1KHO 661: Let Kids Grow Up at the Right Pace | Jon Gustin, The Tired Dad

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Ginny Yurich

Kids & Family, Parenting

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jon Gustin didn’t set out to be a parenting voice. He became one the hard way. In this conversation, Jon talks honestly about early exposure to alcohol, years of running from anxiety, and what happened when becoming a father forced him to stop numbing and start paying attention. He shares what it was like to quit drinking, face anxiety head-on, and rebuild his marriage and inner life while raising young kids. There’s no dramatic turnaround story here—just the quiet, difficult work of changing patterns so they don’t get passed down. From there, the conversation turns to modern childhood. Screens. Phones. Messy houses. Kids growing up too fast. Jon makes a simple but urgent case: childhood needs protection—not through fear or control, but through attention. Paying attention to what kids are doing, who they’re becoming, and whether they’re being pushed into an adult world too soon. This episode is for parents who sense something is off, who don’t want to overreact or opt out of modern life—but who also refuse to sleepwalk through it. Thoughtful, steady, and deeply reassuring. Learn more about Jon and all he has to offer here Pre-order Jon's book, The Tired Dad here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Harych. I'm the founder of 1000
0:04.8	Hours Outside. And today I have for you the tired dad. John Guston, welcome.
0:11.6	Thank you so much for having me.
0:13.6	You got the coolest merch. I just want to kick it off by saying that. You're wearing this hat.
0:18.5	It says tired dad. Your wife is the tired mom. And then you, I think it's the most clever thing. Tell people about the kid's shirt.
0:26.5	Never tired kid. That was definitely, that was invented with, see, this whole brand was invented
0:34.6	after our second born, my son, who did not sleep at all through 13, 14 months.
0:41.9	He would wake up eight, nine times a night for 13 to 14 months before he decided to sleep more than that.
0:49.1	But he is almost six years old and he's going to be the kid that wakes up at 5 a.m. on Saturday, you know?
0:58.4	Yeah. So he's gonna get a lot done. I made those shirts, uh, onesies for him when he was after he was born,
1:06.9	never tired kid because that's what he was.
1:14.4	Well, he seemed like he was tired just at the wrong parts of the day.
1:17.0	It's really so hard.
1:17.8	It's so hard.
1:18.9	And he was your second.
1:19.4	Yeah.
1:22.7	So that means you also have an older one that you're having to parent at the same time.
1:23.6	Yes.
1:26.2	And she, that's my daughter.
1:32.8	And she is, she's a little, a lot more, she beats to her own drum.
1:47.4	So a lot of the time, it's a lot of compromise with her, like letting her, you know, pick her own outfits, like, you know, have that space to be herself fully but also like having boundaries with it as well so yeah and she sleeps like she slept through the night at six weeks and
1:54.3	she would sleep till 10 a.m i swear every day she didn't have to wake up school. So that must have been just such a shock. You have this first baby that sleeps.
	...

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