LND Archives: A Dad’s Guide to Emotional Communication

If you’re getting value from the podcast, please leave us a 5-star rating. It helps other dads find the show.

We’re off this week since Sam just had baby number four and is home with the family. In the meantime, we’re bringing back an OG episode from the archive on emotional communication, one of our favorite episodes from the early days.

In this one, Cole breaks down the difference between emotional and intellectual communication, and why so many of us as dads default to trying to solve a problem when our wife or kids actually just need to feel heard first. He walks through a few real examples from his own life and marriage, like missing his wife’s frustration three different times because he kept trying to fix things instead of just listening, or telling his son about the square footage of a new house when what his son actually needed was for someone to acknowledge that it’s okay to be sad about leaving the old one behind.

They also get into a couple of simple, practical tools you can start using right away, including the nonverbal paraphrase and the emotional paraphrase, and talk through how to get better at reading whether someone is communicating with you emotionally or intellectually in the moment.

If you’ve got young kids, or if you’ve ever been told by your wife that you don’t really get what she’s trying to say, this is a great one to revisit. We’ll be back soon with new episodes. Congrats again to Sam and Raquel on baby number four.