We all want better for our kids. We want them to have a better life than we had. We want them to have better parents than we had. That’s why we’re trying so hard. That’s why we wrestle with our demons–going to therapy, reading books, putting in the work. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to Steven Rinella about the sense of wonder, respect & adventure for nature, spending time with family, and his new book catch a crayfish, count the stars: fun projects, skills, and adventures for outdoor kids . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
There is so much we want to teach our kids —so much that fathers are expected to teach their kids. How to ride a bike. How to swim. How to throw a punch. How to tie a tie. How to read . How to get up the guts to talk to someone. All of this is important, of course. All of this must be done. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
The last book you read was Goodnight Moon . The last series you binged was Harry Potter . You know more about the latest scandal at your daughter’s high school than the 2024 primary candidates. You’ve spent so much time in the sun at soccer games and baseball practice that you might be fried inside. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
The two boys who look just like you. The daughter who lights up when you pick her up from school. The teenager who wears your old band t-shirts. The mischievous prankster who makes you roll your head back in laughter. The nerd who plays video games with you. The foodie who loves to cook with you. The kid going off to college . The one sitting behind the store counter of their first job. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
“She’s not good at hearing people,” the musician Mikel Jollett writes of his mother in his haunting memoir Hollywood Park . “If we tell her we’re hungry, she’ll say, ‘No you’re not. You ate earlier.’ If one of us says ‘I’m sad,’ she tells us that it’s not true, that we’re happy now because we’re with her.” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
When they’re grouchy, when they’re glass-eyed, when they’re stuck, when they’re making choices that don’t quite make sense …there could be many reasons why your kids are acting this way. They could be tired, as we’ve said before . They’re almost certainly hungry– as we said , that’s at the root of most problems. They could be depressed, they could be going through something and just not understand what it is. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagr...
“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.” On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with comedian Christina Pazsitzky on balancing work and life, and raising kids while being a good parent. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
You knew it that day in the hospital. You felt it the first time they threw their arms around you. You are reminded of it every time they do something decent and kind and good. You were given something very special. You have been entrusted with something very special. A bundle of genes and circumstances that will never exist ever again in history, that’s never ever existed before–something, someone totally unique and wonderful. Someone with gifts, someone with something to offer, someone who nee...
When your teenager sits you down to come clean to you about something…When you’re on vacation and wondering whether you should try to squeeze one more thing in…When your adult kid decides to get divorced…When you’re frustrated and resentful about something with your spouse and decide to have a talk, there is something you should keep in mind. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
“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.” It’s fitting that one of the most important things you can do as a parent requires you to think about something that’s very nearly impossible for a parent to consider. It comes to us from Marcus Aurelius by way of Epictetus. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
If you want to spend more time with your kids, as we said recently, the important thing is that you don’t drive them away . Yet that’s what so many of us do, isn’t it? Because we worry, because we care, because we can’t quite strike the right balance, our efforts end up backfiring. Think of John O’Connor’s mom whose smothering tendencies drove her son to move from California to Arizona just to get some distance. There’s no way she wanted that to happen, but she made it happen all the same. Think...
Imagine you’ve come to the end. You’re leaving this world, leaving your kids behind. Or worse, more unthinkably, your kids are leaving you. They’re off to college. They’re moving across the country. Time or distance or conflict separates you. They’ve been in an accident. You’ve both lived to ripe old ages, but they go first. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on stepping outside of our own upbringing and challenging the conversation more as parents when it comes to the freedom of our children. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
This change we’ve made, this decision to become dads—it has uprooted everything. It’s like we were hit, suddenly, with a crossfire hurricane. The house is a mess. The schedule is grueling. There is never enough sleep , never enough time in the day. Even the cool, quiet dark is pierced by the shriek of a man who has stepped on a pile of Legos… and the shriek is coming from your mouth. Yet to be good at our jobs, to be good at this fatherhood thing, we need stillness . We need time to reflect. We ...
