so therefore we can't excuse you for this one. So that's an authoritative parenting technique that we use across the board and to help them. So like oh okay no one really ever dealt with me like this either. They were really, really punitive about whatever it was, right or didn't care. So we show we care, but also there are some there's structure here. Sorry this I think I derail the conversation, but because authoritative, authoritative parenting is a key concept and I love it. But I think we're talking about how it's different maybe than some of the struggles we had with parenting education for dads and so what I was saying is that there's some similar concepts, and of course there are some that are not, and so the things that are not so being able to sort of challenge some of our dads in their, let's say, beliefs growing up of what it means to be a dad, what it means to be a parent and so or being a man. So we have some of our some of our curriculum is just about what does it mean to be a man, right? What does that mean to you? What does it mean to be a dad? Is that different than being a mom? Right. Can we explore that together because the modern day dad is expected to do a lot more than it was in the past for good, all for good reasons like I'm very much. I'm very much a believer in that that dads are able to be just as supportive, just as nurturing. Just as helpful and you know, emotionally aware. They may need practice or they may need some modeling or teaching, which we do, but they can do it. And so sometimes we need to challenge them to their beliefs of what a father can or should be, and some of the struggles is well, I think what eventually happens, one of the big struggles I see, not just with them, but with dads in general, is that they have an expectation now at home to be. Involved with their kids lives and we also have to explain what involved means. And then they also expected to still be financially responsible even if it's an egalitarian household, but when it comes down to it, many times men feel that responsibility, no matter what, that I'm responsible for the finances and I need to if I don't, that doesn't make me a good dad or a good man. And so recognizing that and being able to talk about that is very important. Another thing that we've made sure to keep in mind is working with men of color, which is also a different fathering. Let's say history or trajectory from, let's say, white fathers and me, right? Who's Jewish and white and have different background. And so we talk about that. We make sure to talk about it in our second session, we talk about the Hero Dad's journey and we do something called road mapping. We talked about our the things from the past, we plot our highs and lows and how that goes across your lifetime and one of the things we talk about is oppression and how that has impacted their lives and what how that plays a part in being a man, being a dad and then we also talked about it for just the teaching aspect. It's like, what is it like if I'm running a workshop? What is it like to have me as your facilitator, who's white and may not have had the same background as you? What is it like? Like we talk about race and ethnicity in the room because we wanna make sure that it is, you know. It's there, but you have to make it explicit. And when that happens, they feel a lot more relaxed and comfortable because knowing the systems that they may have been part of or institutions and things and where that was never talked about or cared about or but it's very much part of the whole process, especially fatherhood in the African American community because back when slavery, where they divided up families and things and men were not able to be there for their kids and family and then down the line, the cycle we talk about, the cycle is not a lot of times was not able to be broken. And so part of what we're trying to do is really breaking that cycle and helping dads recognize their importance and helping them to be in their kids lives. And a lot of them really want to and they're able. And a lot of them are able to, but for some it's a real struggle and we're really trying to help those so that I feel like it's different than mothering. About teaching, you know, teaching about fatherhood. A large part about with fatherhood. Also, when we struggled with was the Co parent relationship. So in our in our couples program so we do a lot of communication skills and teaching them how to. We talked about the speaker listener concept and how to be a good speaker, how to be a good listener. But when you're with just one person it's hard to teach that or practice that because you don't have other person with you here. And so the Co parent relationship is such a big, it could be a triggering you know, topic to discuss. And so that's been something we've struggled with and dads have struggled with as well to really allow themselves to be open right and allow them to take in some of those skills and try them because a lot of what they're worried about is if I do this it first of all shows their vulnerability a bit, and if I show any weakness then they're gonna take advantage of me. They're gonna put it back in my face or something like that. But in the end of the day, when they do try it. They see like oh wait a second something is different here. It's like if I don't start with my anger, if I don't start with accusing. If I'm able to start with my feelings and not pointing fingers, not being defensive. Different things start to happen, so there's a lot of pushback or resistance in the beginning because of what they've experienced. But what we say is just we need to at least try it sometimes and see what happens. What's great about is when they do it and they bring it back to the group and the group hears it, that really makes it much more powerful, cause it's not us saying that it works, it's their fellow brothers that we called brotherhoods. They are the ones to say that it works.
