Tim McGraw Has Some Parenting Advice for New Dad Garrett Hedlund

Actor Garrett Hedlund recently became a dad for the first time after Emma Roberts gave birth to the couple's first child, son Rhodes Robert, and he's been getting some advice from Rhodes' godfather, Tim McGraw. Hedlund and McGraw, who first met playing father and son in 2004' Friday Night Lights, had a conversation for LEOedit.com about Hedlund's first days as a dad, and the 36-year-old shared that there is "no one that I respect more as a man, a husband, musician, and a father than Tim McGraw."

Baby Rhodes was three weeks old at the time of the interview, and Hedlund told McGraw, "I know at a certain point the best thing to do is to let them cry themselves to sleep, but I can't handle it. I'll hold him quietly and awake all through the night." He continued, "I know that for us, as babies growing up, eventually you're left to cry and sort that out. But I can't handle it at this point. Which is a wonderful thing, but eventually I'm going to have to let him cry himself to sleep."

McGraw, who shares daughters Gracie, 23, Maggie, 22, and Audrey, 19 with wife Faith Hill, replied, "Eventually, but it is still tough. It's never easy and it's never going to get easy. The way to fix that is to just throw a couple other kids in there; then you don't think about it as much!"

When Hedlund asked his longtime friend how he handled Gracie's first sleepless night, the country star shared that he was "up all night." "Same thing. Just up all night. I can tell you she ended up in the bed with Faith and I quite a bit," he recalled with a laugh. "Which is probably not the best thing to do."

He added that when he and Hill took Gracie home from the hospital, "we couldn't believe they were letting us take this baby home. [Hedlund laughs]. We didn't know what we were doing. I can't believe they let us put her in the car with us and bring her home."

Hedlund also asked his former co-star whether his kids' "firsts," like their first smile and first steps, ever got old. "No, never," McGraw declared. "Because they are going to occur in your life almost every day, right? Those first smiles, first word, first step, not only from an infant's point of view. In your life as you move forward, you are always going to have a first word and a first step in everything you do." He added, "All those lessons that you learn, they carry on through your life because you're going to have them over and over and over and over again. That is just part of the cycle that we all go through."

"Here is what you can want for your kids," McGraw continued. "You hope for the rest of their life that they will always have the opportunity to take a first step on a great adventure."