Growing the Next Generation of Givers - An Interview with Dr. Scott Grant

In this episode, Andrew chats with Dr. Scott Grant, pediatrician and creator and host of the Docs2Dads podcast.  Andrew and Scott discuss generosity, and they delve into how we, as parents and family members, cultivate a lifelong spirit of generosity in our children.  They speak specifically about relationship building, role modeling, and a series of steps we can take to teach generosity.  

Listen to "128- Growing the Next Generation of Givers (Generosity, Parenting, Relationship Building): Dr. Scott Grant (Docs2Dads)" on Spreaker.

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Show Notes

Background

Dr. Scott Grant is a pediatrician in Michigan.  He and his wife Laura have 3 young children, and Scott shares how his transition into parenthood changed how he interacted with his pediatric patients and their families.  In becoming a parent himself, Scott found that he could combine his book training with his day-to-day lived experience as a father.  

The Importance of Relationships

Scott and Andrew spend some time discussing the importance of relationships in both pediatrics and fundraising.  Scott explains how his pediatric practice has shown him that relationships of all types are important to a child’s well-being from infancy to adulthood.  Andrew makes connections between Scott’s emphasis on relationships for children and the importance of relationship building in development.  Both men conclude that attentive listening is a central component to successful relationships with patients and donors.  

Insights of an End User

Scott and Andrew once again draw parallels between pediatrics and fundraising when they discuss the importance of understanding your end user’s experience.  As Scott changed his professional interactions with families after becoming a father, Andrew reminds fundraising professionals to intentionally try out the donor experience with several organizations.  Andrew encourages fundraisers to give to different organizations in different ways so that the fundraiser can understand what donors may really like and what may be disappointing to donors.  

Making a Podcast

Scott explains his motivation for starting his Docs2Dads podcast.  He noticed that dads were often marginalized in parents because of history, experience, and presumed gender roles.  Scott wanted to create content that encouraged confidence and competence for fathers, especially those dads just beginning their parenting journey. The Docs2Dads podcast covers a wide variety of topics including logistics of parenting, parenting styles, and core values.  

Teaching Generosity 

Both Andrew and Scott agree that generosity is a learned behavior, and it’s important for families to teach children how to be generous and why generosity is important.  Scott outlines a three step process for teaching generosity, and Andrew discusses how this process can be equally as useful for fundraisers.  

Lightning Round

1. If you could fundraise for any organization or cause at any time in history, what would it be?
• I would want to do something in the realm of child health, specifically mental health and behavioral health services.
2. If you could get a donor meeting with anyone living or dead, who would it be?
• St. Vincent de Paul:  Not only is he my patron saint and a model of generosity, but he was the fundraising professional of his age.  He was so close to the poor in France, serving them, and yet he also had connections with the wealthy people who had the resources that could help.  He knew how to bridge the gap between rich and poor, and I’d love to hear how he managed to do that.  
3. Is there enough money out there for every organization that's doing good work?
• Yes, but there’s a caveat.  There’s enough money for every organization doing good work well.  Organizations need to be good stewards of the resources they receive.       
4. What is one piece of advice that you would give your past self?
• I’d tell myself to take my physical health a lot more seriously in my youth!  
5. Who are 3 people who have most influenced you professionally?
• My parents:  All things start at home, and I’m so blessed that my parents raised me with a heart for generosity.
• Dr. Bert Johansson:  He was my mentor in medical school.  He was the first doctor I knew who was unashamedly Catholic and Christian.  He spoke to patients about his faith, and he prayed with them.  He combined a heart of service with book knowledge.
• My wife:  At the end of the day, she’s the one I come home to.  She’s also a doctor, and we discuss our cases and bounce ideas off of one another.  She’s also my editor when I write.        
6. What is one fact about you that most people don’t know?
• At one point in my life, I weighed almost 300 pounds.  I have successfully lost and kept off 50 to 75 pounds.  It hasn’t been easy, but I share it because I want dads to know that we can do hard things.  
7. What is a book that you would recommend?
• Hero:  Being the Strong Father Your Children Need by Dr. Meg Meeker.  This is a book that I often gift to new fathers.  It speaks to my soul about the role dads can play for their children.  

If you would like to connect with Scott, you can find him online at https://docs2dads.com/.  He’s on LinkedIn as Dr. Scott Grant, or you can reach out to him by email at [email protected].   

You can find Scott’s podcast on kids and generosity as episode 57 on his Docs2Dads podcast.  Click here to listen!  (https://docs2dads.com/episode57/)

Andrew's Takeaways

My first takeaway from my interview with Scott is about relationship building and listening.  If you’re a regular listener to our podcast, you know that we often emphasize relationships and attentive listening as an essential part of fundraising, and here it is again.  In my chat with Scott, I particularly loved how he spoke about listening in his pediatric practice.  Scott shared that when families come into his practice, he’ll first ask the adults in the room, “what do you want to talk about today?”  Scott has learned that by asking this question first and really listening to what his patients think is the most important concern, his visits are more successful.  He addresses patient concerns first, and then he can share the other info that he, as the doctor, thinks is most important.  If, however, he doesn’t address the patient's concerns first, parents won’t focus on all of the other information he wants to share about a child’s health.  We, as fundraisers, can learn from Scott’s listening technique.  When we meet with donors, we need to really pay attention to their questions and concerns.  Of course, we go to meetings with a loose agenda of what we want to talk about, but we have to be flexible enough to change our plans according to what our donors find important.  To know how to change, we have to listen and listen well.  We can also come up with our own version of Scott’s question by asking donors, “what do you most want to learn about our ministry?” or “how do you want to engage with our organization?”  

