There’s an interesting passage in Evelyn McDonnell’s fascinating biography of Joan Didion ( who we have written about many times and we also just had Evelyn on the Daily Stoic podcast), that points out another about the difference between how the public saw Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne, also a great and successful writer. One was clearly identified as a parent and the other was not, even though Dunne actually wrote a whole book about the topic! As we’ve said before , by talking abou...
Feb 08, 2024•5 min•Ep. 1271
We all feel a little self-conscious about it. Our kids don’t behave as well as we’d like. They make a mess. They make an incredible amount of noise. Perhaps this is why we keep them at home, why we’re always apologizing, preparing people in advance for the hurricane that may or may not come through. Maybe some of us fear being overshadowed by our kids or judged for having them with us— that it will undermine our image as professionals. Don’t apologize . Do your best to clean up, to teach them ho...
Feb 07, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1270
“This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/dailydad and get on your way to being your best self.” The great John Wooden would practice his team hard through the week. He’d run through the plans over and over and over again. Yet as they left the locker room and headed out onto the court for the game, he would say to the team, “Well, I’ve done my job.” He wasn’t going to be micromanaging them from the sideline. It was their turn to do their job. And so it...
Feb 06, 2024•5 min•Ep. 1269
The tantrum. The whining about going to school. The punch that’s thrown. The slipping grades. The sneaking out. The lie. The shouting. The moping around the house. These are not things you like to see your kids do. Maybe these are things you’ve talked to them about before, maybe a million times. But maybe that’s the problem. You’re seeing the wrong thing. You’re talking about the wrong thing. In her wonderful book Good Inside (yes, we love it), Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that “on the surface we se...
Feb 05, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1268
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to creator, author, designer, and the founder of ConvertKit Nathan Barry on having kids earlier in their career, their interest in farms and outdoors, and the process of Emotional Vaccination. IG, and, X, ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Feb 03, 2024•14 min•Ep. 1267
These are challenging, uncertain times, no question. What’s at the root of it? How did we get here? And what can fathers do about it? The answer comes to us, as it often does, from an ancient prescription: Character is fate . Who a person is determines what will happen and what they can do. It should surprise no one that a culture that has put character at the absolute bottom of the list of requirements for its leaders—below whether they tell us what we want to hear, below how clever their tweet...
Feb 02, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1266
Rich is how much you get to see your kids , we said recently. We were redefining wealth away from material items and salary—although these things are nice as far as they go—and towards a thing that pretty much everyone wishes they had more of: time with the people you love most. Is it really a rich life if you are missing out on something so priceless? Perhaps it’s worth also taking a minute to do some similar considerations about power. There are the obvious trappings of power: The corner offic...
Feb 01, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1265
Maybe you did before, but you can’t now. Before you could afford to get sucked into drama, to gossip, to get into long arguments with your buddies, to be petty, to hold grudges, to follow the latest breaking news or celebrity. But now? Now, you need to remind yourself: I ain’t got time for that . Because you don’t. You have kids now. You have people you’re responsible for. You have a big enough struggle on your hands. Your crazy coworker is their own problem. That actor who cheated on their spou...
Jan 31, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1264
We’ve said before that it’s never too late . It’s never too late, as a parent, to follow your dreams—to show your kids that they can too. It’s never too late to start showing up. It’s never too late to deal with your demons. It’s never too late to change. Sooner is better of course, but it’s never too late. It’s also never too late to do that thing we’ve been talking about a lot recently— repair . “Repair can happen ten minutes after a blowup, ten days later, or ten years later,” Dr. Becky Kenne...
Jan 30, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1263
It’s a wonderful state—being in flow. Getting caught up in your work. Getting caught up in the moment. And before you had kids, you lived for this…in fact, you may well have lived in it. Life was simpler then. You would get lost for days at a time in a project. You could spend years, it would seem in retrospect, in the building stages of a company, in the pursuit of a dream , in finding yourself, in exploring the world. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitte...
