Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette. Hey, girl.
And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends. It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Today's episode is an interview about fatherhood. Let's get started.
Hey there. Welcome back to Tweed Trends. Today's episode is all about the fathers, the significance of fathers in our lives and society, and how we view fathers, all beings, fathers in fatherhood. And because of that, I could not think of a better guess for today's episode than this handsome gentleman next to me here, his wife is Winston Langam.
He is my husband. He is father of the year in my eyes. I don't know any other way to describe and look at him. Bless you there.
I see you, baby. Welcome, Winston. Thank you. Thank you, hey, Evette.
And I appreciate you for having me come on to your show today. Hi, Tweed Trends family. Well, I appreciate you for joining me. I'd like to look at you as the ultimate father, because your journey in fatherhood, you've been a father more than half of your life now.
Yes. And you've had the experience of fatherhood from being a young person as a father and a middle-aged person and a little bit older. So I think you're the perfect person to talk to about fatherhood. Thank you.
Thank you. I got to think about that part about the middle age. I'm like, I need to define the middle age a little bit different, but we'll roll with it for the purposes of what we're talking about here. OK, thank you for working with me.
Thank you. Absolutely. I'm not trying to say these are old. Not bad.
Hey, what did you say? All right, sorry. Tell us a little bit about your journey as a father. My journey as a father started as a high school senior.
And so as it stands, I was due to go off the college and start my freshman year at Albany University. And as it would have it, my son was born in Durham, North Carolina. My girlfriend went to stay with her aunt during that time period. And so I was born in Durham, North Carolina a week before I started college.
So college started September 21, 1988. He was one September 14, 1988. So my first day of classes, I have a one-week-old son that I had not met yet. Wow.
And so what was fatherhood like as a team? So it was difficult because from my own personal situation, I didn't feel like I had a good understanding of what I needed to do. I just knew I needed to do something. I knew that that was my responsibility.
He didn't ask to be here. I had to do the things necessary to not have him have a challenging upbringing and whatnot. So I'm off trying to study civil engineering. I'm trying to run track, which is totally different running high school track versus B1, track at Auburn.
A lot of great people there at that time, and just amazing athletes. So just trying to keep up with them. And then at the same time, trying to find a way with the limitations on employment to make some money on the side, to be able to sit at home, to support my son. So it was quite the challenge.
And I guess a story for a different day, that's what led me to finally deciding to join the Navy to get the benefits and income to support him. Old school versus new school, like modern fatherhood versus, in the past, what are your thoughts on that? I don't like, do you have any thoughts on it? Like is that a thing?
Oh, it's definitely a thing. I have plenty of thoughts. I think the gamut, that time period, just seeing how society has changed, has really been key for me. And what's been more important is for me to have the ability to change.
One of the things that I see as sort of a criticism of myself when my younger years, it was, there's this false bravado false, I'm a cheese mode type scenario of, well, my son, he's gonna do this. And he's gonna play with trucks and balls, and he's gonna do all these things that boys are supposed to do by this, but what we see as society. And so I also knew that from my own personal upbringing, the limited engagement that I had from adults in my athletic career, I still was able to be fairly decent in football and track, and basketball not so much. That didn't come until my adulthood that I became decent in that as well.
So for me, as this young father now in my early 20s, with my son, it was like, oh, he's gonna have a cheat code. It's like, he's gonna be nice in football. He's gonna be nice in track. He's gonna be nice in basketball.
He's gonna be nice in volleyball and tennis. Like, yo, I got him because I now know how to do all this stuff. And boy, when I bring him up and we gonna do all this stuff and he's gonna be a five, four, six, four, whatever, just all of this stuff in my head that now that he has something that I didn't have, he's gonna do this stuff. And that just wasn't for him, right?
And so that was a challenge for me because it's like, what's wrong with him? Like, why don't he wanna go and do this stuff? Why don't he wanna, you'll play it now? That doesn't mean that he didn't like playing, you know, with his friends and playing ball and dodgeball and cats and stuff.
