The Father Effect: Why Great Dads Stop Trying To Control Their Children With Geoff Owen

 

Many fathers carry the heavy burden of providing for their families while simultaneously managing a household, often feeling powerless when their attempts to control behavior fail. Geoff Owen, author of The Parenting Assumption, joins us to explore “the father effect” and why great dads often struggle when they stop trying to control their children. Geoff shares his unique journey from the world of professional theater to becoming a leading voice in biologically aligned parenting. We dive into how to move away from outdated “solutions-focused” methods and instead foster a natural, peaceful environment where children can thrive. If you’ve ever wondered why your best efforts at discipline feel like a losing battle, this conversation offers a profound shift in perspective that will change the way you show up for your family.

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The Father Effect: Why Great Dads Stop Trying To Control Their Children With Geoff Owen

Redefining Modern Fatherhood

On this episode, we have Geoff Owen, where we talk about the father effect and why great dads stop trying to control their children. Men’s Anonymous.

 

 

Geoff, so good to have you on the show.

It’s great to be here. Thanks for the invite. Looking forward to it.

I am very much looking forward to the discussion. Welcome to the show. Every father I have ever spoken to wants the same thing. They want to raise confident, resilient, emotionally healthy children. Yet most dads secretly wonder, “Am I getting this wrong?” We are told to set boundaries, be consistent, correct behavior, discipline, reward, punish, all of it. I have got five kids, so I have certainly been well exposed to the differences in children and parenting and what I found works and what does not. I am really excited to talk to you about, particularly from the father’s perspective, how they experience parenting and how they can be better fathers.

Your career, we’re going to jump into it. Your background is in acting and theater, etc. Yet you took a turn along the way, which I am really curious to hear how that all happened. You have become a domain expert in parenting. You have written a book, etc. It is a big detour from acting on stage. Maybe help us understand your journey and how any of that acting in theater actually played into whether it had an influence on how you see parenting.

I was in the theater on stage in Macbeth. It was a very serious scene. I was on stage watching everything happen, and I drifted off. I started looking at the audience and thinking to myself, what am I doing here? Is this what I want to be doing with my life? What am I doing?

On stage, live?

On stage, live in the scene. I was just curious. I was thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?” Anyway, there was this pregnant pause, which I realized was my cue. I was sort of coming to realise what the hell was going on.

You’re like, “To be or not to be?”

All of that. This scene was really serious. Do you know Macbeth at all?

I do. I studied it in school.

You did? There’s a scene where the horses are eating each other, and the king has been killed. It is all serious stuff. I am there, and there was this void, and I became aware it was my cue. As I went forward to speak, somebody in the front row sneezed, and my knee-jerk reaction, because I love comedy anyway, was to step forward and say “Bless you” in the middle of the scene. The whole audience just burst out laughing.

I was completely shocked. We continued the scene, pulled it together somehow. Of course, I came off stage, and everyone went, “You’re so unprofessional.” What’s going on? You cannot make the audience laugh. Seriously, I went to see the manager and everything. That really was a very significant point for me because I realized I did not know what I was doing with my life. I went into therapy, and a few months went past, and I came across.

Were you married to your parents at this time?

No. My son said, I am not a parent at this time. No, this was about six years before I became a parent. I was given this book called The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff. The title appealed to me, obviously, because I was very unhappy. I felt like I was on the outside, just observing, not in it, in life. I read that book, and I reacted to it in my body. Really just spoke to me, and I had this pain in me. I wanted what it was talking about. It was about her experience living with a Stone Age tribe in the Amazon.

When you align the environment a child is born into with the expectations of their biology, then all that behavior that we might label opposition, aggression, and withdrawal settles. Share on X

She was a six-foot blonde model at the time, dropped out of med school, and came to Europe. The circles she was in were quite highbrow, and she met this Italian count who the next day was going to go diamond hunting in the Amazon. He said, “Do you want to come? You can be a photographer and a medic.” He said, “You have got to decide.” She just went with it the next day. She ended up in the Amazon. She spent nearly three years living with these people and noticed certain things, the way they were doing their lives and how it just really moved and astonished her.

She started looking at our Western ways with kids. She realized we are the same species, but for a thousand years or so, or 2,000 years of our mini evolution into this modern world, essentially we are still the same. She wrote this book. That’s basically it. I read that book, and what she was talking about just really spoke to me, and I found out where she lived. She lived in Primrose Hill in London, where I lived. I lived in South London. She lived in North London. I arranged to see her, and she became really my mentor in a weird way.