Jan 29, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1262
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on how Sam prepares for writing Ryan, Integrating his routine in a well adjusted life, how this year is going to be different, all while protecting their headspace. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Jan 27, 2024•15 min•Ep. 1261
There is a great story about a young Spartan woman, Gorgo, who would one day become queen. Despite her royal status, like all Spartans she was raised to be self-sufficient, and without any frills or needless luxury. So imagine Gorgo’s surprise when she witnessed a distinguished visitor to Sparta have his shoes put on by a servant. “Look, father,” she said, “the stranger has no hands!” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Jan 26, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1260
We have emotions. We experience stressful situations. We have intrusive thoughts. So really what we have to teach our kids, Dr. Becky writes in her incredible book Good Inside (must read!), is how to differentiate urge from action. “Having the urge to bite is okay,” she explains, “biting a person is not. Having the urge to hit is okay; hitting a person is not okay.” We know this to be true in our adult lives—that there’s a big difference between being angry and then doing something rash or irres...
Jan 25, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1259
Our parents weren’t everything we needed. Maybe it was more time we needed. More understanding. More kindness. More support. More love. More just them having their act together. But they weren’t this. Sadly, they also weren’t what the world needed either. Few generations have been. They kicked problems down the road. They started wars that cost blood and treasure to little purpose. They abused the environment. They averted their gaze, turned their hearts away from sufferings and injustice. In a ...
Jan 24, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1258
George Dewey was a kid who got in trouble a lot. His father was always bailing him out. Finally, as a last ditch effort, he secured his son entrance into the U.S Naval Academy in 19XX. “George, I’ve done all I can for you,” his father told him as he dropped him off. “The rest you must do for yourself.” We talked a while back about how you have to let your kids fail , you have to let them struggle. As we’ve said before Luctor Et Emergo—from the struggle they emerge ( we have a cool challenge coin...
Jan 23, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1257
The bike was nice. So was the trip to Disneyland. So was being able to graduate from college without student debt. They appreciated the presents. They appreciated the clothes that fit. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they took for granted what it cost for you to buy a house where they could have their own room. Maybe they didn’t understand what it took out of you to give them a better life than you had, to pay for all this stuff, to pay to go to all these places. Maybe they didn’t understand because...
Jan 22, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1256
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy on how we emotionally vaccinate, the ability to cope through stress, educating our kids on emotions and her new book Good Inside Dr. Becky Kennedy is an American clinical psychologist who is founder and chief executive officer of the Good Inside company, an online parenting advice service. She has been called the "millennial parent whisperer" by Time Magazine and is a number one New York Tim...
Jan 20, 2024•17 min•Ep. 1255
The career opportunities are hard to turn down. It’s hard in the moment, as we’ve talked about , to be able to think too far into the future. It’s hard to make much in the way of long term investments as a parent because you’re so overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the present. But we have to remember what we’re after, we have to keep in perspective that this is a marathon we’ve signed up for. We quoted the baseball player Anthony Rendon recently about how he was having to weigh painful but ...
Jan 19, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1254
You didn’t like rules when you were a kid. Your parents had too many. Your school was a prison of pointless, arbitrary ones—how you could dress, when you could go to the bathroom, how you had to hold the pencil. So it makes sense that you’re averse to them now. It’s good that you question how many of them matter and don’t want to make the same mistakes as adults did in your own childhood. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTu...
Jan 18, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1253
There are lots of ways to read, ways that have improved the experience and opened up the world of literature to people who otherwise would have missed out. Ebooks are awesome. Audiobooks are spectacular. They let you read anywhere. They let you read faster. They let you read while you’re multitasking. All from the convenience of a device in your pocket smaller than the smallest book. But that’s sort of the problem isn’t it? Your kids have no idea that that is what you’re using your phone for. To...