He did. He just wasn't as determined about it as I was, that's he wasn't as competitive as I was. And so that was sort of an internal, like what's wrong with me that I can't get him to want to do those things, right? And that was an unfair assessment of that scenario.
So to then have to grow and say, okay, maybe that's just not for him, right? All right, I have to receive that and I have to accept that. You know, I love him unconditionally. So if that's not your thing, okay, then what is your thing?
All right, got it. So your thing is to do these other things. And you have more of a creative spirit and more of an artistic spirit. Okay, I don't understand that.
So I'm gonna let you do what you do because that's what you do. And I just have to receive that you're more of a creative than what I am and what I understand. You know, he was more musically inclined than I was or knew to be. So okay, we're gonna go to band competitions and do those things that you enjoy and you want to do.
And I think that was key that I had to learn that in a moment on the fly, whereas now, yeah, I really accept that, right? You know, so as we kind of see around and then how we interact with Bree and even with the grand, it's, hey, what's your thing? All right, we still want to expose you to other stuff because having that exposure is gonna be key. You may not realize that you enjoy doing stuff until you try it, but at the same time, we're not necessarily trying to make you a pro athlete at this age, you know, because of all the feel of this story that we see from others.
So now it's easier for me to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to amount in our own situation, except the kid for who they seem to be and what they seem to like right now. It still may change and that's okay. But also when I see other people in scenarios, I can be more of an advocate for the kid in that mindset of, well, this is the way I had to do it. So that's the way they have to do it.
That's like, but do they? Like, what's wrong with that? You know, it's like, it's okay for them to like something different. It's okay for them to want to do something different, engage them, encourage them in what it is that they like and what they enjoy, expose them to the things that you like and enjoy and see if they have an affinity towards it.
If they do, that's fine. If they don't, then that's okay as well and be accepting and receptive of that, you know, receptive of that. So how do you think we get that message across to younger dads or dads in general that there's no manual that tells you, okay, here's the pivot. When you realize that your kids are trying to meet you where you are versus you're trying to meet them where they are, how do we kind of explain that or get people to understand that you might have to get down on the child's level and play what the child wants to do versus them trying to now be an adult like you at such a young age to fit in with you?
Well, I think it starts with self confidence, right? Like when I look in the mirror, I have to know who I am. I have to know, you know, I have a proclivity for this or that I have to know what my likes of dislikes are. And I have to be okay with that regardless of what anyone else around me may say.
That being said, once I have confidence in who I am as a person, as a man, as a father, then I can now receive what that kid may want to do. So in the event of older daughter and younger daughter, if they want to play t-sets or whatever, I have to be okay with doing that because it's like, I'm not gonna play t-sets because I'm a man and men don't do that. Now my daughter wants me to play and this is what she wants to play, then I'm gonna play with her because I'm meeting her where she wants to be, right? And so in my opinion, that creates that bond that says, as a dad, you have to be able to give that child what they need.
That did want to touch on, there's a class that you've been taking, can you tell us a little bit about that and why? Certainly, I've been taking the class. So big picture wise, with my fraternity, B, Omega Sci Fi fraternity, Incorporated, they initially had a fatherhood initiative where they wanted to be reaching out to young dads in the communities and to also mentor young kids. Well, that's now gone from an initiative to be an imandated program as agreed upon at one of our last conclave.
So now that's the mandated program, I enjoy that space. I enjoy, as we kind of talked about a few minutes ago, I enjoy being able to interact with young people and to provide mentorship and to learn and grow myself because there may be things that they're doing that helps me evolve in this day and I used to be a better dad. Based on that, one of the things I did in Hampton, Virginia was to reach out to the city and they have a 24-7 nurturing dads program. And I'm like, well, how better to be suited to help my chapter and fraternity than to go through the city's certification process, take their class, learn as much as I can and then come back and employ those tools with my chapter brothers as well as members in community.
So in that regard, that's where I signed up for the class and two other members of my chapter signed up for the class as well and there were two other people, two other men in that class. One is since not been engaged but there's still one other guy there so we're on these calls, these classes shall I say, every Wednesday for two and a half hours and we go through a lesson plan, that's a curriculum. We ask each other questions, we go through scenarios and we talk about some of the things that we talk about on this interview here. And so it's awesome to kind of hear different perspectives.