You weren’t wrong. You did have some experience on the matter. You only wanted what was best for them. You wanted them to stay in school. You didn’t want them messing around with something that could cause them trouble. You wanted them to be safe. You wanted to make sure they stayed the good and innocent and promising kid you used to carry around. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
They see you disheveled and groggy. They see you busy and preoccupied. They see you argue with your spouse . They see you burned out after a long week. They see regular old, normal you. But what about some of those peak career moments? When you sold your company. When you were invited to that special reception at the fancy place downtown. The first day of shooting for your new screenplay. When you were interviewed for that big morning show. When that raise finally came through. ✉️ Sign up for th...
The amount of choices we have today is not normal. Certainly, it’s quite new. When you were a kid–which was not that long ago–there were how many channels on TV? Even cable, which radically expanded that number, was still finite and nothing compared to streaming. There was no infinite scroll…YouTube only rolled out autoplay at the end of videos in the last decade. And this is only discussing what we watch–there is essentially an unlimited choice in what we listen to, who we date, where we travel...
When they’re young, when they’re asleep, when they’re older, when you’re old, when you’re on vacation, after a big Thanksgiving meal, early in the morning before school, in the afternoons when you’re visiting their new family, there’s one thing you should do with your kids: We’ve talked about John Adams ( the great McCullough bio is at The Painted Porch ) and his fascinating relationship with his brilliant son John Quincy. Ryan Holiday dedicated a chapter to the value of walking in his best-sell...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on being the model for our kids and the ultimate skill on the ability to handle frustration. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
By now, you’ve almost certainly lost count of how many questions you’ve been asked by your kids. From the moment they can talk, that’s what fatherhood is—answering questions. Some you can’t wait for them to ask, some you hope they’ll never ask (or ask their mom), some so absurdly, brilliantly child-like you never could have guessed they were coming in a million years. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
In 1940, as Nazi bombs rained down on London, an observer noted the contrasts between the “natural splendor and human vileness.” This idea (which inspired Erik Larson’s wonderful book The Splendid and the Vile ) would be born out over the next several months–not just the bombs falling in one of the world’s great cities, but also the human resilience and heroism in response to such villainy and evil. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Faceb...
In the moment, it seemed like a big deal . In the moment, you just needed them to understand your concerns. In the moment, the phone was ringing. In the moment, you were overwhelmed. In the moment, you were worried something might happen. In the moment, you had other plans. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything was simple and straightforward? That’s what we’d like the job of a parent to be. We’d like there to be a blueprint that laid out exactly what we have to do and when we have to do it in order to guarantee that all our parental i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed. Of course, life isn’t remotely like that. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
There are parents who pay for music lessons so their kids can play an instrument. There are parents who tutor their kids in a foreign language. There are parents who teach their kids how to do all sorts of things–to start a campfire, to change a flat tire, to sew a button. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
On this episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks to Paul Kix about enjoying the time we do have with our kids, while being self-conscious of what we call work during family settings. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
F. Scott Fitzgerald knew the long term damage of being spoiled rotten. Not only was he a prime and painful example himself— as we’ve written about —but as he observed and studied the rich men and women of the Jazz Age, he saw how indulgent people quickly became the “careless” monsters that he portrayed in The Great Gatsby . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Your kids ask for a lot. Money. Patience. They ask for toys and games and attention. They demand chicken nuggets after you hand them the hamburger they told you they wanted. They ask for forgiveness , and they ask for trust. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Study any great leader, artist, athlete, or parent, and you’ll find that they had a hero, a mentor, or a model. Some were lucky enough to study directly under that person. But for most, this studying happened remotely—by reading books, watching documentaries, listening to interviews, and so on. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
They’re scared there’s something under their bed or in their closet. They tell you they don’t want to go to school today. They tell you they feel depressed. They tell you that they think somebody hates them. They tell you that they hate playing this sport or practicing that instrument. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