Jen: I think that all of that is super amazing and very much needed within our communities across the country. I mean it's. It's really neat at The Family Place because we have that kids place where parents can bring their kids for two hours out of the day and get some self-care for themselves. And when we have hired men or have hired or have men interns. Those kids are flocking to those men. They need them in their lives. It's super important. The other day I walked in and there was one of our staff he was just holding a child and seeing that little child just snuggle in, wanting that that touch that comfort from a male figure was really it just really struck me of how important these men, our men are in our kids' lives.
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Yeah. No, that, that's beautiful to hear. Thanks for sharing. I totally agree. I feel like kids they really do need that comfort, that love that knowing that dad, or whoever their father had fatherly figure is, is there for them and, you know, research has shown that kids that grow up in two family homes, you know, with the dad, their success rates are just so much better. There's less truancy, there's less mental health issues there, they're less at risk for different types of risky behavior or of well the list goes on and on. It's not rocket science.
Hilary: So, I'm imagining an individual listening to this podcast, a dad who's saying to himself, I'm ready. I'm ready to learn these skills. I'm ready to be a more active, more involved father. But they may not be local in your area. What? What suggestion would you offer to a dad out there who wants more education? Who wants to become more involved in their child's relationship?
Doctor Moshe Moeller: That's OK, that's a great question. So I do want to talk about what it means to be involved also in their kid's life, because people think, yeah, I'm so involved. I'm like, OK, what does that mean? I go to my kid's soccer games every Sunday like, I'm super involved or I take them to school every day. We teach our dads always that. That the quantity of time with your kids is not what matters. Research shows that it's the quality of time that you spend with your kids. It is so much more important so cause a lot of our dads don't live with their kids and they're like I want. how am I gonna make an impact? So, it's not again, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. So that if you're with them 2-3 hours a week, you can make sure that that is amazing quality time. You can have dads. Being in the same home with their kids 24/7, but there's zero quality time there, whether they're always on their phone, they're working all the time, they're out with their friends, whatever but I'm a dad, right? So we talk about involved fatherhood. Usually, the research talks about 3. Three areas of accessibility responsibility and engagement now accessibility is that that idea of is my father. Or is the father available when needed? So let's say you need it. If I call him, will he answer? If I text, will he respond? How accessible are they? The second one is responsibility. Those are the parenting tasks that are. Sort of shared amongst you know, all parents like diapering, taking kids to the doctor, scheduling appointments, yeah, soccer games, things like that's responsible bedtime. And then there's engagement. And that's the one-on-one interaction that you have with your kid. Playing with them, talking to them at one-on-one. What's going on? So altogether that creates involved father and so it's not just one thing, it's all of those things. So number one is first that's knowing these three things. Things is really important because they're like, how do I come? How could I be more involved? Well, let's look at these three domains. Where do you fall under there? So that's that. But if dads want more knowledge about this, so there are of course you know, there are several books there are depending if they want, if they want, like research and more academic. I would suggest reading things by Michael Lamb. He's one of the like forerunners and fatherhood, research and like scholarly works. Recently I've come upon a series of fatherhood series of books by. Hold on,
Armin A. Brout that he has few different books on. Like the expectant father, the single father. A dad's guide to the toddler years. Father and your school age child, the military father, the new father. Right. So, he has a bunch of these Armen A Brout, and they're all on Amazon. But it helps. It's written specifically for dads with a lot of research. And those are some good. Some places to start, but you can also follow a bunch of these fatherhood initiatives or websites like on Instagram. I'm sure they also have Facebook, but on Instagram so and they post a lot of different things about fatherhood, so the fatherhood right. So, the federal government is called the fatherhood initiative, I believe. I think it's What is it? I just don't forget the website, but. I could probably. I think it's wait. So, if I do go fatherhood, I'm sure something will come up and.
Hilary: And while you look for that, we'll just remind our listeners that we will and we will include these websites as well as those individuals that you mentioned in our show notes. So that you guys have the opportunity to look into this these resources, cause this is a great resource to offer to you so.
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Yeah, here it is. It's fatherhood.gov. That's what it is. Filler.gov has tons of resources, dedication, videos, Dad talk blog activities for dads and kids services near you. So, if you're looking for a fatherhood program, lots of different resources and webinars and things on different topics on blended families. On child support and substance use Co-parenting, it's quite it's quite robust this website.