My second takeaway is also from my discussion with Scott about relationships.  Scott shared how his skills as a pediatrician changed when he had his own children.  He was a good pediatrician before he had kids.  But, once he was a father, he became a better pediatrician because he better understood what his patients’ families were experiencing.  We can experience this same improvement as fundraisers.  We can probably learn to be a good fundraiser without ever being a donor, but we can be better fundraisers if we are also a donor.  I always encourage new development professionals to be donor with their personal funds.  I suggest that they choose several organizations to donate to, and I tell them to choose different methods of donation.  Maybe they donate online to one organization they care about, maybe they send a check to another, maybe they attend a fundraising event for a third.  In making these donations in different ways, development professionals can see what other organizations are doing, and they can learn what they, as a donor, find attractive.  What kind of follow-up did the receive after their donation?  Did they receive a really special thank you note?  Or, a call?  Or, did they not receive a thank you note at all?  By becoming the end user in a donation process, fundraisers can put themselves in the shoes of their own donors, and they can learn how to improve their own processes.  Give it a try sometime!  Donate and see if you find something that makes you really happy to be a donor.  

My final takeaway comes from Scott’s discussion on how to teach generosity and foster it in our children.  Scott outlines three steps that he uses to help teach his kids generosity.  First, he helps them recognize that there is a problem.  Until his children can even see there is a problem, they’ll never be able to figure out how to help.  In that vein, the next step is helping them realize that they have the ability to help.  Finally, step three is to actually have them do the helping.  While generosity is a learned behavior, it’s not immediately learned - it takes work.  I appreciate that Scott has an easily explained process for how he actually encourages generosity to his children. Again, that process is (1) he helps them see the problem, (2) helps them see how they can help, and (3) he encourages them to actually help.  Not surprisingly, this process is also applicable to our role as fundraisers.  When we are trying to move a donor to action, we can use this process to structure our discussion.  First, we have to help a donor see there is a problem.  Once we have successfully helped the donor recognize the problem, we have to move her to realize she can (theoretically!) help address this problem.  Finally, we help the donor make the leap from having the ability to help to actually make a gift that makes a difference.  Success!  Scott’s 3 step process to generosity just helped us secure a donation.  

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

01:40.90 aggierobison: "So good. Well howdy everyone and welcome to another episode of the Petrus Development Show. I'm Andrew Robinson, and I'm thrilled that you're with us here today. Today, I have Dr. Scott Grant. Dr. Grant or Scott, I'll just call you Scott for the rest of the interview if that's okay, Scott. Ah, Scott is a physician. He's a medical instructor, and he is also the host of a podcast called "Docs2Dads." Scott and I have connected over LinkedIn recently, and he puts out great content about empowering dads and having conversations with their kids to get involved with their lives."

01:56.87 Scott Grant: "That's perfect."

02:16.32 aggierobison: "Um, and a lot of the conversations that are some of the conversations that he's shared are about generosity, and I thought, 'Man, this is a perfect topic for us.' I loved f Scott on so reached out Scott said yes, and so here we are recording an interview. So Scott, thanks so much for being here."

02:31.57 Scott Grant: "It's absolutely my pleasure. I enjoyed getting to know you on LinkedIn, and now it's great to get to know you in person a little bit better."

02:36.40 aggierobison: "Perfect. So Scott, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, about your background? How did you come to be a medical professional that is so interested in helping dads be better fathers?"

02:46.43 Scott Grant: "Sure. So, I am specifically a pediatrician. That's the type of medical professional that I am. So, I am a physician who did additional training to learn how to take care of kids. And one of the main things that we talk about a lot in Pediatrics is growth and development. And one thing that I learned pretty early on is that those things are so important to children, and the place that that comes from is that child's environment and that within their family. And so it's something that I've always been interested in, to say we're not just taking care of this one child in front of us. But we're really having to wrap our arms around this whole family. And so, what are the ways that we can help families have the skills that they need, and those kinds of things to make sure that their children are growing and developing appropriately, and then when health issues come up, you know, how do we manage those as well?"

03:27.48 aggierobison: "Yeah."

03:44.35 Scott Grant: Ah, that's one of the places that sort of led me down this path to really wanting to talk to parents and dads in particular, and we can get more into that in a few minutes if you'd like.

03:52.48 aggierobison: Yeah, perfect. Well, I love that and I think that you're absolutely right. Just from, you know, I've got four kids, and we've had the same pediatrician for her, at least, the well, all four of them now, and we're transitioning from our oldest to a different doctor now that she's becoming a teenager and getting to that point in life. But certainly, you know, a lot of our, I think you're absolutely right, a lot of the conversations we have with a pediatrician are not just about the health of that child that's sitting there in that room. It's about, you know, he really does dive into how are the other kids doing? How is the dynamic between them? You know, what can I help you with? And so I think you're absolutely right that in order to be able to care for that child, you really have to develop trust with the family, and that's how that relationship, you know, the way you do that same way we do it in fundraising, right? Is you invest in those relationships? You ask questions, you get to know them, you learn about them, and that's ultimately what allows that relationship to build into a point of trust.

