The Daily Dad

It’s hard to be a kid , as we’ve said many times. It’s hard to make transitions between worlds . It’s hard to come home after a long day of behaving and not misbehave. They want personal space. They want some freedom. What they need is some empathy and understanding . You want and need these things and you’re an adult who has a lot more practice, has a lot more resources and a lot more maturity. ✉...

Ryan speaks with his longtime friend fellow father Austin Kleon during a stop along his book tour for The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids . They discuss the life habits that they maintain in order to help fuel their creative success, why the most effective form of parenting is indirect, what parenting skills they are working on right now, how adopting a daily...

When we think teacher, we think classroom. When we think leader, we think the corner office or the lectern or a general in front of their troops. But the truth is that a teacher can do their job anywhere and in many forms, just as a leader can. Plutarch would say of Socrates that he “did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher’s chair, or reserve a prearranged time for lecturing and wa...

Bruce Springsteen’s childhood was a strange one. His mother worked to support their family. His father was distant and harsh . He spent a lot of time with his grandparents, who spoiled him, in part because they were grieving the loss of their own daughter years earlier. “His Majesty, the Baby,” is how his childhood is described in the fascinating book Deliver Me From Nowhere (incredible book, by t...

Marcus even wrote a testament to his love for his wife and their life together in a letter to his tutor Fronto. “I call the gods to witness,” he wrote, “that I would I were now living in exile with [Faustina] rather than without her on the Palatine.” Sure, the palaces were nice and so was power. He had an important job. But none of it was better than spending time with his lovely partner . It’s a...

It’s not easy for lots of reasons. Gay Talese, who knew the Didion family ( who we’ve been talking about a lot recently ), speculates in Evelyn McDonnell’s biography of Joan Didion ( signed copies here ) what it must have been like to be Quintana Roo, their adopted daughter. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Priv...

These are the Cardinal Virtues , which Zeno laid down in the 3rd Century B.C. as: Courage Discipline Justice Wisdom We need these virtues and we need to teach these virtues to our children. Their life…and the future hinges on it. So memorize these four virtues. Act on them. Live them. Parent by them. And keep them close to your heart always. If you want to carry the Four Virtues around like a comp...

While on tour for his new book The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids , Ryan met up with his longtime friend and occasional running partner Casey Neistat for a live interview at Barnes & Noble in Union Square during which they shared the story of how they met, reflections and wisdom they have gleaned from their journeys through parenthood, the work and life h...

“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.” When our kids mess up we say: Aren’t you a little old for that? And we have all sorts of rules of thumb for what things are age appropriate or not—what age they should stop having accidents, what age they should stop throwing a tantrum just because they’re ti...

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, e...

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 wil...

“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 w...

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 h...

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      See Privacy Policy a...

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 requir...

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...

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 st...

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 ....

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,...

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      See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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 h...