Is we've had some situations where people are just fundamentally disagreeing with each other's positions so to speak and not in a negative way, just sort of like how they saw being a father, what they remember from their upbringing, how their dads or father figures interacted with them. And we've had some healthy discussions about that. That being said, without now, fatherhood mentoring committee, that's a mandated program, I feel like we're so much better suited to find those dads who are age 16 to 24 in society and to give them the tools that they need because that kid didn't ask to be here. So now that that situation has manifested to be able to get them into a program where they can see that hey, we're interested in them, we're interested in them being suitable parents to their kids and that ultimately helps the family unit.
Whether the mom and dad are together in a relationship or they have to sort of co-parenting agreement, whatever it is, the kid needs both parents involved. And that's the key is to find a way that if you're in a loving, married relationship, great. You guys use your report to raise the kid properly. If that's not just an area, okay, fine, let's be adult about this and find the best way to co-parent and pour into the child so that they're a healthy, contributing member of society.
So wrap things up, do you have any closing thoughts or anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to touch on? Well, I think one I wanna thank you again for this opportunity to share insights to my story and my past and this definitely is one of my passions. And I think overall it's just for people to really be true to themselves in where they are right now. And at the same time, channels themselves to be better versions of themselves.
In doing that, to then, like I say, make sure that they have connectivity with their kids and not just letting quote unquote the streets raise them. Because kids are gonna learn from somewhere, right? And it's best that your kid, for example, with guidance and structure is pouring into that kid who doesn't have guidance and structure rather than that kid without guidance and structure is pouring into your kid, right? That's not really the situation we want.
However, whatever your situation is, whatever that looks like, whatever normal looks like for you to be able to pour into his with consistency, with a deliberate mindset of having a path to financial literacy, having a path to generation of wealth building, having a path to being able to problem solve, having a path to be able to deescalate situations, just all those things that help young people out. And things like that, in my opinion, can help. You don't want to do it when it's too late. So being able to have that skill set to say, hey, we're gonna have rapport and we're gonna talk and I'm gonna know what you're doing and what your gaze did on an age-appropriate level until you can reasonably and responsibly handle yourself, I think is vital.
One last thing, I'm gonna put you on the slide. All right. You can do this. What is your best dad joke?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Wow. You did, we'll be able to spot. Did you hear about this new movie called Constipation?
No. Yeah, it never came out. So. Ha ha ha ha.
Now, as I share with Tiffany, I'm not poop jokes aren't my favorite, but they are a solid number two. Oh, I didn't see that one come in. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.
So anyway, yeah, yeah. We're sitting at a table. I have some food on my plate and I go to take a spoonful and some peas fall off my spoon and onto the table. And I look at you and I say, oops, I just peed on the table.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No? Okay, all right. I'll save your audience there.
Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh my goodness. Leave it there and yeah, stop. I'm on the behind.
I'll show myself out. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And on top of that, I hope you share it with somebody.
Share it with a young dad. Share with the old dad. Share with the mom. Share with some kids.
Share it with everybody you come across. Okay, because it's all about uplifting the dads. It's about supporting them and honoring them for Father's Day. Right?
The other thing, because this was an interview, you know that you did not get the entire conversation. There's still more out there, but you got to go over to YouTube to get that. And you know how to find it. It's that hey, Edet at H-G-Y-E-V-E-T-T-E.
Last but not least, I want to send a birthday shout out. A happy, heavenly birthday to Mr. James, a wig fault, my dad. Today would have been his 91st birthday.
And although he transitioned back in 2018, because this podcast is made up of sound waves, I'd like to believe that these waves are reaching all the way up to heaven. Dad, I know you hear me. I know you've been tuning in to all of my episodes and liking it and sharing it with your friends. Happy birthday, Dad.
I love you and I miss you. And I'm so glad that I was blessed with you as my father. Okay? Thanks guys for listening.
You know, me and me right here next week. And we'll do this thing all over again.