04:49.88 Scott Grant: Absolutely. One thing that I've come to really understand now that I've been out doing this for, you know, eight years or so is that so much of our health and well-being, and this is true for adults just like kids, but it's particularly true with kids, I think, so much of our health and well-being comes in the context of relationships, and so you really have to understand what are the relationships in this child's life? Who are the important people in this child's life, and what is the health of those relationships? And that'll give you a clue to what is the health of this child like, and that starts from the very beginning with bonding with parents from during pregnancy, as well as, you know, immediately after birth. We talk so much about skin to skin right after delivery for both mom and dad, by the way, and, you know, that's where it starts is that bonding, and then the relationships really influence the child's health all the way into adulthood and even now. You know, your and my health is dependent on how good is our relationship with our wives? How good is our relationship with our children? How good is our relationship with the other people in our community? Our co-workers, our friends, you know, those relationships in a very big way dictate our overall health and well-being in some really important ways.

06:05.79 aggierobison Yeah, I think that's really fascinating. I hadn't thought about it in that way, that the health and well-being of your body is impacted by the relationships that you have that exist outside of your body, right? But they, they...

06:15.69 Scott Grant Here.

06:18.89 aggierobison You're absolutely right. I see that in my own life, in my wife's life, and then in our family and my kids, right? Like when they're getting along with the kids at school and their teachers and everything, they just generally seem to be feeling better, and you know, there are not those ailments. That's a really interesting point. Thank you for sharing that. So tell us a lot about yourself. You have kids, I presume. What is your family makeup like?

06:48.60 Scott Grant Sure, yeah, so a little bit about me. Going all the way back, I'm in Michigan now, but I grew up in Texas. I was born in Oklahoma but raised in the Dallas, Texas area, so go Cowboys and ah...

07:05.21 Scott Grant And then I went to medical school. When I was in medical school, I met my wife Laura. We dated throughout medical school and into residency, and then got married back in 2015. I better get that right. And we now have three kids: boy, girl, boy, a four-and-a-half-year-old, two-and-a-half-year-old, and now a four-month-old. So we are early in our journey but live in the early childhood years. My youngest is going through his four-month sleep progression right now. So, there's not a lot of sleep happening in my house right now, unfortunately. Yeah, that's my journey into fatherhood. So, now I've been a dad for about four and a half years. It was really becoming a dad myself that fundamentally shifted the way that I thought about my interactions with families in clinic. Because all of a sudden, all of the theoretical book knowledge that I had gained from my undergraduate degree and my going to medical school and four years in medical school rotating through all the different departments, going to residency three years, you know, taking care of kids at various ages with different kinds of diseases, staying on for a chief resident year. I did all the things that you're supposed to do to become an excellent pediatrician, and I think that I am for the families that I serve, and I'm proud of the care that I provide. But it was really becoming a father myself and living those issues day to day that made it practical for me, and it just solidified everything, and I was like, "This is where I need to spend my time, is talking to parents about the practical things that happen." Because some of this book knowledge applies, and some of it maybe isn't quite as practical as we wish it was as we're giving the advice. You might have had that experience with your pediatrician too. We do the best we can. But I'm definitely a much better Pediatrician now that I have kids of my own and I have experienced different personalities and different temperaments across my three kids, and so I'm a much better Pediatrician now than I was then. And that is a big part of what motivated me to want to start having conversations regularly with parents about not only saying like these are the things that maybe you could do a little bit better, but the other thing that I think we fall short on as care providers sometimes is acknowledging like there are a lot of things that most parents are doing correctly, and we should encourage them. So much of marketing and advertising and all these things that are happening are basically telling you that you're not a very good parent and if you bought this product, you'd be a much better parent.

Ah, and so if we can say, "Well, not quite, hold on to that. Not quite so fast. Like, you're doing a good job." You know, babies don't grow and develop appropriately unless they have relationships, right? Unless they have parents and caregivers who care about them and play with them and feed them and all of these things that they can't do for themselves. And so what I tell the residents that I work with all the time is when you see a baby that's growing well and developing well and meeting their milestones, like that's not normal. It feels normal, but that's not the default position. That only happens in the context of this baby has at least 1 adult, hopefully more than one, that loves them and cares about them enough to feed them and talk to them and play with them, right? And that's how we achieve all of these skills. And so that was sort of this frame shift moment for me as a pediatrician in the way that we talk to families about their kids.

Yeah, I want to come back to that. But just a point that I want to make for our listeners, many of whom are fundraisers. This is the same thing about being, if you're raising money for an organization, about being a donor yourself, right? So a lot of the young clients that I work with are the young development directors that I work with. You know, one of the first things that I say is, "Pick a couple of charities and go make a gift to them." You know, send a check to one, go online and make a gift to another, and then go by the office and drop off some money to this one. Just exposing yourself to how it feels to be on the other side of that equation, right? As the donor and then how you're treated, how that sort of, you know, the feelings that you that are generated in your own life like that will help you be a better, ask a better fundraiser on the other side. It's the same thing you're talking about, you know, or it's similar to what you're talking about here about how do you have the knowledge to care for kids, right? That's one thing, and you're trained extensively in that. But the experience of having your kids, raising them, and then being the dad who's, presumed has a pediatrician, right? Who's helping you raise, you know, keep them healthy, and it's like, "Yeah, I see what you're trying to do there, but as the dad, I don't I like that, that's not how I hear it," and so you know, then it.

11:40.28 Scott Grant: Left now.

11:52.92 aggierobison: It sort of informs your ability to then work with other parents of other kids in a way that because you have that experience.