Jan 17, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1252
You know your kids are good. You’ve seen their sweetness, their cuteness since the beginning . You’ve seen them try. You’ve seen them feel shame when they’ve messed up. You also know how hard it is to be a person , let alone a kid, in this world. Life is frustrating. Life is tough. It’s full of temptations. It’s easy to make mistakes . It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Dr. Becky Kennedy - Good Inside ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook...
Jan 16, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1251
“This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/dailydad and get on your way to being your best self.” How flexible you were then. How much energy you had. What you could eat without consequence. The innocence. The earnestness. The sweetness. You had it once and now, it’s gone, disappeared beneath the years and the experiences and everything else. When Taylor Swift sang ‘being this young is art,’ she wasn’t talking about your kids, about kids generally, but ...
Jan 15, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1250
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on Their word for 2024 being systems, designing the system around people instead of people around the system, and creating plans before they happen instead of during the chaos. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Jan 13, 2024•18 min•Ep. 1249
The late Paul Woodruff told a wonderful story in his episode on the Daily Stoic podcast . Before he died, he loved birdwatching and had a bird feeder in his backyard. But the squirrels kept stealing the birdseed he was putting out. This was frustrating and annoying and he found himself growing angry. But then he remembered a passage from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations about how we should accept when things are doing what their nature demands. The squirrels were not trying to give Paul a hard time,...
Jan 12, 2024•2 min•Ep. 1248
Bruce Springsteen has three children: Evan, Jessica, and Sam. One of them is an Olympic-level equestrian (which can not have been a cheap or easy interest to encourage, nor always a fun one to watch). His son, Sam, recently became a New Jersey firefighter (a scary thought for any parent). Clearly, Bruce and his wife Patti have figured out how to help their children become who they are, and to realize their potential. “I wanted them to see people that did a lot of other things,” Bruce once said i...
Jan 11, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1247
It can be hard in the moment to think of anything else. You have lunches to make. Practices to get to. Birthday parties to plan. Work to do. Childhoods to survive. Having kids is so overwhelming that your ability to conceive of two weeks from now, let alone the future, is severely compromised. This isn’t entirely a bad thing—it’s good to be in the moment, to not get too far ahead of yourself. But at the same time, you do need to make sure that you consider more than just this moment. The basebal...
Jan 10, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1246
There are lots of different trappings of wealth. A big house. A nice car. Exotic vacations. First-class flights? Private flights? Not everyone can afford these things . In fact, that’s sort of the point—they are considered fancy and elite because of how elusive they are. But is this really wealth? Or is this just materialism? On Christmas (and it’s the Dec 25th entry in * The Daily Da*d book , too), we quoted Paul Orfalea , the billionaire founder of Kinkos, who defined ‘success’ as having kids ...
Jan 09, 2024•3 min•Ep. 1245
Your kids are going to face stuff in life. Big stuff for sure–failing tests, being made fun of, getting fired, losing something important to them. We may wish we could prevent that from happening, but we can’t. We teach them resilience instead. But our kids are also going to face little situations too. The TV is going to have to be turned off at some point, and they’re not going to like it. They’re going to have to get up early for school tomorrow. Their routines are going to change. They’re goi...
Jan 08, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1244
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy on how we emotionally vaccinate, the ability to cope through stress, educating our kids on emotions and her new book Good Inside Dr. Becky Kennedy is an American clinical psychologist who is founder and chief executive officer of the Good Inside company, an online parenting advice service. She has been called the "millennial parent whisperer" by Time Magazine and is a number one New York Tim...
Jan 06, 2024•32 min•Ep. 1243
Most schools and most parents teach reading all wrong. They bully kids into doing it. They pressure them. They tell them, “Reading is what smart and successful people do.” Then they’re surprised when kids who struggled with reading don’t think they’re smart, and they wonder why kids almost wear illiteracy as a badge of honor. They wonder why people say things like, “I haven’t read a book since I was forced to in high school.” No, the way to teach a kid to read is not to talk about how wonderful ...
Jan 05, 2024•4 min•Ep. 1242