Hilary: Perfect oh, thank you. Thank you for providing that information to our listeners. I I know that they all appreciate that as we kind of wrap up our time here, let me just close with this final question if I can. If you were to offer two, two or three final tips to our parents out there, maybe even specifically to our dads out there, what parenting tips or advice would you offer?
Doctor Moshe Moeller: Great question. So first of all, I want to say that there is no perfect parent. That's number one. There's no perfect parent. The researchers in the past, they said, we're looking to be a good enough parent. Good enough. And so whatever that means for you. But we're really not looking for perfection here. No child is gonna, you know, if we're looking, if we're gonna have perfect parents, then what are all the psychologists and mental health counselors gonna do? In 20 years from now, they're not gonna have jobs, right? OK. I'm sorry. I'm joking. I don't wanna say to the parents that your kids are all gonna need therapy. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is that we wanna take a little bit of that pressure off of ourselves to be perfect parents like my wife and I. We're definitely not perfect. We give our kids screen time sometimes when we need to take a break. That's a lot of time. You know, if you. Need a break? Take the break like that's more important, cause if you're not able to function yourself, it's gonna be more devastating and more harmful for the kids later on because they're gonna get some of your, you know, anxieties or frustration or pressure that you have going on, so give yourself a break. A key concept that I that I always like to share with people. I touched on it a little bit before is it's so important for every relationship, but especially parenting is validation. There's a great book by I think it's high in rent. Ohh it's called between parent and child. Between parent and Child is a great book. Can you see a time? It's an older book, but it's quite it's a best seller. And it talks a lot about the validation. Talks about how. It is important to acknowledge and recognize that your child has something going on. It may be difficult and you're not trying to fix it or change it or ignore it. Many times, our kids come to us. Let's say they come home from school and be like, oh, I got a, you know, I had a bad day. Oh what happened right? I would be usually an immediate reaction instead. I mean we wanna validate first like you had such a bad day. That means it looks like you're a little sad or upset about that? Wow, that probably that probably was a hard day. And then you can ask about it because if we're just asking if we're just saying, oh, what did you do or like? What happened? It's almost we're not connecting the feelings. We're not connecting that emotional support and validation. So validation is so, so important in any situation. It's like if your kids don't wanna eat their dinner and they're making a fuss about it, it's like seems like you're really angry, but you really don't like this food right now. Yeah, that must be frustrating. However, you know, this is what we're having for dinner now, as opposed to. No, I don't care. This is what we're eating, right? It's a very different approach when we have validation, our kids are able to see that we hear them and we care about them and that they know that we get it. We're in, we get their subjectivity. That's a very important piece in parenting. So that's something I wanna share. I guess those are two things. Let's see if I have anything else. Yes, another big thing with parenting is the relationship that you also have with your partner, whether you're living together or whether you're again Co-parenting your kids pick up on everything. People know this, right? Kids learn everything, no matter what they see, they hear, they feel, they think. And if they see positive relationships, positive communication between parents, that trickles down to them, that also creates an atmosphere in the home, Goodman always calls an atmosphere of appreciation or atmosphere of love, right? We're trying to build family stability and love and support. And so it really starts with the parents. Part of that is also parents being on the same page. What it is that they want to have their kids part of that is talking about. I know so many things. The value system, if they're connected with values, is what helps. Their decision making their actions, their behaviors, if you're and that that lessens a lot of that conflict that happens with families. So, know your values. Stick to them and that will help the whole family. And so again, whether that's the parents in the, in the relationship or Co parents, the kids see the kids are the ones that in the end of the day are gonna be affected by whatever is going on between you guys. So, healthy communication, healthy relationships is a really important part of parenting as well.
Jen: That we've been just feed lots of great information and so many things that we can take from this and increase our knowledge, encourage our dads. To be more involved and engaged and connected with their kids, I want to thank you so much for. Coming today, we really appreciate it. I want to thank all of our listeners for coming and listening today. We appreciate you and we know that there is at least one piece of information in here that you can take and really just try and if that's working on your couple relationship with or your Co-parenting. Relationship is, you know, start there. So, thank you so much. Remember to be patient and kind with yourself and we will see you next week.
Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like to reach us, you can at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen Daly – The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is TheFamilyPlaceUtah.org. If you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes, we'd love to see you there.
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