11:59.62 Scott Grant: Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. I think that's a good way to think about it. The more that you can become, I think this is true in most business endeavors or pretty much any kind of scenario, the more that you can become an end user of the product that you're trying to get other people to use and have a good sense of what is the actual experience of the person that I'm trying to get to use my product or donate to my organization or whatever it is, the more able you're going to be able to step into their shoes and figure out like what are their motivations. What are the things that they need to be successful? What are the things that they would be looking for from me as a person who's asking for that donation? And in the case of the audience for your show, you know, the more that you can become the end user of the product you're trying to sell, to sort of boil that down a little bit, the more efficient you're going to be and the more effective you're going to be at getting other people to become end users of the product.

12:56.43 aggierobison: Yeah, and then one point I want to go back to a minute ago, I saw on Twitter, I think it was last night or the day before, it was somebody, and I think it was a physician, but she was like, here's all the reasons that you're beating yourself up as a parent, and the thread was like, you know, all of these things that you're being taught about, you know, to your point, right? Marketers, they need to sell things, so they need to convince you that you need them, right? And how do they do that? They create that gap in what you think you're doing, but it was like, here's all the ways that you're probably doing a really great job with your kids, right? Like spending time with them doesn't always have to be educational. It could just be play, and it was, you know, all these different things.

13:17.16 Scott Grant: He.

13:33.69 aggierobison: You know, the thread had blown up, and you know, clearly that's a message that people are itching to hear is like, okay, fine, you know, it's just like this beat that like, all right, fine, I maybe am better than I give myself credit for, and that's important for you.

13:46.41 Scott Grant: Absolutely co-sign that completely. I think that so much of parenting is already feeling like you're not quite doing everything that you wish you could be doing. You wish you had more time, you wish you could do X, Y, or Z thing if there was more time, there was more money, there were less responsibilities that you had to fill, all of those kinds of things. And so just taking the time to appreciate that what you're doing is good. Sure, maybe there are things that you can do to try to be better, and as a pediatrician, I'm looking for those things as we're having a conversation, like what are those little tweaks that you can make as a parent that might give you not only better outcomes for your child, whatever that might be. Right? If your child is having some developmental delays, then I can give you some tips about how to get them to speak better, how to use their hands better, walk more effectively - we can do all of that. But there are also many great things that you're doing with the time you spend with your child. And when you have developmental delays or other issues, it's not necessarily a sign of failure as a parent. These things happen to a large percentage of parents, and it's usually not the case that there's anything a parent could or should have done differently.

15:03.61 Scott Grant: Differently than they were doing before that caused this problem. There might be some extra steps we need to take now to try to address it. But you know, we also can't beat ourselves up too much, and that's another place where I try to enforce people. You know, especially right now, we're going through this winter, every family that I know has had at least one sick kid for like the last four months. It feels like on any given day, right? And I'm going through that too, right? And it becomes this natural question that parents sometimes have of like, is there something wrong with my kid's immune system? Is there something that I should be doing differently to try to protect my kids from this? And the reality is, like, this is just a normal winter, and sometimes, some winters are particularly bad, which this one seems to be, you know. And we're getting a little off track here. But, you know, there's nothing that you're doing wrong. It's just sort of, this is life, and you have to learn how to adjust to that, and that's where some of the coaching aspect of being a pediatrician comes in as well. But I think that's an important thing too, like, you're doing a good job, and if somebody, to all of you out there who are listening who are parents, you're doing a good job, and if somebody hasn't told you that recently, like hear it from me. Please, you're doing a good job, and look at your partner, your spouse, like maybe nobody has told them that they're doing a good job recently either. So today, when you get home tonight at the end of the day, you're collapsing on the couch at the end of another exhausting day, just look over at your partner and say, you know, you're doing a great job. We've got some great kids. We love them so much, and you are a big part of that. Thank you for everything that you do because you're doing a good job because maybe they haven't heard that before because who says that to anybody, you know? My wife and I try to say it to each other, but you know, just try to bring that positivity a little bit.

16:36.83 Aggierobison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:45.89 Aggierobison: I think that's huge, and I appreciate you sharing that. Um, yeah, there's just so much that is helpful in this conversation. You know, you said we're getting off track, and yet everything you're saying, I'm pulling out. Like, if I'm putting on my fundraiser's hat right now, you're talking about as a physician, part of, you know, a lot of what you have to do is listen, right? Like, that's probably a big part of every visit that you have and every relationship is just listening to them because if you're not hearing what they're telling you, and you're not, to your point.

17:16.53 Aggierobison: Almost kind of putting on your investigator hat, you know, looking for clues and sort of trying to hear behind what they're saying, the words that they're saying, like, then how are you going to be able to help them? And in fundraising, the way that we build relationships, the way we get to know our donors is we have to listen. And sometimes that's hard because it's like, and I'm sure it's the same for you as a physician, you know, we represent this organization, we represent this ministry, and we want to tell you all the ways that it's really great, all the ways that we're doing really good, and then at the end of the meeting, they're like, "Alright? Well, thanks for the update. I don't know that I shared much," and then you're like, "Oh wait, shoot, we were supposed to go somewhere with this."

17:51.37 Scott Grant: But to your point, the best fundraisers and I'm sure the best physicians, they are able to start by putting in, entering into that listening space, right? Like, I'm going to ask you questions and I'm going to get you to talk, and then we're going to pivot the conversation. I'm going to offer you some advice, some counsel or even just, you know, I'm sure in some cases, just a shoulder to cry on, right? Or you right somebody to hear what you're saying. But you have to start with listening, is that am I right in that?

