Hey, it’s Greg. 👋🏽

It’s been a while.

Without giving you the long story, I’ll give ya the short…

After building Healthy Kids of America and having two kids, I needed to shelf the project I loved for a while to focus on my insurance practice which was paying the bills for my family.

Anyway, the last few years have given me quite a few perspectives as a parent.

Here’s a big one…

My son is growing into a new phase. 

The kind that comes with what they call "big emotions" these days. 

He's testing the boundaries — and he's smart about it. 

He pushes his mom one way and me another, because he's already figured out we're two different doors.

Part of him knows exactly what he's doing. 

The other part…

Is a little developing brain still trying to sort out three things at once: 

what he feels

what he wants

What mom and dad say. 

Those three don't always line up. For any of us, really. He just hasn't built the muscles to hold all three yet.

I grew up under a simpler code. 

Listen to your parents. 

Don't rock the boat too much. 

Keep your head down and everything's fine. Right?

Well — not always.

Underneath all that status quo, there was mischief brewing. 

In a lot of kids. Me included. 

Don't get me wrong, I was close to my parents and I knew right from wrong. 

But "do as you're told" kept the peace on the surface while the real stuff went unspoken underneath. 

Today feels different. 

I think kids need more than the status quo now. 

They need a true connection to the people raising them just to navigate this world.

And here's the part I keep chewing on: they need to feel trusted.

They already trust us for the basics. 

They trust we'll wipe the butt, put food on the table, and show up at pickup after practice. 

That's the floor. 

But that floor doesn't build connection — it's just the price of admission for being a parent. It's expected.

Connection gets built somewhere else. 

It gets built the moment a kid realizes you're going to let him figure something out on his own. 

When he feels you step back — not abandon him, but trust him — something opens up. 

The walls come down…

And a kid with his walls down is a kid who'll actually hear what you have to say.

I’m not about to hand a four-year-old the keys to his life. 

We're still building the boundaries. 

We're still handing him the codes to live by inside this container we've built for him. 

Trust and structure aren't enemies — they're partners. 

You can't have one without the other doing its job.

But here's the trap I watch myself fall into. 

The second I decide I have to control every situation, I lose my own temper. 

I stop being the calm one. 

And running hot doesn't get better results — he gets a mirror. 

You want the fruit of your labor? 

It starts with you not needing to win every small thing.

Trust them with the small stuff now, and they'll trust you with the big stuff later.

In your corner,

Greg

P.S. Disclaimer: Don't take parenting advice from me. I've got four years of experience, which means I just started my master's. This was really a conversation among my peers — a bunch of dads in the same trench, trying to figure it out together. So take it as one guy thinking out loud, not gospel.