I love these stories. I had another guest previously where I always find it fascinating, and I think this is a lesson for the audience as well, which is like, if you want something, you should go for it. If you want a mentor, like one of the last guests I had, he said, “I now have a mentor who has got this very successful property empire, whatever.” I went and asked him if I could pay him to mentor me. The guy now mentors him. When I hear these stories, whether you read a book, you really liked it, you’re like, you know what, I want to meet the author. That’s like, people do not think those things are possible, to put yourself out there to do that. Tell me what happened.

Therapy, Weightlifting, And Rethinking Childhood

I went to see her, and we had what she called therapeutic sessions. Through her experience, she is not a psychologist or anything, but it’s just these principles, these insights. She said, “My job with you is to grow you up.” I said, “Okay.” We had conversations about my own childhood, my relationship, or I should say my perceived relationship with my parents, because we were four kids. On the outside, everything looked tickety-boo. Went on holidays, had nice clothes, all this. We were not wealthy. We were not poor. I soon realized that the relationship I thought I had, I did not have.

Can you say the relationship you had with whom you were referring?

With my parents.

What was the relationship you thought you had?

The relationship I thought I had.

What was the relationship you thought you had?

That I was loved, that my parents were supportive and caring. I got a segue to demonstrate my difference. What I understood is that actually, when I left school, I went into a gym, not when I left school, but I left school to go to a sports session in a gym outside the school. It was like circuit training. It was a weightlifting gym, powerlifting, and Olympic lifting. The trainer said to me, “You would make a good Olympic weightlifter.” I said, “Really?” “Yes.” He said, “Why don’t you join?” “Come and join.” I went and joined. I became British champion.

Seriously?

I did. I became British champion.

At weight, at powerlifting?

No, at Olympic weightlifting, which in those days was the early ‘70s.

Did you go to any Olympics?

No, I was in the English squad, and we were training, but I’ll come back to that in a sec. Really quickly, the reason I mentioned it is that my parents did not attend that competition where I won the British championship. It never occurred to me. I thought, that’s interesting. Your father did not come and see you become a British champion. There was something else that happened. The bittersweet story around my Olympic weightlifting. Do you understand what I mean by Olympic weightlifting?

Absolutely. I watched the Olympics before.

Clean and jerk. In my day, it used to be the press. You used to press it off your shoulders as well. They banned that. Anyway, the trainer who, at the time, was the head of BAWLA, the British Amateur Weightlifting Association, was a pedophile. We all went through stuff. One thing that always puzzled me is why I felt such shame and guilt, and also that I could not talk to my parents about it. They never knew. They both passed now, but they never knew.

That was something that was quite revealing to me in terms of the context of my conversations with Jean in my past and children and childhood. Anyway, yeah, that began my journey. From that moment forward, after those sessions with Jean, who then went to San Francisco, she went back to the States. She passed, by the way, in 2010, I think. Anyway, I vowed that I would bring those insights into my own parenting if ever I became a father.

This is just from a personal perspective. You’re writing a book. This is like, “I am going to adopt some of these principles for my own when I am a father, and I am going to use that with my kids.” Give my kids what I did not receive and become a much more conscious father.

Not as a makeup or repair. I just want to do the best job I possibly can.

A lot of fathers set out wanting to do the best job that they can in their head.

I do not know a parent that does not. All the parents I speak with, they love their kids, they care for their kids, they do everything they can for their kids. Yet there is something missing there sometimes.

You went down a long path, and you got to writing a book called THE PARENTING ASSUMPTION.

I did, yeah.

Writing ‘The Parenting Assumption’ And Aligning Biology

How many years from when you became a father for the first time?

How much later did you write THE PARENTING ASSUMPTION?

It has been years. It has been about twenty-odd years because I did not know how to talk about it. I belonged to one of Jean’s email chains. After my sessions with Jean and she went back to the States, we talked about how we could get this out there, and never came to any real conclusions. She talked about talking to Oprah and stuff like that. I did other stuff. I did retreats. I did therapy. I did Landmark Forum stuff. Do you know Landmark Forum stuff? Do you know Werner Erhard, Dan? Do you know Est, the railroad of Est?

What’s Est again?

Est is the Erhard Seminars Training going back to San Francisco in the ‘70s. He has often been lauded as the father of personal development, Werner Erhard.

Is that the place in California where there’s a place where they all go?

It might be. I’m out of touch with it these days. When I came across his work, that’s the door. When I came across his work, basically, his work is all about what is and what is not, so you can get into reality, what reality is really about. I did all that work, and then eventually I met Helen. I was in the theater, I was doing, I did some West End, I did touring, I did various shows everywhere.

I realized we were pretty into one another, and I thought, I just cannot sustain a relationship being in the theater. It is just, you do not earn much money unless you get a break. You’re traveling all the time. You’re away. I left the theater consciously because I really wanted to raise a family, and Helen wanted children too. I then trained as a joiner. If you know what a joiner is, do you have a joiner? Where are you?