18:21.30 Scott Grant: Absolutely right. I tell the residents I work with in every encounter that I do, the very first question that should come out of your mouth when you walk in the door is, "What do you want to talk about today? What are you, like, you're coming as a parent?" And sometimes the answer is, "Nothing. Everything seems to be going great. We're really happy. We're just here because we need some shots to get our kid into school or whatever, you know?" But every once in a while, parents come with legitimate, very concerning things that they want to talk about with their pediatrician. And so the first question is always, "What do you want to make sure that we talk about today?" Because at every age, I've been doing this long enough that at every age, I can talk for 20 minutes about different things that are really important for kids at that age. But if I ramble on and on, and this is probably the parallel to what you were just saying, if I ramble on and on about all the things that you need to know about to make sure that your 5-year-old is healthy and is set up for success in school-

18:57.63 Aggierobison: Alright, right.

19:13.40 Scott Grant But you're concerned because you know you're having trouble with, you know, bedwetting at night and you really want to talk about that. But if I don't ever talk about that, then we've got a disconnect in that relationship now has an issue. But if I start with, "what do you want to make sure that we talk about today?" and you say, "my kid is still bedwetting, and I don't know if that's a problem," which, by the way, 5-year-olds are still allowed to bedwet, that's not a problem. Um, which is a big part of what we do as pediatricians, but if I don't talk about that first and get that out of the way, then nothing else I say is going to land anywhere because you're so worried about the bedwetting, right? As an example. And it sounds like-

19:39.66 aggierobison Exactly.

19:49.86 Scott Grant Same thing for you, I could imagine, as you're having conversations with potential donors. You really want to know what their motivations are. What kind of good are they trying to achieve in the world, and then where does your organization fill that need? Because your organization might do 300 really important, awesome things, but that donor might really only be interested in one or two key things that they think are the most important that they want to make sure that they're putting their money behind. And if you know that and you're listening to them, then you can really highlight the aspects of your organization that are meeting that need, right? And so it's always got to start from a place of like listening because otherwise, you're just dumping information that's not going anywhere. Just talking, talking to a wall.

20:29.22 aggierobison Absolutely, great. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about your podcast. So it feels like to me, based on this conversation, your podcast is really just an extension of your office work, right? You're talking with a certain number of families in the office during a normal day. This is great.

20:32.51 Scott Grant Yeah, wow.

20:46.80 aggierobison A lot of people want to hear what you're saying or want to learn or grow, and so tell me about starting this podcast. What has that experience been like, and what are you hoping to get out of that experience?

20:57.33 Scott Grant Sure, yeah. The podcast has grown sort of organically from that. It was in this moment that I sort of realized that I wanted to talk to parents about parenting, and specifically dads, who I think frequently get left out completely or at least are marginalized in most conversations about parenting. I think that's starting to change. One of the things that's been most encouraging about getting to know folks like you on LinkedIn is seeing just how many active dads are out there who are talking about their professional work but are also talking a lot about how much they love being a dad and how much being a dad informs an important part of their identity. I think more and more dads of our generation fall into that category. Like we want to be involved in our kids' lives. We want to be a part of the work that's happening at home. This idea that the dad of the family is supposed to just be somebody who leaves for work every morning and comes home at night and eats dinner and then doesn't really interact with their wife or their kids or any of the rest of that. They're basically just there to bring in money for the family so that the rest of the family can do whatever it is that they want to do. We reject that. I think our generation generally is rejecting that mentality. We want to be actively involved in the lives of our kids, and so I think that there is a skills gap that has emerged because most of us were not trained when we were younger or taught when we were younger how to take care of kids. Some of these deeply practical things about like what do I do when my kid is sick? How often should they be feeding? What do I do if my baby is spitting up every time they feed? When is that a problem? When is it not a problem?

21:56.20 Aggierobison Main.

21:56.35 Scott Grant Their wife or their kids or any of the rest of that. They're basically just there to bring in money for the family so that the rest of the family can do whatever it is that they want to do. We reject that. I think our generation generally is rejecting that mentality. We want to be actively involved in the lives of our kids, and so I think that there is a skills gap that has emerged because most of us were not trained when we were younger or taught when we were younger how to take care of kids. Some of these deeply practical things about like what do I do when my kid is sick? How often should they be feeding? What do I do if my baby is spitting up every time they feed? When is that a problem? When is it not a problem?

22:21.33 Aggierobison Are.

22:32.26 Scott Grant You know some of these things that we just didn't get that much exposure to caring for children and caring for babies when we were younger. But now we want to do it, but we don't necessarily have those skills, and so that's a place where I feel like as a pediatrician, I have an unfair advantage, and I want to try to share that knowledge with parents generally, but especially for dads who are trying to be actively involved in the lives of their family. But may not feel confident or competent to do those things, and so that's one of the places I spend a lot of my time, is talking about answering these common questions that I get in clinics so that dads can listen to this and take that information home to their families and sort of feel like they're contributing and they're again, confident and competent to take care of their kids and to be experts in the health of their kids.  To be experts in the health of their kids because, especially within the healthcare community, I think it's true that dads often get marginalized and sidelined. Some of the stories I've heard from dads about their healthcare experiences have been disheartening, to say the least. That's where the podcast grew from, and then I officially started the podcast a little over a year ago.

