However much they seem to be prioritized by other parents, by certain cultures, perhaps by your own parents, or your instincts, in the end, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what color they dye their hair …it doesn’t matter how clean their room is …it doesn’t if they’re gay or straight or anything on any spectrum …it doesn’t matter where they go to college …it doesn’t matter what field they enter …it doesn’t matter how dark or strange or profane the music they like is …it doesn’t matter wheth...
May 23, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast We parents are collectors. We have the photos from the day they were born. We have the first drawing they did. Their first pair of shoes, the tickets to that first flight. We have their high school diploma and their baseball t-shirts. We have their trophies and ribbons. Our garage, we’ve said, is a graveyard of strollers and high chairs and bikes and boxes of outgrown clothes and toys. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 22, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to CBS Morning in depth on applying stoicism, Garbage Time versus Quality Time & unforgettable family moments during a rainy weekend in NYC. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 20, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast None of us will be perfect parents . Our children will not agree with and understand with every choice we make–now or later. We are going to make mistakes. We are going to do things we regret. We are going to find out later just how the decisions we made affected them. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 19, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Only later,” Joan Didion wrote of her daughter, “did I see that I had been raising her as a doll.” Grieving, heart broken over the sudden and tragic loss of her family (detailed in the moving books A Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights ), she was almost certainly being too hard on herself, yet… Aren’t we all a little guilty of this? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 18, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast They are so like you. So like their mother. They have the same affect. They have the same bad habits. The same hopes, the same fears you did when you were their age. This helps you be patient with them, helps you connect with them, helps you get them what they need. You understand . Or so you think. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 17, 2023•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Look, when you were young, you could get away with it. You could spend more than you had–knowing you’d figure things out later. You could be selfish because you were the only person that really counted in your life. You weren’t expected to have it together, you were expecting to make mistakes and learn by trial and error. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 16, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast There is a famous line we have posted many times here at Daily Dad, one that’s always popular on Instagram whenever it goes up . The most important thing you can do for your kids, it reads, is love their mother. While the quote could be made to be more inclusive (for both genders and for modern, blended families) the overall wisdom is spot on: Kids thrive when their parents not only get along, but love each other. A good marriage is a critical part of a happy home. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad e...
May 15, 2023•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to his wife Samantha about what their learning as parents and when to enforce the better safe than sorry rule. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 13, 2023•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast For thousands of years, humans have been expressing wisdom to each other through fables. Whether it’s Aesop or the Bible or Leonardo da Vinci or Hans Christian Anderson , smart writers have been packaging moral lessons in the form of quaint little stories or parables. And, for just as long, parents have been passing these fables onto their children. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 12, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast There seems to be this concern, particularly on the right and from older generations, that kids are just way too soft these days. Everyone is sensitive. Everyone is easily triggered. Everyone seems to have some sort of mental illness or trauma. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 11, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast No vacation, no special experience, not even a family outing, just happens on its own. There is planning. There is time off work. There is the expense. There is the intention–to spend * quality* time together. And this is wonderful and it should be celebrated, soaked in when it happens. Just be sure not to give yourself too much credit because you booked a trip to the beach or got them excited for ice cream or the movies. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twit...
May 10, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nobody likes confrontation. Nobody likes having to enforce our boundaries. Nobody likes having to have an awkward conversation with their parents. Or the boss. Or the mechanic who is working on your car. But you know what we should like even less? Being burned out when we get home. Not having patience or energy left for our kids . Not having a shred of slack left to deal with the inevitable stresses that will occur in the course of picking them up from school, getting them dinner, getting them t...
May 09, 2023•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast We talked recently about the fleetingness of happiness . The way that happiness changes and evolves, the way that it tends to ensue rather than exist as something to pursue. A happy family is not one where everyone is happy all the time, Ursula Le Quin said. No, it’s closer to something we cycle through. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 08, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode of The Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks in depth about empire, philosophy, and natural feelings when it comes to our kids, as well as the connection we make with them through the opportunities and obstacles of life. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 07, 2023•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast These kids have changed your life. There are so many things you used to do that you no longer can. Traveling with no notice. Staying out all night. Sleeping on an airplane…sleeping in at all. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 05, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Joan Didion was bored. She was four or five. She was bothering her mother. She was asking for something to do. Her mother could have sent her away. Told her to stop . Told her to figure it out for herself. Instead, she went over to a drawer and pulled out a notebook. Here, she said, if you’re bored “then write something. Then you can read it.” The little girl was taken aback. “I had just learned to read,” she later explained, “so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write s...
