70: GUEST | The 4 Emotional Needs Your Kids Need You to Meet with Richard O'Keefe

Most parenting books tell you what to fix. This one tells you why it’s broken.

In this deeply grounded episode, I sit down with Richard O’Keefe: father of six, grandfather of 23 (!), great-grandfather of four (!!), and author of 9-1-1: What Is Your Parenting Emergency?. Richard teaches parenting skills to incarcerated fathers through Utah State University and has created a simple, powerful framework based on four core emotional needs every child has.

We talk about how unmet emotional needs in childhood often lead to incarceration, addiction, and relational breakdowns in adulthood and what every parent can do now to stop that cycle.

This episode is calm, clear, and rich with lived experience. It’s not about shaming or strategy overload, it’s about understanding what makes a child feel whole, and what happens when they don’t.

🧨 In This Episode, We Talk SHIFT About:

00:00 – The four core emotional needs all children share

03:10 – 15 parenting skills that meet those emotional needs

05:50 – Richard’s breaking point (and the mashed potatoes incident)

08:20 – Why most parenting books overwhelm and overcomplicate

10:40 – Teaching incarcerated fathers how to reconnect with their kids

13:35 – Why most people in prison didn’t have their emotional needs met

16:15 – The power of teaching values (and how it starts at dinner)

20:42 – How traditional masculinity shuts down emotional connection

23:00 – The "fixer" instinct vs. emotional attunement in relationships

27:15 – Parenting as a team (even when co-parenting is complicated)

31:20 – Why his students should be motivational speakers

33:05 – What led Richard to write 9-1-1: What Is Your Parenting Emergency?

35:20 – The iceberg metaphor of behavior and emotional needs

38:00 – What it means to make “positive deposits” with your kids

42:20 – Raising boys into men as a single mother

45:00 – The values his students wish they’d been taught

47:00 – Anger management and the “upstairs/downstairs brain”

50:00 – How Davina’s own parenting moments led to repair and growth

54:00 – Helping dads raise children from behind bars

57:10 – What to do when only one partner wants to do the work

59:30 – Why we weaponize emotional growth in relationships and how to stop

01:02:00 – Unconditional love, earned trust, and realistic expectations

👋 Connect with Richard O’Keefe:

📘 Book: 9-1-1: What Is Your Parenting Emergency? (Available on Amazon)

🔗 Ready to SHIFT with Me?

✨ Join SHIFT Live

📞 Book a Clarity Call