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...
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,...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 ...
We spend so much time at the office, trying to get better at our jobs, trying to make a little more money, trying to climb further up the ladder. We spend hours in the gym over the course of a life, trying to get into better shape, trying to hit personal records. We spend mountains of time online, trying to help our fantasy football teams, trying to find discount codes to save money shopping, trying to stay abreast of our friends’ and families’ lives (or so we tell ourselves). ✉️ Sign up for the...
It doesn’t feel like they listen. In fact, we have pretty visible evidence that they don’t. We tell them not to do this or that and then we watch them do that exact thing. We warn them, remind them, advise them…and then they come to us crying or complaining or in trouble, having heeded none of that guidance. So you can be forgiven for missing the fact that not only are they listening to what you say, but that your words have an enormous effect on them. So much so that you have to really, really ...
We’ve been quoting recently from the old children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit , about a toy that’s so loved by a young boy that it becomes real. This is a great metaphor for parenting in a way. Because that’s what’s happening to us. We made a decision to have kids many years ago and then for years that decision works on us, shaping, changing, transforming us . No part of that is more powerful than the love and energy of our children—whose joy, whose innocence, whose pain, whose growth is workin...
We talked recently about what Dr. Becky Kennedy always tells parents: it’s never too late . We’ve talked about Nell Painter’s mother , who became an author late in life (and Nell Painter herself, who went back and was Old in Art School ) We’ve talked about Bruce Springsteen’s father finally telling Bruce what he needed to hear. We’ve talked about other parents who got their act together late . We should be inspired by these examples. We should be inspired to be this example for our kids. We shou...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on finding common ground and learning to empathize after they had kids, the value of to do lists, pros and cons from the pandemic & the importance of routine. If you want to spend time with more dedicated Stoics, if you want to join a culture full of people rising together, we invite you to join the 2024 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge . We did the first New Year New You Challenge in 2018, and year after year, we’...
We’ve said this before, but one of the things we need to constantly remind ourselves of as parents is that our kids are just being kids. If we’re being honest, what’s closer to an accurate description of a kid: those behaviors listed above or being a perfectly quiet, perfectly obedient, perfectly well mannered and well behaved? You know that kids do these things, you know that it’s normal, you know that it’s largely harmless, you know that they have very little control over it, that it’s all par...
You weren’t the parent you wanted to be in 2023. You weren’t the person you wanted to be in 2023. Almost no one was. Anyone who thinks or says they were is lying…and for most of us, this truth goes back further than a calendar year. None of us are perfect. We all screwed up. We all back-slid. We all picked up bad habits. And as a parent, that means our kids picked up those bad habits too. Because, as we’ve said before, behavior is the language of children . For those ready for reformation, as we...
We do so much for our kids. We drive them around. We provide for them . We entertain them. And of course, there are parents who do even more. Parents who packed up and moved across the world for a better life for their kids. Parents who gave their lives for their kids. How much do children understand these sacrifices? How much do they appreciate it? Not fully, that’s for sure. But that’s OK—because it’s not theirs to understand, it’s not theirs to appreciate. As we’ve said before , we owe our ki...
Every parent wishes they could have done some things differently . Maybe you wish you were around more when they were a toddler. Maybe you wish you were more patient when they were a teenager. Maybe you wish you said I love you more. In her amazing book Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be , Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that that’s what she hears all the time: ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Today we wanted to run our favorite entry from The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids , a helpful reminder on this day of celebration. When you were younger, for Christmas, all you wanted was presents. Now that you’re older, now that you have kids, all you want is presence . All you want is for your kids to be present over the holidays. Our New Year New You Challenge is all-new content, guided by thousands of responses and reactions to our previous challenges, ...
“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 his wife Samantha on the emotional neglect that comes with using kids for social media, t he culture of Christmas being stressful, not letting work or expectations become the main thing along with self awareness and communication. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: ...
