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A Dad’s Playbook for Forging Faith in his Kids–Part 3: Gentlemen–This is Your Brain on Testosterone

A Dad’s Playbook for Forging Faith in his Kids–Part 3: Gentlemen–This is Your Brain on Testosterone

Last updated on: February 3, 2015 at 3:34 pm by Tim Wright

A Dad’s Playbook for Forging Faith in his Kids–Part 3: Gentlemen–This is Your Brain on Testosterone 2015-02-03T15:34:27+00:00 Tim Wright

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(Many great books have been written recently about how to be more intentional in forging faith in the home. Most so far have been written by female authors and while inclusive, tend to speak better to moms and women. Over the next several weeks I want to speak to dads in male language about their unique call to forge faith in their kids. My hope is to turn this into a free e-book. So comments, suggestions, ideas, along the way are welcome and appreciated.)

Gentlemen: This is Your Brain on Testosterone

In shaping his football team, the great Vince Lombardi always started with the basics: Gentlemen: this is a football!

Dads, forging faith in your kids starts with going back to the basics: Gentlemen: You are the Image of God—Male.

Being a man—being a male—being masculine, means something. A man has a stance toward the world and toward faith that is different from that of a woman. And your kids need it!

We’re not talking stereotypes here (although just because it’s a stereotype doesn’t mean it’s wrong). We’re talking about the way God created you as a male.

Gentlemen: This is your primary hormone—Testosterone.

Testosterone is:

An action hormone
A get-it-done hormone
A movement hormone

It is essentially testosterone that makes you a male. When you were in the womb you were female until you were bombarded with testosterone, which in turn shaped your brain into a distinctly male brain.

(The primary chemicals/hormones in women are oxytocin and estrogen, which are calming, bonding, and connecting hormones.)

Gentlemen: This is your brain

Your brain:

Tends to draw on the spatial-mechanical centers in the right part of your brain
Responds more to movement and action than words
Moves you to bond via activity (which helps activate your verbal centers), banter, and oneupmanship
Gives you the ability to laser focus on one task (often to the exclusion of anything else happening around you)
Processes life best through data and “facts”
Stimulates you to be competitive (along with those doses of testosterone)
Problem solves

(A woman’s brain draws blood to the verbal-emotive centers on both sides of the brain, making her far more verbal. Women tend to bond via talking. They are more attuned to many things happening at once from words being said to voice inflection to body language. Women problem solve as well, but do so more with others, verbalizing the problem through to its conclusion where men internalize the process and speak the solution.)

This unique combination of testosterone and your testosterone-shaped brain provides you with an important, compelling set of skills for forging faith in your kids.

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January 27, 2015

A Dad's Playbook for Forging Faith in His Kids--Part 2: From Outsourcing to Dadsourcing

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March 10, 2015 A Dad's Playbook for Forging Faith in his kids--Part 4: Dad--You Have a Particular Set of Skills

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