23:42.83 Scott Grant: And just start from the beginning, like what do you do when you just found out that your partner is pregnant and you're going to have a baby? Like what do you do? There are like a million things that pop to mind. Um, and so trying to provide a framework for like what are really the most important things that you need to think about when you first find out that you're going to have a baby, what are the things that you need to have figured out before that baby arrives? What should you expect to happen when you get to the hospital? How do you bond with the baby before delivery and after delivery? Um, and just starting to develop that relationship which is a place where as dads we have a little bit of an unfair advantage because Mom is carrying this baby and knows them in a much more intimate way than we can, ah, but there are ways that Dads can start that bonding process, and that's sort of where I started from. And then from then it's kind of grown into talking about all kinds of parenting topics, parenting styles, talking about...

24:18.58 AggieRobison: Um, right? yeah.

24:35.71 Scott Grant: Ah, core values, which is where we talked about the generosity piece that we'll get into here in a minute, um, and just sort of trying to help Dads think a little bit more about being really intentional about their fatherhood. You know, we do all this extra work with our professional lives to make sure that we're the best doctor or development professional or engineer or whatever it is that you're doing out there. Like there are things that we can do as dads to make sure that we're being the best dad that we can be, and I'm trying to share some of that information.

25:04.55 AggieRobison: That's awesome. So, ah, you mentioned it a couple of times, and this is kind of not where we got connected, but what piqued my interest in having you on is that you've posted a couple of times about teaching kids the importance of generosity, right? And I've said all along, um, you know that in...

25:16.31 Scott Grant: Right.

25:21.42 AggieRobison: I was, ah, I used to wait tables, right? And you saw people all different ends of the spectrum when they when it came to paying the bill and tipping, you know, and what I learned in that through that experience is that people don't know how much to tip unless they have been taught. It's a learned habit, right?

25:27.80 Scott Grant: Hope.

25:39.30 Scott Grant: Yep, absolutely.

25:39.49 aggierobison And now it's a little bit more mainstream, tipping. But you know, ten years ago, fifty years ago, that was, you know, we would see it all, and generosity in a way is similar to that, and specifically when it comes to financial generosity. But even outside of that, if you don't have somebody that teaches you, "This is how you can give, and this is why giving is important, and this is why generosity is," then you can go, people can go, you know, many, many years into their adult life and never really having had that experience. Um, so anyways, I want to ask you in these conversations that you've had and some of the lessons that you've tried to impart, what where does that desire to practice and then teach generosity come from in your own life, and then what if what have you seen as why are these lessons important for kids today?

26:34.71 Scott Grant Sure. Um, there's a lot to unpack there. I think the motivation for that episode of the podcast and those series of posts that I did was basically we were sort of right in holiday times, like Christmas is coming up, and I was sort of working in the hospital, and I was kind of humming, you know, a Christmas song of some kind as I'm walking around the hospital, and I got kind of this negative reaction from a couple of the nurses that I was working with because I was, you know, in this cheerful mood. And as we got to talking about it, they sort of were telling me about some interactions they'd had with their own kids about how they were, you know, selfish and spoiled and they were only worried about the presents and all of these kinds of things, and it really got me thinking about how do we--

27:28.14 Scott Grant: How do we avoid that? Is there a way that we, as parents, can talk to our kids about what this holiday season is for or what our lives are for, even more generally, in a way that's not inward-looking but is outward-looking? And we can teach them, you know, and that's really the idea for me, at least when I think about generosity. Certainly, money is part of that, time is part of that, but it's really just about your perspective. Is your perspective outward-looking or is your perspective inward-looking? And is there a way that we can talk to kids about generosity? And so that's kind of where that came from for me. You know, it all starts at home. I'm grateful and thankful that I had great parents who taught me about generosity. So it's been hard for me to come up with, like, why I think that's important. It just has always been taught to me that it's important, and it's been proven fruitful in my life that when it's in those moments of generosity, good things tend to happen, right? And you know, we see there's biblical references. I know almost your audience is Christian as well, so we see all through the Bible these mentionings of the importance of generosity. It's all through the Proverbs, you know. St. Paul talks about how we should share one another's burdens, and I think that comes down to generosity, right? So there's so many places in the Bible and in our church teachings that tell us about the importance of generosity. And then kind of from a selfish perspective, there's maybe a little more inward lurking for me. Like one of the things that I have always enjoyed even from when I was younger is the giving of gifts more than the receiving. Like that old adage, it's better to give than to receive. I always thought it was so fun to come up with a fun gift for my younger brother and then put it inside a box and then wrap that box inside another box and send him on a scavenger hunt to find the gift or whatever. Like that kind of stuff, I always thought was fun. And that's a generosity both of the gift itself but also the time that I spent doing all of that. And my big financial dream at some point, if we can get there, and we'll see, is I was always so impressed with the news stories of folks who just could be outrageously generous. Like those news stories that you see of some anonymous donor who's bought bikes at Christmas time for every kid in an entire school or something. It's like these unfathomable acts of generosity, and you're just like, what a cool thing on if you can put yourself in that donor's shoes. What a cool thing to be able to be in a position where you can not only take care of your own family but you can take care of the needs of some other family, right? And I just get the warm fuzzies when I think about being able to help other people in that way. And I think that maybe that comes more naturally to me for some reason than others, but I do think that it all starts from a young age where you're talking to kids about recognizing the needs of others, right? And this is something that starts really, really small. You know, and I think that's the thing about all of these core value series that I've been working on. It starts really small. So I have my four-and-a-half-year-old, and I'm trying to teach him, like, for step one, just notice when your little sister has a problem that you might be able to help her fix.  