Yes.

I did a six-month intensive training with four old boys, four old guys, mature old guys who knew everything about wood and joints. I just lapped it all up. I had a business in joinery, and that’s how I earned a living. Our first child was born, Elsie, yeah, she was born in 1993. What I was saying is it took so long to write the book because when you talk about living with a Stone Age tribe and adopting some of their principles or their insights, people immediately say, “We are not a tribe. We do not live in the jungle.” We are in a modern world. I just could not find a way to adapt it or get away from that. Do you know what I mean?

Sure.

People would get very intellectual about it, and it becomes very child-centered around it. Whereas I was wanting to get away from that somehow, and we did by and large as we went along. I came across the biology of it all. It is really about biology. I found that I created something called biologically aligned parenting. When you align the environment a child is born into with the expectations of their biology, which are non-thinking, then all that behavior that we might label opposition, aggression, withdrawal.

Some of these behaviors we cannot quite understand, and they seem so extreme. They settle. They settle because they’re not required, because those behaviors are trying to correct their biology. I discovered through my own children, through watching them and being with them. It is quite something, yeah.

Why High-Achieving Fathers Struggle With Control

I would say that many fathers, especially those who are tuning in, who build businesses, lead companies, manage hundreds of staff, yet they come home, and they feel completely powerless. Why do intelligent men, and I put myself in the same category because I made a lot of these mistakes in the past, but why do intelligent men struggle so much with parenting? They’re the killers in the office or doing the deal or whatever their specialty is, as professionals, or like as a joiner, they’re producing great work, and people enjoy working with them. They come home, and they just absolutely fail. They just cannot rationalize how I am a really smart person. How am I getting this wrong? What’s going on there for fathers?

Fathers are confined by what I would call an informed conditioning. An informed conditioning, in other words, is informed by the movies we watch, our own experience, and people we see around us.

Fathers are confined by informed conditioning—informed by the movies we watch, our own experience, and the people we see around us. Share on X

What do fathers unconsciously assume then? How are they wired?

Unconsciously, they think, let’s just call it modern parenting. I call it modern because, in terms of where we’ve come from, it’s a very tiny little space of time. Revolution. It has all become institutionalized and not biological. That’s my thing. I am trying to pull dads back into their biology, as opposed to going into their heads and trying to solve problems. They see the behavior as a problem, and they try to use their business acumen and approaches to solve the problem.

Men in general, whether it’s in parenting or in relationships or in the workplace, are solutions-focused. They’re like, “Problem? I need to fix it. If there’s a problem, I need to fix it.” They’re not really too concerned about why the problem’s there, what’s causing the problem. They are like, “I get it. There’s a problem. Let’s just fix it.”

Sure. You’re familiar with Men from Mars, women are from Venus.

Yes, absolutely.

Men are. That’s a great quality of a man. It’s a wonderful quality.

For a lot of occasions. For not every occasion.

Quite, yes, not all occasions are appropriate. They do, they want to fix. First of all, they’re seeing the behavior as a problem. In reality, it is a problem because the behavior is before you. Because they care and love, and they want their child to grow into having an experience, a happy life. They want their child to be able to communicate and be social.

All-around good human.

They want that big time, but they’re seeing the converse of that. They’re seeing the opposite. They’ve got this stuff that comes up that they do not really understand. That’s the real problem, I think. Because they think this is what you do around here, we have got to control this behavior. There is a book by Alice Miller called For Your Own Good. Have you read that? It is amazing. The Drama of the Gifted Child is another book she has written. Actually, she wrote.

She is a German psychologist. It’s very interesting. Anyway, for the child’s own good, they’re trying to control the behavior, and they do that through strategies like boundaries. They put in rules and consequences. If you break the rules, this happens. They will reward the child with stickers and money, maybe. They will isolate the child, send them to their room. They will shame their child sometimes. Unwittingly, they do not set out to do this. This is what they just do.

I’m telling you all the things you’re saying. I have done all of them.

I get that. I understand that. I get that. They will put them on a naughty step, which is shaming something, you could argue. They will ground them so they will take away their freedom. When you add all that up, the only other place that happens is in a prison or school.

Just a prison.

It is. I totally agree with you there. I really do.

It is for a child. It is a day prison.

You get let out at the end of the day. Yeah, quite.

Behavior Is Information: Decoding Your Child’s Biology

You get let out. What I see is you often say that behavior is information.

It is information. If a child hits or lies or withdraws, or shouts or refuses, what are we actually looking at? That is a response to something that their biology is not aligning to. Something Gene talked about a lot was that children are born with expectations on a biological level, just like they’re born with lungs in the expectation of breathing air. There’s also a blueprint of ancient lineage and behavior through all our existence to this day that has worked, that has kept our species alive. That involves the environment being a certain way when they’re born.