Theodore Roosevelt lived an incredible life. He was an author. A naturalist. A rancher. A police chief. A cowboy. A hunter. A governor. A soldier. A president. An explorer. A philanthropist. And that’s probably not even close to an exhaustive list. His life was full of activity. It was full of adventure. It was marked by triumph and adversity to overcome. It’s worth telling your kids the story of Theodore Roosevelt to inspire them for the same reason that Theodore Roosevelt’s parents made sure...
There is a beautiful passage in The Velveteen Rabbit where the young rabbit asks one of the seasoned old toys in the playroom whether ‘becoming real’—the process of being changed by the love of a child—is something that has to do with how a toy is made. Is it about having certain parts, he asked? Does it require a certain makeup? "Real isn't how you are made," says the toy horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY lo...
Beauty to the Stoics was far deeper than appearances. “If your choices are beautiful,” Epictetus said, “so too will you be.” It’s simple and it’s true. You are what your choices make you, nothing more and nothing less. Isn’t this what we try to teach our kids? That, yes of course, we love them unconditionally and unequivocally, and have since the moment they were born, but they have this incredible power to choose what kind of person they’re going to be. The reason we read to them, the reason we...
Each of us is responsible for what we do as parents, but we’re also responsible for the dynamic that exists in our homes and in our relationships. Just because you’re the nice one, just because you do the repairing, just because you’re not as hard on your kids—that doesn’t mean that you’re not complicit in the stress or strain that’s being inflicted. It’s our job to create a safe and loving and supportive home. We can’t make excuses— Oh, he’s just under stress at work. Oh, that’s what she learne...
There’s no question Hemingway was a great writer. He was the voice of a generation—The Lost Generation. He redefined prose style in the English language. His books have sold millions of copies. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He wrote beautifully on love and family ( A Farewell to Arms ). He wrote beautifully on struggle and perseverance ( The Old Man and the Sea ). He was also a pretty awful husband and father. As one of his sons said, to Hemingway “fami...
On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to American stand-up comedian, actress, writer, director, producer, and podcaster Whitney Cummings on self-awareness, the ability to update the script, and the impressions we leave on our children. IG, X, and Tiktok: @WhitneyCummings To follow her on OnlyFans @Whitney ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
It can be hard to express your feelings as a father sometimes. Not so much because men are expected to bottle up their emotions, but because the emotions that come with being a dad can be so overwhelming and complex. It’s a rush of a million feelings: love, joy, fear, absurdity, exhaustion, responsibility, motivation, and primal attachment. No one prepared you for any of this…and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever dealt with before. How do you express it? How do you let your family know what they ...
A parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child , goes the expression. And even if that wasn’t true, even if it didn’t directly impact our own happiness, would any of us want our children to be unhappy? Of course not. We love them so much . The last thing we want is for them to feel pain. We want their lives to be wonderful. We want them to have fun . We want them to have a great life. We want them to be happy! There’s nothing wrong with this…except that oftentimes trying to make someone hap...
He was a young man fresh out of the Naval Academy and a stint in the submarine service. He was being interviewed by Admiral Hyman Rickover for a coveted spot in the nuclear program. Then he got the question that changed his life. “How did you stand in your class at the academy?” Rickover asked. “Sir, I stood 59th in a class of 820,” future president Jimmy Carter answered. “But did you do your best?” Rickover asked. And when Carter could not honestly answer that he has always done his best, Ricko...
We wanted it so badly and we never got it. We still haven’t got it. Dad was withholding, dad was hard to please—we wanted to make him proud, but we just couldn’t. That’s partly why we’re working so hard today. There’s some part of us that thinks if we can just accomplish enough, make enough money, win enough awards, surpass him then maybe, finally, we’ll get that begrudging pat on the back. We’ll get him to acknowledge us. He’ll let us know he respects us, loves us, and appreciates us. But someh...
There are things you would have never done before. You’d never have sung a crazy song in public. You’d never have painted your nails. You would have vomited before you sucked snot out of someone’s nose ( as Hasan Minhaj did ). You’d have rather starved than put on a McUniform and work extra hours at some job you hate. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
