339 | DA+3 Group Guide: Justin Whitmel Earley
Episode Description
Looking for fresh ideas on building better habits, routines, and rhythms with your kids? Tune in to this week’s DA+3 Group Guide featuring Justin Whitmel Earley. From morning huddles to bedtime rituals, you’ll explore ways to transform everyday moments into meaningful connections with your family.
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Justin Whitmel Earley is a lawyer, author, and speaker from Richmond, Virginia. His most recent book, Habits of the Household, was published in 2021. Justin is married to Lauren and has four sons: Whit, Asher, Coulter, and Shep.
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· New Day, New Start: Every day is a new chance to parent differently and experience more of God’s grace.
· Pause Prayers: Before disciplining or interacting with your kids, take a moment to pray and ask for guidance to approach the situation with love and understanding.
· Morning Huddles: Start your day with a family huddle where you teach your kids a simple prayer or affirmation.
· Bedtime Rituals: Create a routine that transforms ordinary moments into opportunities for connection. Don’t be discouraged if it takes several tries to work!
· Reconciliation Rituals: Don’t just immediately move on after conflict or discipline. Whether it’s a hug, a joke, or a shared Tic Tac, show your kids and spouse you’re still on their side.
DA+3 Group Guide Discussion Questions:
Do you ever feel weighed down by past parenting mistakes—whether from a day, week, or year ago?
What are some practical ways you show yourself grace and embrace the “New Day, New Start” mindset as a dad?
What changes for you when you say a quick prayer before disciplining your kids?
How do you find the right balance between discipline and showing grace?
What does your current morning routine look like with your family?
How can you make your family’s routine more intentional and spiritually focused?
Do you have a bedtime ritual that helps you connect spiritually with your children?
What is your biggest challenge when trying to establish a new family habit or routine?
How do you model reconciliation for your kids?
Is there a small, fun gesture you use to reconnect with your kids after conflict, such as sharing a Tic Tac, telling a joke, or giving a hug?
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:00:38] What's up guys? Welcome back to DadAwesome. Today, episode 339, I have the next installment of this summer series, DA+3 group guides. So we are just putting a ton of emphasis around, let's do this Dad life together. Let's not be DadAwesome alone, our own content, our own learning, our own in the earbuds, just listen to DadAwesome and go try to be a better Dad for our own kids. We're saying, let's do this together. Let's activate Dads to gather some other dudes. Let's let's do some, let's do stuff together and let's learn. So these are short 10 to 15 minute podcasts, going back into the archives of DadAwesome. Today, we're going back to episode 253. This is Justin Whitmel Earley, he wrote the book Habits of the Household, one of our favorite episodes over the last six and a half years. This goes back about two years ago, though, to have this conversation. I'm going to take my top five learnings. So I just grabbed five top insights. And then right into your podcast app, you're going to have ten discussion questions. You can use these questions to dive into conversation. So here we go from the conversation with Justin Whitmel Earley. And this is a lot about habits because we really focused in on his book Habits of the Household. So the first takeaway is new day, new start. New day, new start. What I mean by that is, and what he meant by that insight, is every day is a new chance to experience grace from your heavenly Fatherand step in with your whole heart to being a dad. New day, new start. Do not beat yourself up about yesterday, last week, last month, last year, the last decade of your dad life. Don't play the comparison game and do not disqualify yourself. God has not disqualified you. So let's walk with a lot of grace. We stumble. This is not the dad perfect show, the dad perfect life. That's not what we're going for. Actually, every stumble is a beautiful opportunity to experience more of God's love and to step in with, my wife and I just had a conversation about this. We were like, man, what is going on? The amount of frustration we're feeling right now. Well, we actually reminded ourselves that what we were feeling with our four daughters is we don't want God to feel that with us, and He doesn't because He loves unconditionally. But man, we can learn and grow. We can learn and grow. New day, new start. The next one is pause prayers. So Justin challenged us with this idea of before discipline, take a moment to pray. Before coming with an answer, a response, a reaction, pause and pray. Pause and pray. Some of us actually need to walk a lap around the house as we pause and pray. Some of us actually, I remember John Eldredge said on the way down the stairs, that was his like signal. He was like responding, and it was just like a pause, let's walk slowly down these steps and pray. So pause prayers. How do we fill our schedule, live a life with pausing and praying being the norm so we don't end up as reactive, reactionary dads. It's really hard for us to bring a level of grace and love and intentionality if we're playing that reactive mode. So pause prayers is the second take away. The third one is morning huddles. I struggle with this, a discipline of saying, let's, let's do this, this, this ongoing morning huddle. For us, it's usually a calibration huddle of like, man, we actually need to put some extra focus here, so let's huddle. We'll put our hands in, we'll huddle together and we'll say a prayer together as a family or we'll, we'll say, let's focus on this today. Justin encouraged a regular morning huddle with a regular rhythm, a habit of a daily prayer that you pray as a family. We still have a lot of work to do on this, but I think the idea of huddling in key moments, a huddle before you leave the house, a family huddle. These are important moments of calibration, and I want to grow in this area of, of doing huddle moments with our kids and affirming and speaking intentional words and blessings in those huddles. And it steers the family, so Morning Huddle. The, the fourth one is bedtime rituals. I want you to hear directly from Justin on this one. This was a huge takeaway that I have, for a couple years now, prayed some of his call response prayer to his kids around his bedtime ritual. Take a quick listen.
Justin Whitmel Earley: [00:05:05] So I was talking about this with one of my pastors, and he recommended I tried doing a bedtime liturgy with my kids. I came back and I wrote my first bedtime liturgy with the boys, the back and forth. If you read the book, you read this in the first couple pages. It's just a short, I did this with my sons last night. I say, can you see my eyes? And they say, yes. And then I say, can you see that I see your eyes? They say yes. And I say, do you know that I love you? They say yes. And then I say, do you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do? Yes. Do you know that I love you no matter what good things you do? Yes. And then who else loves you like that. And they say God does. And then I say, rest in that love. And this little back and forth, which might sound sentimental to anybody listening, was wildly unsuccessful the first time I tried to do it, right. Like I got pokes in the eyes for the eyes part. And then, like I remember, I say, did you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do? And they're like, no, you don't. You don't love us when we do bad things, you know. So there's there is a comical and halting nature to starting any important habit with your family, which is very important to realize. Nothing in the household is normal until it is, you have to practice.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:17] I love that. I can picture myself, when I started praying this prayer, I was in the RV praying this to my girls about can you see my eyes? Can you hear my voice? I love that, that prayer. And then the last one, the last takeaway this week is reconciliation rituals. So, it's so important that we don't just, like, try to move on after hurt is caused. Hurt, fights, arguments, words spoken that you wish were not spoken, you wish you could have back. Reconciliation is, I mean, this is what makes us different. Everyone has conflict. But what do we do? How do we reconcile? How do we turn back to the ones that we love? And we get to experience reconciliation with God by turning back to him. We also get to turn back to our spouse, back to our kids, and experience reconciliation. Well, well, Justin brought some fun to this. So he uses Tic-Tacs in the car as an example of, man, we're through this moment, that was hard, now let's have, let's enjoy a little candy, a little Tic-Tac together as a way to emphasize we're good. Tickling, intentional tickling as a way to say we're good. There's grace here. There's forgiveness. We are, have experienced reconciliation. With your wife, it could be a moment of a hug or a kiss. I think there's playful ways to bring tangible, like, a ritual that helps us know we're good. There's not a problem. Your laughter, tickling, celebration, hugs, kissing, these are these are specific ways. And he even goes into a few other ones. Reconciliation rituals. How do we grow in intentionality around, we're good, and we're not only good, we like each other. We don't only love each other and forgive each other or reconcile, but we like each other. And that's what the delight of tickling or laughing or joking or sharing, a celebration or a hug or a kiss can do. So that was the last one. Reconciliation ritual. So these are the top five from my conversation, a couple years ago, with Justin Whitmel Earley. Guys, thank you. Thank you for joining us this week. This was episode 339, the DA+3 Group guide. This summer series we're praying is helpful. If nothing else, man, send a voice text to another dad saying, hey, take a listen and send me your thoughts. You know, you could, you can even dialog if you're not in proximity to another dad who you're growing with, you can even use some digital form, a back and forth. A phone call, a FaceTime call, a, a voice text, a Marco Polo. Use whatever you can to dive a little deeper this summer. Guys, don't journey the dad life alone. Praying for you guys. Cheering for you this week.
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· 2:07 - "Every day is a new chance to experience grace from your heavenly Father and step in with your whole heart to being a dad. New day, new start. Do not beat yourself up about yesterday, last week, last month, last year, the last decade of your dad life. Don't play the comparison game and do not disqualify yourself. God has not disqualified you. So let's walk with a lot of grace."
· 6:03 - "There's a comical and halting nature to starting any important habit with your family, which is very important to realize. Nothing in the household is normal until it is, you have to practice.
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