You expand on that.

There are four of them. One is they expect to be in the presence of an adult who knows exactly what they’re doing. They expect to be on the periphery of life, not the center of it.

What does that mean when you say that the adults take center stage and they’re there on the sidelines? They’re there to observe and learn.

In their own time, in their own way, so that they can assimilate and bleed into life as and when they’re ready. Age and physicality, physically appropriate.

The wisdom passed down, rites of passage, they have got to go through all the steps, and they’re more here, and the adults and the elders are at the core.

In the Yekuana community, of course, the adults are really busy, but it’s more in our culture, it’s more notional that they’re over here, not here. Unfortunately, when we have children in our culture, especially if we go into the hospital and all that, everything stops. Everything comes to a grinding halt when you have a baby. Everything focuses around it, so life is orchestrated around the presence of a child. When really the presence of the child needs to be, and they expect it to be a side activity. They’re watching.

Basically, we have, in modern times, we have flipped that script, almost the inherent expectation of the child, without knowing it’s in their biology. We’re delivering something that is the opposite of what they expect.

That is going to cause a response in them. There’s another one they expect to be carried. As soon as a child’s born, it can barely move. It cannot walk, cannot feed itself, barely sees, barely hears. Yet we will scoop it up and put it in a room somewhere, maybe a pink one or maybe a blue one.

You’re saying they need to be on you all the time, like you see in National Geographic, in the tribes, and they’re just being carried on the back.

Yes. Side activities.

Until what age?

My children did not get out of bed until one was six.

Did not get out, what do you mean, did not get out of what?

Get out of our bed.

Is that a good thing?

When you’re saying that is a good thing, what are you saying?

I  am going to speak to five kids.

Come on. I know five is a lot. Bravo to you.

I have three daughters. One of my daughters got out of her room at a very young age. They sat in a cot. She moved to a bed very early because she climbed out of the cot very early. Moved into bed. From a very young age, and I’m talking about the 12-month mark, she was already in a bed, which is very young. She basically would walk into our bed from a young age. You’re taught, like a lot of, let’s say the, the sleep Nazis and all those things teach you, you need to walk them back, you need to walk them back. We did not. I personally really enjoyed it. It’s really cool having a little baby in your bed and so cute and whatever. The longer it went on, the more difficult it was to break that cycle, and she is now nine and a half, and she has just broken that cycle now. That was painful.

Painful for you or her or both?

It was for everyone. It’s stressful for the parents, and it’s stressful for the child because it’s like, she really wants to be in the bed with you. You are telling her no. She really just wants to feel safe and protected. You are like, “This is better for you for the long term.” Everyone suffers with it because you feel shit about taking something away that is a nice thing, but you think it is having a negative impact on her. I want you to give it to me.

This is very interesting. A lot of people struggle with this. The information you are getting from the different authorities on parenting, and you are coming from the biological perspective. From the biological perspective, what is the child’s expectation inherent biologically that they should stay in the bed with the parents until they are ready to leave? Just so we get on the same page here.

If you had a parent that came and said, “My child is four years old, and he is still sleeping in our bed,” your advice would be, I am going to make an assumption here, your advice would be, “That is okay. They are going to be fine humans in the future. They will leave the bed when they are ready.” My counter to that would be, and I am not sure how it works in African tribes or in the Amazon or whatever. My counter would be it has a negative impact on the physical and sexual relationship between a couple when you have a very young child sleeping in between. This can negatively impact the overall relationship.

There is an assumption there that it could negatively impact.

It does.

Co-Sleeping, Intimacy, And Rethinking Modern Norms

You think it does.

The romantic relationship between the mother and the father. The individual is having their own time, and there is the couple having their own time, and there is the family having their time.

You cannot really control another person—child or anybody—unless you use a threat of some kind. But you can control yourself. You can make choices about you as a father. Share on X

I get it.

What you are suggesting, or what I am saying it is not for free. It is not without any consequences, or there are other residual effects from having a child in your bed till they are nine years old.

To the nine, yes.

You said six.

Yes, I know. Where do I begin? What bed are we talking about?

What do you mean?

Most modern beds are raised off the ground, are they not? They are like a double or king-size mattress.

Call it a king-size.

We had our mattress on the floor so that if we wanted to have intimate moments, so to speak, we could because there was loads of room and the child was way away asleep. I talked about this with Jean, but she was saying during the act, during that coupling, let us call it that way. Relax.

Can you relax?

It depends on your relationship with the presence of the children, does it not? That gets back to our conditioning and everything else. I will talk about my experience. It was extremely relaxing, actually, because we had followed this all the way through from the beginning. Jean, I remember, I think it is in her book somewhere, actually, where she talks about that orgasm of creation to be in the realm around the child, the celebration of life, so to speak. It is a very interesting thing. I suppose something that you have to keep away from.

What you are saying is that it is more like preconceived or conditioned ideas of what we have been exposed to that are what the norms are about sex, about race.

Yes, I think so. When you start to look at it, you think, actually, you know. You could argue, and I say to parents about their own biology, actually calling on them. Our biology tells us things, but we do not realize it or are being told things. When something is hard or difficult or exhausting, it is like biology is saying to you, you are on the wrong track. Something’s off here. You are slightly off. You need to get back on track. It is a bit like if you were walking up a steep incline or up a mountain or something, there comes a point where you have got to rest because your body cannot go on. It is just telling you, I need to recover. The thing about parenting is you cannot rest, because they are always there. You just cannot.

I do, especially since I have twin boys. When you have twins, one thing that people do not really understand is that when you have a child, like a single child, they have a cycle of rest, eat, sleep, shit. It goes around. You do get a break. The baby is going to go down for two hours now. When you have twins, they are not in sync. It is constantly one is resting, and one is up. Triplets would be a whole different level. I have not experienced it. I want to get back to the sex. There is the behavior coming back to the behavior of the children and what the father says. Instead of asking, “How do I stop this?” What should fathers be asking themselves when they see what they would consider to be misbehavior?

Unwanted or antisocial or whatever.

Let us say something like negative behavior.

They are looking at the behavior as a problem to be solved. What I encourage fathers to do is to look through a different lens and ask the question, what is the behavior? Where does it come from? What’s required? What’s missing?

Give me an example.

An aggressive child hits you, kicks you, pinches you, whatever they do, all that, they are in one of the four fight-or-flight states. Mind, fight or flight is about survival, is it not? Their biology is all about survival, and it is a non-thinking state that they want to return to, which is where everything is safe and everything is certain. When they are displaying this behavior, it is their biology trying to push or change to correct what’s going on.

Give me a real-world example of the child hitting and kicking you and whatever. Give me an example of what can be behind that. Are they grabbing attention?

That’s an interesting thing. When you say grabbing attention, that’s what we analyze it as or showing off or whatever. What they’re doing when they’re aggressive is they’re trying to correct their biology, pushing their body to correct, and they’re trying to push the parents into a place where they provide what they require.

Run me through an example of that behavior. How do you analyze that in real time, to be very calm as a father, realize there’s something up, and how do you decipher? How do you work out what I need to give the child to neutralize that biological effect?

The Energy You Broadcast: Changing Your Parenting State

Great. It is all about what we are broadcasting. An example I use is, say you’re at work somewhere, you go into a room and there are two people there and you know instantly that they’ve had a row or disagreement. You can feel it. The phrase is you can cut the air with a knife. We broadcast this all the time. The first thing a parent needs to do in the face of that baby is to look at their state. What’s going on with them in terms of what they’re broadcasting?

Look at themselves. What am I giving off?

Yes, exactly. That’s what the child’s responding to. What they’re giving off collectively across the whole territory of the environment they’re in, within the house, within their setup, within their routines, is going to be a sense that they are not safe and there is no certainty around. Particularly if a father is addressing the behavior because he feels he’s a failure and he does not know what the hell’s going on, he’s almost creating more of the behavior when they may subside.

He may come in with some conditions, send them to their room, whatever it is. It is not dealing. It is dealing with the smoke and not the fire. What I am encouraging fathers to do is to look at their energy. For instance, a father comes home. He’s had a really tough day, walks through the front door. Of course, often fathers are there as the relief, the cavalry come at the end of the day.

After they’ve had a tough day.

That’s right. They just want to hand it over. The father comes in knowing that’s going to happen and already is wound up about it inside because he just does not.

He wants to decompress as well.

He has not got it in. He feels he has not had the resources. He has got to do it. He might come in incredibly resentful. He might slam his keys down on the counter to let everybody know he’s pissed off, which often happens. We do it sometimes without even thinking. That sets the stage. That sets the whole tone. He might snap at the child, or he might raise his voice or get impatient, or there might be a dynamic between him and his wife or his partner. All these incrementally go to build the environment.

What I encourage fathers to do, particularly actually, is to start to register their state first. They can see themselves being caught in the matter of their child’s behavior. If you follow me when I say that, it’s quite a funny old thing. It’s an amazing thing. That’s brilliant because you cannot really control another person, child, anybody, unless you use a threat of some kind, like a weapon or something. They will soon capitulate then, but you can control yourself. You can make choices about you as a father. That’s about looking at, do I need to show this?

Do I need to let everybody know how tough my day has been? Do I really need to show everybody? What’s it going to bring? What’s the benefit of that? Do I need to complain and whinge and moan? It is that energy. When a father addresses that, the behavior starts to settle because there is no need for the behavior because the environment’s getting more settled and nicer to be around. There is a guy called Gordon Neufeld. He wrote a book with Gabor Mate, if you know Gabor Mate. He said, “It’s not the love a parent has for the child that makes them easy to parent. It’s the love the child has for the parent.”

'It's not the love a parent has for the child that makes them easy to parent. It's the love the child has for the parent.' Share on X

That fits in my model. The child’s biology is expecting safety, expects to be part of a life that it can witness. It expects its caregiver to know exactly what’s going on and expects to be close until it is ready to leave. That’s basically it. If you’re providing all that, and you’re aware of it all. As was with our children, we did not punish them ever. We never had to send them to a room. It is not because we’re brilliant parents at all, because it’s this stuff. You do not have to be perfect about it either. That’s the other beauty of it. It’s just because we tried to attune to the biology of it all. That is it really.

You may make it sound so simple.

Do you know something, Dan? It is simple, but it’s quite an adjustment.

Do you not think fathers in general unconsciously parent the way they were parented, and they carry that on? If you look at that, many men were raised with that. Do not cry. Toughen up. Do not be weak. You need to earn, put the effort in, and earn all that. It perpetuates, right?

It does. Once you become conscious of it and you bring that to your own consciousness and you make a commitment to yourself, actually, you know something? “I am going to take this stand for my kids. I am going to take this stand. I am not going to spew my stuff over my kids. I am not going to pollute my environment with this stuff. I want to keep my environment sacred and pure and simple for my kids.” If you can do that and it takes time, sometimes it happens quicker than others. It just depends on the dynamic and what’s going on and how busy you all are and what pressures you’re under, which we examine. It starts to turn. I had a mother.

How Subtle Shifts Create Real-World Success

Do you want to give you an example? I say this because this is the most recent. A mother who had a high-pressure job trading. She was a trader in currency. She had a child of eleven years of age whom she would come home to every night after school. Get to himself. He was oppositional, grumpy, rude, disrespectful, and would not help with the chores. Resulted in him going into his room on Xbox, and she ended up feeding him, leaving his food outside his room.

It got that bad. I met her on the South Bank for a coffee at the National Theatre, and we were just chatting, and I said, “What is it you would like?” Which is what I ask all clients. “How would you like to change things? How would you know it would be changed?” She said, “I just like my son to be interested in parents and parents, fathers too.” They give and give. They can feel they get very little back sometimes. They may judge their kids to be taking them for granted.

We’ve all been there. You’re giving and giving. Like, “Son, say something.”

Yes. Anyway, that is what she said. I said, “Let’s work with that.” We talked about how she spoke to her children, her child. How she moved around the house. How is she with time? Does she make a mad dash for the door? How does she feel? What are her feelings around? What feelings do you carry around the house about her work? We looked at the whole situation.

She started making some adjustments, some very subtle adjustments. We have a call every few weeks. She rang me one evening. She goes, you never guess what. I said, “What?” She said, “I was in the kitchen this evening, and Matthew came to the door, and he said, ‘Mum, how was your day?’” It was a very small thing, but for her it was enormous. That was the stepping stone for her to really grab this and move.

She could see her actions. You have a feedback loop where she’s like, “I’m going to keep going down this.”

It’s like a domino effect down. You start altering how you’re showing up, and the kid’s behavior will reflect that, and it will be a knock-on effect. It is indirect. I never speak to children. I always speak to parents. It is not about the kids. Do you know what I mean?

 

 

That’s fascinating. Why do you think the instinct for parents is to try and control the situation? What often happens is that when they try to control, the response is often resistance, which is what I extracted from what you described. The Matthew and mother situation there.

It is resistance.

Why is the parents’ default? You talk about biology and what the children, what the children expect biologically is there. Would you say the same is true biologically for parents that they’re wired to need to be in control?

They devolve to their intellect and not their intuition. They are probably responding to their own childhood in a compensatory way. A child who cannot get its needs met biologically will adapt. We talk about fighting as trying to change it. If they cannot change it, they will start adapting. In the animal kingdom, they will run away. They will flee, both physically and metaphorically. Your killer disappears a bit, or they will lie. It was not me. I was not there. It’s a way of compensating. That’s what they do. They will adapt. They will also play dead, like the animals do because they’re feeling, they’re feeling vulnerable.

You think the children will play dead.

In an unconscious way, which is not thinking. It’s not conscious. It is that they have the drive in them. That’s when you can say to a child, “Why did you do that to daddy?” They’ll say, “I do not know.” They do not know if they’re just driven. They’ll play dead. They will go monosyllabic, or they’ll become non-verbal. They are down. They go vacant. You cannot get through stuff like that. They will fawn. They will be overly nice, overly compliant. It takes a little bit of time to try to analyze what might or might not be going on. Anyway, I’ve lost my thread slightly since then.

Actionable Steps: Leaning Out And Shutting Up

No, you have not. No, not at all. It’s absolutely fascinating. Totally fascinating. I would love to know for the audience, like to wrap this up. Give me one or two hacks, tips you can give a father that they can implement today. That is an easy thing to implement. This is, I feel like it’s a change-of-behavior situation. If you can give 1 or 2 just nuggets for a father that they can put into place, and they will see a positive impact on what they do.

Can I swear?

Absolutely.

Shut the fuck up.

When you say that, let me paint the vision for me. You are saying, “Do not respond is what I am hearing.”

No, I am saying shut the fuck up.

When you say shut the fuck up, it’s like the child’s going to have a behavior. Do not respond. Do not react to it. He’s shut the fuck up.

I am at the pre-drama stage here. This precedes all the drama. Just lean out of initiating conversation with your kids.

Lean out. Do not try to have conversations with your kids. It is so counterintuitive here.

I know.

I speak to all my kids every day trying to engage.

What ages are they?

The oldest is 19, 14 and a half, nearly 15, then nine and a half, and then twin boys seven and a half. Seven and a half. We will speak to all of them every day.

I get that.

Individually, engage with them one on one.

No, that’s beautiful. I get that.

Are you saying try not to have a conversation?

Yes. You got it wrong. No, I am not saying ignore your children or have an attitude.

You’re just saying just sit there and let them be.

Let them start the conversations when they have got something to talk about. Often parents speak to children, and I am not saying that you’re this parent.

“How was your day? Good?”

They feel an obligation. They feel they want to. Do you know what I mean? Often when parents are on their own with the child a lot, they do a lot of talking.

The parent.

It is no good just shutting the fuck up unless you know why you're shutting the fuck up. Share on X

That can be, mean, so say that again. I missed that. Sorry.

The parent does a lot of talking. They’re trying to talk to me.

They’re trying to fill the void biologically of the missing village or the door silence. The kids are to be okay with silence. They’re going to be okay. They will soon pipe up when they want something.

They have the first tip.

If you’re talking to them all the time, do you know what I mean?

What’s the second tip?

The second tip is to look at what you’re broadcasting.

Your temperature, what your mood is, what your energy is, and look at your own behavior and see how that affects the kids around you.

What choices can you make about how you show up? Do you need to let everybody know how awful your day’s been? Do you need to let everybody know how exhausted you are or how difficult things are, or do you need to complain about something? Just choose one thing at a time and gradually build it and get into the swing of it. You will start noticing little shifts in their behavior. They’ve just asked me a question. It’s nice, it’s lovely.

What you’re trying to provide is a sense of peace, which is their biology, which is what they expect to be living in so that they can survive. The only time they cannot survive is when there’s no peace because there’s uncertainty. Their body is always trying to correct that. If the parents cannot, that’s how they regulate themselves through the parent. If you’ve got a parent who cannot regulate himself, or if you’ve got a father who cannot control his feelings or cannot make choices about what he shares and what he does not, then the child is not going to feel safe.

Is there any sentence that the child wants to hear? Does a child biologically want to hear something from their father?

No, and this is the main problem.

What do they biologically want from their father then, to finish off, to wrap it up? What do they want from their father?

They want to know their father is congruent, safe to be around, and that the atmosphere he’s providing, the environment, is safe to be in. That’s all they require. Any behaviors that jeopardize that, he can look at and change. It will change the child’s behavior. I’ve seen it happen time and time. This stuff just works. It just absolutely works because it’s nature, it’s biology.

Absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed the conversation, especially being a dad.

I do too. I wonder what’s going on in your mind right now.

I’m very into all this. I’m like, I’m going to be with the kids now. They come next week for three weeks of vacation. All of them together. I’m going to shut the fuck up, not be too much in control. I’m a Virgo, so I like to be in control. The other thing. I’m going to shut the fuck up, and I’m also going to not express negative feelings.

What do you do that for? Do you see what you’ve done now?

I’m pissed off that this happened.

Either man, you know?

I finish off. Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation and the time.

I’ve loved it. I hope your audience gets some. It does. You get where I’m coming from.

Listen, firstly, I would say that it is quite unorthodox to the way parenting is taught. Have you ever debated with therapists or child therapists who are like experts from a mental therapeutic perspective?

Final Reflections: Compassion, Courage, And Connection

I had a conversation with one the other day who gets what I’m talking about, but does not quite get it because she’s focused on talking to the parents to change their behavior. That’s no good. It’s like saying I’m going on a diet, a New Year’s resolution. You say I’m going to lose a stone. You do not, because they have no context. It’s context, if you understand my meaning of context.

Providing a context for them gives them information that supports their behavior as opposed to just mind. It is no good just shutting the fuck up unless you know why you’re shutting the fuck up, and you do now. Also, let me just add. You must not do it with an attitude, not you personally, but one, just because I’ve said, and you just said I need to shut up. No, it’s no attitude if this space you’re in now, guys, is just heavenly.

I can do that.

You can actually. Get that. Can get that.

I can do that. It’s easier. My life has changed from, let’s say, a focus on career and all that stuff has become deprioritized, and family has become a lot more, a lot more of what I focus on, what I think about. I do think, from a father’s perspective, those who are trying to be a provider and create that safety in what you’re talking about and like contribute to the house. That’s a big burden to take on as a father and a man.

Also to have to step up as the father. It’s a lot easier when you like to go, “I’m okay on that part of the equation.” I can allocate much more energy to this without worrying about that. I think a lot of men have the burden of, I need to deliver here. I need to perform regardless of what’s happening in the home. I need to make sure that home keeps running.

 

 

I get it.

As you described, the man who comes home from working all day and then he has to, like, show up fresh off the bench, but he’s not fresh. His tank is like it’s at the red right now, and he’s got to, like, come in for bedtime and like, not easygoing stuff and have to put into practice what you’re talking about.

The thing about it is it’s less effort. What I’m talking about is less effort.

Is less effort. It’s scary. It’s a big mindset shift, though. It is. It’s rewiring. I’m going to ask you. I ask all my guests five questions at the end of every episode. I’m going to shoot. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?

My sister.

What are you proud of being or doing in your life besides Macbeth?

I’m proud of my courage in standing in the face of criticism and opposition. It’s fine. Bring it on.

Nice. When did you receive kindness while needing it most, but expecting it least?

When a friend of mine lent me 500 quid when I was absolutely broke, and I burst into tears. I wasn’t expecting it. That was a few years ago now, but it was just out of the blue. He just put it in my hand, and he said, “Take it.”

“You go, son.”

Beautiful. Actually, just an extraordinary moment.

Fathers, you are not really failing. You think you are, but it's a hell of a job you're doing. Share on X

What did your father or mother teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?

Forewarned is forearmed. That was my father’s. My father just said that a lot. Forewarned is forearmed. Do you know what I mean by that?

No, you can explain.

If you inform yourself about a possibility, you’re ready for it when it comes. You are armed to fight it because you’re warning yourself about it. You’re aware of what can come. That’s what he said.

The final one is, what’s your superpower? Shutting the fuck up.

Shutting the fuck up. I fail at that miserably a lot of the time. That’s the beauty of it, is you can recover from this. My superpower is, I think, my generosity of spirit. I see us all as connected and spiritual beings. I really do. I have compassion. Like fathers, you fathers out there, it’s not your fault. You’re not really failing. You think you are. It’s a hell of a job you’re doing. It really is. Five kids, that’s a hell of a something. Bravo for five kids. Any more coming?

No, we’re done. Thank you so much. Men’s Anonymous.

Nice one. Nice to be here. Thanks. I’ve enjoyed it.

Thank you. Bye, then.

 

Important Links

• Owen Geoff on LinkedIn
• Owen Geoff on Facebook
• The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost
• THE PARENTING ASSUMPTION
• For Your Own Good

 

About Geoff Owen

Geoff Owen is the founder of Biologically Aligned Parenting and the author of The Parenting Assumption, a book that challenges the belief that children’s behaviour needs to be managed, corrected, or controlled.

His work grew out of a question he began asking long before he became a parent himself. After training at the Old Vic Theatre School and spending years in theatre, Geoff came across The Continuum Concept, a book that changed how he understood childhood, maturity, and the environment children need in order to develop. Years later, when he had daughters of his own, he put those ideas into practice in real life rather than treating them as theory.

Geoff’s view is direct: behaviour is not the problem; behaviour is a response. He works with parents who are exhausted by daily conflict, resistance, defiance, distance, aggression, or over-compliance, and who feel they have tried everything from boundaries and consequences to consistency, explanation, and professional advice. His approach asks parents to look beneath the behaviour and understand what the child is responding to in the environment around them.

Through Biologically Aligned Parenting, Geoff helps parents see how the pressure to control often creates the very resistance they are trying to stop. His work is conversational and reflective rather than worksheet-driven, helping parents shift from correcting the child in the moment to changing the conditions in which cooperation, maturity, and connection can emerge naturally.

Geoff brings a rare combination of lived experience, philosophical depth, and practical observation. He has reared his own children through these principles, worked with parents facing intense family conflict, and speaks with particular insight to high-performing professionals who can manage complexity at work or perform under pressure, yet feel lost when the same instincts do not work at home.