May 04, 2023•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast We parents are like field goal kickers. Just like if a certain shirt or a pair of socks brings a kicker luck, Were always looking for something, Anything that will give us an edge. Just like a free throw shooter going through a preposterous routine, were religious about ours to. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
May 03, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sure, you become a parent when you have a kid. It’s a biological thing. It’s a legal status. It’s codified on a piece of paper. But we all know that being a good parent is something much more than that. There is no one moment, one benchmark, one thing that makes you a parent–just as there is no single moment that one becomes a writer or an entrepreneur or a wise elder. Even ‘turning pro’ as the great Steven Pressfield has written , is not something that happens with the signing of a contract or ...
May 02, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Think of all the things you’ve pretended to be interested in on a date. Think of all the hours you’ve spent at the office, what you’ve committed to and sacrificed to get ahead. Think of the bosses you’ve put up with at that job, the obnoxious colleagues. Think of the hours you’ve spent pouring over your finances, investing and saving and growing. Think of the time you set aside to go to the gym, think about the willpower you summon to slide into the cold plunge . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad ema...
May 01, 2023•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ryan talks to Scott Hershovitz about the Adventures in Philosophy with Kids, the common misconceptions about philosophy, how to apply philosophy to actual life, and more. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Apr 29, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do You Really Care? “A key point to bear in mind…You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve. -Marcus Aurelius It seems like it’s really important to you. That the door not be slammed. That the chores be done a certain way. That everything be put away immediately. That feet go on the ground, not the furniture. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Apr 28, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ryan Holiday’s latest book, The Daily Dad comes out May 2. Preorder your signed and numbered first edition before they sell out! There are going to be moments where we’re not sure we can keep going. We hit a plateau in our career. We hit a wall on mile 19 of our first marathon. Our marriage is struggling. Our attempt to lose weight has stalled out. Going back to school has turned out to be a lot more than we expected. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter ...
Apr 27, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ryan Holiday’s latest book, The Daily Dad comes out May 2. Preorder your signed and numbered first edition before they sell out! [COUNTDOWN CLOCK] None of us come from families that were perfect. None of us got everything we needed. Our parents were not perfect. Indeed, they may have been quite flawed. Perhaps they were not loving enough, understanding enough, accepting enough. Maybe they just weren't there enough . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitt...
Apr 26, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Parenting doesn’t have to change a person. As we said recently , plenty of people remain the same selfish, immature, irresponsible people they were before they had kids. Which is why it’s worth making the distinction between having kids and being a parent. There are lots more of the former in this world than the latter. People who just have kids are still living the lives they had before. Parents live a different life. They become different people with different priorities, different capacities,...
Apr 25, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Too many of us have the wrong idea about what happiness is. We confuse it with pleasure or fun. We confuse it with some sort of permanent state or an accomplishment to pursue. But happiness is more subtle and supple than that. It is something that ensues , as the great Viktor Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Apr 24, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to his wife Samantha about what their learning as parents, and the importance of making time for your children. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Apr 22, 2023•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast You Will Want A Crowded Table “What a great spectacle it is when a husband or wife with many children are seen with these children crowded around them!” -Musonius Rufus It’s helpful to sit back and really think about what parental success looks like. First, of course, it’s having healthy kids who survive to adulthood—that’s obvious. But second, when you flash way forward into the future, what is it? It’s that beautiful phrase captured in the title of the Highwomen’s hit “Crowded Table.” At Thank...
Apr 21, 2023•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nothing takes up space in a parent’s head (or heart) quite like a kid who is struggling. “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child,” the expression goes, and it’s true. If one of your kids is struggling–with reading, with adjusting to a new school or city, with becoming a teenager, with the divorce, with some health issue–it’s hard to focus or think about anything else. Even if you’re crushing it at work, even if one of your other kids just made honor roll or the varsity team. ✉️ Sign up fo...
Apr 20, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’re upset because you just blew it in that meeting. You’re kicking yourself because you meant to get up early and ended up sleeping through your alarm and missing a flight. You’re stressed about the business, you wish your marriage was better, you hate the way your house looks from the street. You can’t watch the news without being disgusted or outraged or worried. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...
Apr 19, 2023•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
