The Life Boss Podcast Episode 4 - Whit Honea | Christine Tremoulet

Joining me for today’s episode is my guest Whit Honea. He is the author of “The Parents’ Phrase Book,” co-founder of Dads 4 Change, handles social and community management for the Dad 2.0 Summit , and contributes to a number of popular websites and magazines. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, their two boys and a bunch of pets.

Whit & I first met thanks to the Dad 2.0 Summit in Houston, which was *not* in 1987. (If you look through the internet archives, there are mullet photos of Whit.)

Whit & Carter Gaddis first started Dads4Change (don’t let the name fool you – it is great for anyone; they just happen to be dads, and they wanted to make a change) as a platform to tell the stories of social good that is being done in the online parenting space. They also want to encourage you to get involved and find things that you’re passionate about.

Their goal is to tell stories and share the passion behind doing good.

Kids also want to do social good, and the Kids4Change section of the site developed out of that to encourage you to find a way to help your kids get involved with making the world a better place.

Whit shared about Camp Kesem and the upcoming Dads4Kesem walk of 84 miles along England’s Hadrian’s Wall to raise funds for a new Camp Kesem Chapter in honor of the late Oren Miller, a dad blogger friend of ours who we lost to cancer in 2015.

If you’ve never heard of Camp Kesem, it is an amazing thing — a camp for kids who have parents with cancer, so that they can have a chance to get away, yet be with other kids who understand what it is like to have a parent with cancer. Their flagship program, FREE summer camps in over 80 locations, will serve over 6,000 children from coast-to-coast in 2016.

We also discussed the changing view of fatherhood and parenting, and the realities of self-employment. Millennials are a big part of that shift, and we discuss how the internet has open up the world to us in a completely different way.

Whit also shared the work that Dads4Change has done with St. Jude & Disney’s Club Penguin. You can see more on the Dads4Change website. They have worked with a number of other charities, which you can see on their website.

Whit’s book, The Parent’s Phrase Book, was written with the goal of helping parents bridge the conversations that can be challenging to have with your children. He suggests viewing it as a guide to empathy. It is broken down in to situations, with tips of what to do and what not to do. (And he admits, he has done a lot of the “what not to do” tips himself.)

We wrapped up with discussing blogging about your children, and the long-term impact it could have on your children. Your story is yours up to the line where it is someone else’s story.