The Daily Dad

It does work. We have to concede that. For generations, some parents have tried withholding praise, withholding pride, withholding approval so that their kids don’t feel entitled to it. The idea is that this will make them hungry, make them really work for it. No participation trophies here! You’ve got to earn it in my house!✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Harry Truman was not a good businessman. The clothing shop he opened with a friend was a disaster—and he was paying off the debts through his senate career and into his presidency. Most of his investments were flops. He had to sell off chunks of his mother’s farm when they couldn’t pay the mortgage. After he left office, the only safety net he had was his army pension.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

We know what we want our kids to say about us when they grow up. We want them to say that we were great parents, that we did our best. We want them to say that they knew they were loved. We want them to say that they love spending time with us–especially now that they’re older and they have a choice.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

We want happy kids, obviously. But as we talked about recently, you can’t make your kids happy. Certainly, you can’t always keep them happy.So what do you do?There’s a great exchange between Epictetus (we recommend his Discourses) and one of his students. The student is asking Epictetus to show him what to do so he can be wise and successful. This is the wrong request, Epictetus says. It would be better to ask how to be adaptable to circumstances.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Being a parent doesn’t mean you give up on your dreams. We’ve talked about this many times. What kind of message would it send to your kids to see their parents quit on themselves? What kind of house is it to grow up in where Mom or Dad aren’t growing, changing, aren’t taking risks, aren’t fulfilled?And yet, we also understand that it’s not about us anymore. Before, sure, we could take every risk and pursue every opportunity. But things are different now. There are people counting on us, people affected by our decisions.✉️ 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 breaking constraints,  finding the solution to the problem, and the impacts on their household reflecting through parenting.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

It’s a world with too many problems. It’s a world with too much suffering. It’s a world with too much selfishness. We can’t fix all of this as people nor as parents. But we can try to help a little.We’ve talked before about Ron Lieber’s clever description for the goal of most parents. We’re trying, he says, to raise kids who are “the opposite of spoiled.” (he has a book of the same name). That is to say, kids who are not just self-sufficient, but have energy and resources left over to help others.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Things could be so much better. This could be a world that takes care of parents and families. It could be a world with a better safety net. It could be a world where we don’t shrug after a school shooting, or as democracy is dismantled by fanatics and nut-jobs.We could use more support. Inflation could come down. Your spouse could get their act together. Things could be better, they should be better.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Kids have always been like this. They’ve always been crazy. Always had trouble sleeping at night. Always liked to play and explore. They’ve been overwhelmed by hormones. They’ve been driving their parents crazy a long time.​We talked a while back about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Children’s Games painting which depicts a loud and raucous scene of kids playing outside. It’s 463 years old and yet, with a few exceptions, it resembles almost exactly what the kids in your neighborhood were doing last weekend.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube   

It’s easy to forget it when you see them hitting a sibling. Or when you catch them in a lie. When you hear them say something mean. When the call comes in from school, or worse, the police station.It’s easy to forget that our kids are good. That they have good morals. A good heart. That they are still that same innocent and pure little thing we brought home from the hospital. It’s easy to forget because we’re so worried, so worried that our sweet innocent and pure thing will end up like most of the people we meet in life–which is to say not so innocent and pure.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube  

We used to need so much to be happy, as we talked about recently. We needed things to go well. We needed excitement and success. We needed people to like us. We needed people’s approval.But now? Now, not so much.Conan O’Brien, who like any performer has some part of him that craves attention and validation, has explained how his insecurity has lessened as he got older and had a family. “Oh as long as they’re alright,” he has said of his kids, then basically everything is right.✉️ 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 staying consistent to the system,  the results to bad decision making, and comparing ourselves against ourselves.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Sometimes it can feel like being a dad is just an endless series of errands. It’s the call from the bedroom that they need a glass of water. It’s the call from college for you to come to take them shopping for something they need for their apartment. It’s the running around town getting soccer cleats, or picking up concert tickets, or bringing them the homework they forgot. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube   

We talked recently about some of the folks who comment on the Daily Dad Instagram (do follow us!) or reply to these emails. Sure, some of the responses are nice, but so many of them are self-righteous and hectoring, judgmental and superior. There is something profoundly sad about these commenters too. Because, whether they know it or not, they are the punchline in that famous old cartoon, “Sorry, honey, I can’t come to bed right now, someone is wrong on the internet!” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Gandhi was a saintly man, but he was not a particularly great father. He was too demanding of his children, too controlling, too quick to push them away when they were not exactly what he wanted them to be (which was impossible).It is sad that the man who was so kind and patient and forgiving, such a father figure to so many, could not be those things for the people who loved him the most, who most deserved that from him. But this is why we study the lives of the greats and not-so-greats–they provide us lessons, both inspiring and cautionary.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube  

The author Rinker Buck (he has an amazing book called Life on the Mississippi where he travels the entire river in a homemade flat boat) remembers vividly what would happen when his father came home. We talked recently about what kind of feeling the sound of a parent at the door springs up for you. Well for him, it was partly fear–because he knew he was going to get punished, usually for unfair, contradictory reasons.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

The thing about parenting is that it’s always thrusting us into situations we have to deal with, we have to solve, we have to correct, we have to stop. Our kids aren’t listening. Our kids did something dangerous. Our kids failed a class. Our kids are drifting in a direction that worries us.Of course, there are some parents who are oblivious to all this, just generally hands-off. But the rest of us, who are just doing the best we can, struggle with these situations. We don’t want to yell, but that’s what we end up doing. We want to teach and instruct, but it somehow devolves into a power struggle. We fail to reach them, fail to teach them.✉️ 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 speaks with organizational psychologist and book author Adam Grant on seeing things in the context of where they actually sit, learning to be pleased but not satisfied, current sports culture, perfect parenting and his new book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

What gives you the right? What’s your purpose on this planet? Why do you work so hard, why do you fight for the causes you fight for, why do you put up with all the crap you have to put up with in this life?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube   

You think it’d be pretty non-controversial. Over on the Daily Dad Instagram (you should follow us!) we’ll post something about having fewer opinions and judgements when it comes to your kids. We’ll talk about loving them unconditionally–even when you don’t understand, even when you disagree. We’ll put up a video about letting your kids be who they are, not trying to make them into something you think they should be.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube