We still want our parents’ approval. You can be in your 50s, in your 80s, and your parents could have passed on. You still want their approval. It never stopped. You never stop wanting that.
– Josh Davis, PhD
There is a moment Perry Solomon describes that most grandparents would recognize instantly. He was at a buffet brunch with his three-year-old granddaughter when she picked up a skewer, speared a strawberry, and dipped it into the chocolate fountain for the first time. She took a bite. And in that moment, Perry says, “I could see right then and there her life had changed.” He was paying close enough attention to see it. That granddaughter is now thirteen years old and is known in the craft chocolate industry as the future of craft chocolate. The seed of a lifelong passion was planted not by a lesson or a lecture, but by one adult who was fully watching.
That kind of attention is exactly what Josh Davis, PhD, author of The Difference That Makes the Difference and an expert in psychology, performance, and emotional intelligence, studies for a living. Davis works with individuals and organizations to understand how connection, mindset, and emotional patterns shape the way people live and lead. He and Solomon recently joined forces to discuss what fathers and grandfathers uniquely provide for children and why getting this right matters more than most families realize.
Why Men Are Raising Kids in Isolation Right Now
Before exploring what fathers can give, Davis wants people to understand the environment they are operating in. The pressures on families today are real and well-documented, he says, pointing to cultural conversations around screen time, anxiety in young people, and the uncertainty that comes with rapid technological change. But there is a layer beneath those headline concerns that does not get enough attention.
“Men are feeling more isolated,” Davis says. “Women are finding ways to continue to have groups and friends and text chains. Moms know what each other’s kids are doing. The dads are doing it on their own and feeling quite isolated and really just trying to invent what they are doing.”
This isolation matters because it strips away the informal support structures that once helped fathers calibrate their instincts. Without other dads to compare notes with, many men default to either replicating what their own fathers did or improvising entirely, neither of which reliably leads to the kind of emotionally present parenting they actually want to provide. Davis notes the irony: more fathers than ever genuinely want to be full parents and full partners in raising their children, and more mothers want that too. The desire is there. The road map often is not.
The One Shift That Changes Every Relationship in the Family
Davis has spent years working with people on what he considers the foundational skill of human connection: getting into the psychological world of another person, not just observing their behavior, but genuinely asking what internal logic makes that behavior make perfect sense.
He illustrates this with a story from his own family. His oldest child spent weeks unable to choose between two planets for a school project. The family kept pushing: just pick one. Finally, Davis paused and did what he coaches others to do. “Instead of just saying, what is going on, it is like, what is going on,” he explains. “That is a crucial difference in attitude.” He mentally stepped into his son’s experience and realized that for a ten-year-old, choosing a planet for a month-long project felt enormous. The child was trying to know the future completely before committing.
“I was able to be a role model. I was able to help him enjoy the project. I was able to help him move on. We were not at odds about it anymore,” Davis says.
This is not a trick. It is a discipline. Davis describes it as choosing, in each moment, whether you are making decisions based on your own criteria or the other person’s. Neither is inherently better. But when parents and grandparents default entirely to their own frame without ever genuinely entering the child’s, the connection breaks down. The first step is simply the willingness to ask, with real curiosity, what is going on inside this person that makes their behavior make sense.
What Fathers Provide That Nobody Else Does
When asked what fathers uniquely contribute emotionally, Davis resists the urge to be too tidy about it. Every family context is different, he says, and fathers should not feel limited to a narrow script. But he does identify something real.
There is, he explains, a cultural permission structure that works in a father’s favor. He calls it the “dad pass.” Dads are not typically expected to know every child’s name at school, remember every birthday, or track every social detail. That same pass, Davis argues, can actually be a gift when used well. “I can just kind of be in the moment and be present, because I do not have to be tracking everything,” he says. It gives fathers the freedom to show up physically and spontaneously, to be the one who declares it is hike time or tickle time, to be a friend and a playmate in a way that carries its own emotional weight.
The challenge, Davis says, is learning to be both that playmate and a steady guide at the same time, setting limits without anger, without interpreting normal childhood behavior as disrespect, and without the kind of mental interpretations that make a moment of play end in strain. “How do I set boundaries without feeling like something has to be the case?” That question, he says, is where the real skill development happens for fathers.
The Role Grandfathers Play That Parents Simply Cannot
Perry Solomon’s insight about grandfathers is direct: they have a structural advantage that parents do not. “A grandfather does not have to be a disciplinarian,” Solomon says. The boundaries are looser. The environment that is created opens up something genuinely different for children.
When a child spends a day with a grandfather, they often encounter something rare in their lives: the experience of being in charge. Solomon makes this explicit on what he calls Grandpa Day, one day per week spent with a single grandchild. “I tell them, it is your day. You are in charge. I am here to help you enjoy this day and get the most out of it.” Meals anchor the day, and with younger grandchildren, he offers three or four choices for where to eat; as they grow older, they decide entirely on their own.
That consistent practice of giving children decision-making authority, in a low-stakes context without consequences or parental judgment, builds something that cannot be rushed. And because grandparents often have more time and fewer competing demands than parents do, they can offer something working parents genuinely struggle to give: hours of undivided attention with one child.
A Table Ritual That Teaches Children to Be Human
One of the most specific and practical tools Solomon shares from Grandpa Day is a conversation structure he uses at every meal. It begins not with questions for the grandchild but with Solomon himself modeling something important.
“I start by talking about a mistake I made and what I learned from it,” he explains. “Then I talk about how I delivered value. How I gave something to someone in my life.” After Solomon shares both, it is the grandchild’s turn. They already know it is coming. They arrive prepared. They have thought about what mistake they made since they last met and how they helped someone.
The ritual accomplishes something quietly significant. Children overwhelmingly see their parents and grandparents as superhuman, even when evidence suggests otherwise. Davis notes that the reckoning with that illusion often does not arrive until late adolescence, and when it does, it can feel disorienting. Solomon’s meal structure short-circuits that dynamic in a gentle way, signaling from the beginning that adults make mistakes, learn from them, and still show up. It permits children to do the same.
The grandchild needs to know they are going to make mistakes. We all make mistakes. And that is perfectly cool as long as you learn from it.
– Perry Soloman
What “Presence Over Perfection” Actually Means in Practice
The phrase presence over perfection can sound like a bumper sticker. Davis takes it somewhere more useful. Real presence, he argues, does not require the absence of distraction, worry, or imperfection. It requires the ability to tolerate those things while staying engaged.
“You can have anxiety about your work, and you can still enjoy this moment with you right now,” Davis says. “That is one of the keys to being present. It does not have to go a certain way, but I am here.”
Davis believes this is a capacity every person already has, even if they do not recognize it. When he tells clients they can tolerate a worry or a mistake and still be in the room with their child, it often comes as a genuine surprise. “The reason I can know that,” he says, “is because it is true for every person.” The skill is not eliminating the noise but choosing, moment by moment, not to let it determine whether you show up.
For fathers and grandfathers navigating imperfect families, messy days, and the ordinary friction of parenting, this is the most honest reframe available: you do not have to have it together to be present. You just have to be willing to stay.
Legacy Is Built in Ordinary Moments
Both Davis and Solomon return, in the end, to the question of legacy, not in a grand or abstract sense but in the daily, specific, relational sense. What are you actually leaving behind?
Solomon frames it plainly. He wants his grandchildren to have the tools to succeed in life on their own terms, long after he is gone. “By being the best grandfather you can be, you are helping the parents tremendously, providing an enormous amount of support and enabling them to be better parents.” The generations are not separate. They are a system.
Davis invites fathers and grandfathers to treat this as a skill, something to develop rather than a role to perform. Like any complex skill, he says, there is nuance, there is learning, and there is the satisfaction of getting better over time. The opportunity is to be a friend and a leader, a role model and a teammate, present and humble enough to keep asking what is really going on inside the people you love.
That question, asked with genuine curiosity and without judgment, is where every lasting connection begins. And according to Dr. Josh Davis, it is something every person is capable of learning to do.