30:50.82 Scott Grant: That's all. Like, you don't actually have to do anything else, just notice when there's a problem. And so what I'll try to do as I'm coaching him through that as a parent is to say, "Hey buddy, you might notice that your sister is having a hard time getting her shoes on. She's so impressed by you being able to put your shoes on by yourself that she also wants to do that, and she's having a little trouble. Maybe what do you think about that?" And then we have a little conversation, and eventually, maybe he'll go over and help her, right? Like she can't quite reach to put her dishes into the sink at the end of the meal, and you can, so maybe that's a moment for you to be able to help her. And it's that sort of spirit of helpfulness that I think grows into generosity, but it sort of first starts with just noticing that there's somebody else outside of you that has a problem and developing that empathy. For now, I want to help, and then I have the ability to help, and then I actually help, which is where the generosity piece comes in. So I think you have to sort of stack these things on top of one another. But I think it starts with that idea of just like helping your kids notice. And this, I think, is one of the places where it's a lot easier when kids have siblings because they spend so much time together that you can point these things out. That's one of the benefits of having large families, or at least siblings, because then you can point out, "Hey, look, little sister's having this problem. Little brother needs a little hug because he's a little upset because dad's busy trying to finish dinner and I can't come pick him up. So maybe if you go play with him, he'll be happy." And now he's starting to get the hang of like this is something that I can do, and now he's become more generous with his time in doing that.

32:01.15 Aggie Robison: Um, right.

32:17.50 Scott Grant: Dad's busy trying to finish dinner, and I can't come pick him up. So maybe if you go play with him, he'll be happy, and now he's starting to get the hang of like this is something that I can do, and now he's become more generous with his time in doing that.

32:29.50 Aggie Robison: Um, I love that mindset of just pointing out, like becoming aware when somebody is having a problem doing something, right? And that I think is a very natural like making that leap being awareness and then moving to action is like that's the transition point that people, you know, that we kind of focus on is how do you move people to action when it comes to giving, you know, from a fundraising standpoint. But if you don't start with helping people realize there is somebody having a problem, then.

32:55.89 Scott Grant: Right.

33:05.40 Aggie Robison: It makes that transition even more difficult. It's like, well, why would I move there? And I love that lesson, just a simple lesson of working with your kids to be able to help them, just first by identifying somebody is having a problem doing something there. There's a...

33:17.35 Scott Grant: Yeah, I think that's the way that you have to build it. And if they don't recognize that there's a problem, then it's not fair to say, "How come you're not helping?"

33:17.35 Scott Grant: Yeah, I think that's the way that you have to build it. And if they don't recognize that there's a problem, then it's not fair to say, "How come you're not helping?" Well, if I don't know there's a problem, I can't help, right? How many of us have said that to our wives like, but...

33:26.52 Aggierobison: Yeah.

33:34.95 Aggierobison: Never, never me. I tell you that. Ah.

33:35.56 Scott Grant: It's the same thing for kids, right? Like if they don't notice that there's a problem, then it's not fair to expect them to help because they don't know that there's something that needs helping. And so the first step is just noticing. And if you can point that out to them when you notice, right, because you have that skill.

33:41.36 Aggierobison: Yeah, yeah.

33:47.61 Aggierobison: Ah.

33:54.28 Scott Grant: But kids only learn skills again. It goes back to that the importance of those relationships, right? They can only develop skills or they'll do it most efficiently, at least if I or his mom or his teacher or somebody point out the, you know, and show him how to do that skill. And some of these more complex skills, it's hard, but you got to. The more you can sort of break it down to its component pieces, then you can move people to 1) realizing that there's a problem, 2) realizing that they have the ability to help that problem, and then 3) actually helping, right? And so I think if you can break down each of those pieces, that could be a framework that you use, certainly with donors as well, when you're explaining like, "This is the problem that we're trying to solve. You have this resource, whether it's money or other things, that could help us achieve our mission, whether it's, you know, money, or it might be that we need you to come and be a speaker. We need you to come and share your story, your testimony to, you know, to a group of people. There are other a variety of different ways that people can help." And then third is like...

34:52.90 Aggierobison: Well, yeah, I think that that's perfect. You know, realizing there's a problem, helping them realize there is a problem first, helping them realize that they're in a position to help, and then helping them realize these are the steps to take to actually address that problem. Yeah, that's great. There was a, you mentioned or something earlier about...

34:53.40 Scott Grant: Motivating them to actually take that step.

35:06.32 Scott Grant: Absolutely.

35:11.79 aggierobison: You know and kind of in your own life, it's a series of little things throughout life that have helped you understand the importance of generosity. One of my favorite interviews I ever did was, um, I was talking with a family and there were four generations, right? It was the grandparents, and then their kids, and then their kids, and then there was, like, the teenager was there, so all four generations were, and we were, I was interviewing them all about, ah, you know, ah, at the same time about generosity, and it was so funny that they didn't realize it, but so many of them, you know, we were talking about giving specifically to church and why that was important to them. And every, all three of the generations, the lower generations, pointed to one thing that their grandfather did every Sunday. He would keep the giving envelopes on the top of the refrigerator, and so every Sunday before church, he would say, "Go grab the envelope off the refrigerator so we can take it to mass," and he did this with all of his kids and then his grandkids, and they started to see that, and then even the great kid, and so it was like, you know, and in this conversation, it came out the grandfather was like, "I just needed somebody to grab the envelope. I had no idea," and all of them pointed to, like, the single act of, you know, them being involved in a very little, very small way, but then being involved in.

36:19.64 Scott Grant: Right. But-

36:25.45 aggierobison: And that generosity and why that taught them a lesson about giving, ah, to church down the road, and you know, sometimes it's about developing those habits, and sometimes it's about the little moments of engaging our families in the in generosity.

36:30.36 Scott Grant: Yeah, yeah.

36:38.62 Scott Grant: Yeah, I think that speaks to a larger point that I think is ah applicable to anything you're trying to teach your kids is the more you can, one, do that thing yourself, right? So none of that would have happened if the grandfather wasn't actively giving to the church, right? So that's one, do the thing yourself, and then two-

36:51.80 aggierobison: Right, yeah.

36:55.88 Scott Grant: Bring them along the journey, like whatever little part that you can get them to play, and then as they get bigger, trust them with more and more responsibility, and I think this has been something that's hard, actually, now, because for us right now, it's just easier to give electronically, and so we give the vast majority of our tithe to our local parish. We give-

37:08.33 aggierobison: E-

37:15.73 Scott Grant: Electronically, but we have started. I mean, today we're actually out, so I need more money for mass this weekend, but I've started, like, just going and getting some cash so that every week my kids can each get, you know, ah, you know, some cash to put into the tray when it goes around, and they get so excited about being able to do that because they feel like they're-

37:27.23 aggierobison: I hit-

37:35.88 Scott Grant: Contributing and they're part of it, and we talk a little bit. You know they're foreign too, so they only understand so much, but we do talk a little bit about like, this money is going to go to the church, and that's going to help them be able to help people in our community do various things and like explaining to them like not only that we give to the church, right? Just-

37:54.30 AggieRobison: Right.

37:54.10 Scott Grant: Don't give just to give, right? We give because it has some endpoint that we're trying to accomplish and that we're part of that good that's happening, right? And the more you can let your kids take some of those actions, you know, the more involved they're going to be, and that's certainly true of generosity. I've seen that in my own kid's life. But that's true of any number. It's true of like getting kids to behave well at church, right? Like if you're engaged in what's happening at church and then I can bring my son and sit him right next to me, and I can teach him some of the words and teach him some of the prayers so that he feels like he's part of it, then he's going to be more engaged, and he's going to be less likely to pick on his sister in the middle of mass, right? So anything that you can do, one do it yourself.

38:26.53 AggieRobison: I-

38:33.66 Scott Grant: And two, let your kids be part of whatever that is.

38:37.88 AggieRobison: Yeah, I realized this has been a couple of years ago that as our oldest got older, she wasn't. We would give her the dollar or we would give her coins to put in the basket, but she never saw me putting anything in because like you, we give electronically, and I'm a big proponent for recurring giving and electronic-

38:49.10 Scott Grant: Right.

38:55.88 AggieRobison: ...funds transfer and all of that, right? But there is that disconnect between the teaching component, right? And so when she was older, she made some comment about how come you never put anything in the basket, Dad, and I was like, "Oh my God. This is such a fail." And so we sat her down, and we went through like, "Here's all the charities that Mom and I have chosen to support, and here's how we do it. We do it electronically so we can budget. But I think it's important that you realize what we're supporting," and then she was like, "Okay, well, that makes sense. I just never saw you putting anything in, so I never even thought about you being you giving and just giving us a dollar," and so it was like, "Oh, shoot. Yeah, so there is even that, you know, that need to kind of be mindful about that when we're trying to educate our children or trying to educate, you know, campus ministry, right? Like showing the students that are coming to Mass alongside of you, right? Like you're supporting in some way."

39:51.74 Scott Grant: Absolutely. And I think you have older kids, so this is more relevant to your season of life than where I'm at now. But the other thing to think about too is once your kids start earning some money through doing odd jobs or start to have some amount of income, like teaching them what to do with that money, right? And some of this money, depending on what your values are, will inform that, but it'll usually start with some sense of like there's a certain amount that we're going to save, and maybe part of that goes to some kind of investment, and there's a certain amount that maybe you want to be generous with, and you're just going to give it away to a church or some other charity or organization that you think is doing work that you think is important. And then there's the bucket that you can spend on something that you want to save for. Talking them through like there are these different things that you can do with money, and they all have pros and cons. And then teaching them at first, so at first, you're sort of guiding them a little bit more firmly. And then now you're sort of probably getting to a season with your oldest, in particular, where you sort of maybe give them a little bit more flexibility to make decisions about what to do with their money. And maybe sometimes they save a little less than you wish they would, or they give a little more.

40:54.67 aggierobison: Yeah.

41:02.98 Scott Grant: Ah, then you thought they would, and that's really positive, right? And so, but sort of talking to them about like this is your money, and these are the different things that you can do with it, is another piece once they get old enough to kind of have some money that they are sort of primarily responsible for. Even if you're being a good parent and providing that secondary responsibility.

41:23.51 aggierobison: Yeah, we had my oldest, she does babysitting, so she has some money now, and my wife and I had to kind of check ourselves because, you know, we do that like we have the save, spend, give, right? And one of her friends was having a birthday, and she wanted to go really big. This is a very close friend. She wanted to go really big on the birthday gift, and she spent way more than we thought that she should, right? But at the end of the day, we had to, like, check ourselves with this. This is her, like, she earned this money. If she wants to spend it by buying a birthday gift for her friend, we should allow that. Or, like, alright, if she's going to spend exorbitant amounts of money, maybe buying gifts for other people is an appropriate way to go over it above, right? And so that was like a lesson for us where we were like, "Maybe you shouldn't." And then, it kind of both dawned on us at the same time, "Alright, maybe we need to let this happen because there's a lot of good behind it as well."