The Daily Dad

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.  Sh...

The career opportunities are hard to turn down. It’s hard in the moment, as we’ve talked about , to be able to think too far into the future. It’s hard to make much in the way of long term investments as a parent because you’re so overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the present. But we have to remember what we’re after, we have to keep in perspective that this is a marathon we’ve signed up for....

You didn’t like rules when you were a kid. Your parents had too many. Your school was a prison of pointless, arbitrary ones—how you could dress, when you could go to the bathroom, how you had to hold the pencil. So it makes sense that you’re averse to them now. It’s good that you question how many of them matter and don’t want to make the same mistakes as adults did in your own childhood. ✉️ Sign...

There are lots of ways to read, ways that have improved the experience and opened up the world of literature to people who otherwise would have missed out. Ebooks are awesome. Audiobooks are spectacular.  They let you read anywhere. They let you read faster. They let you read while you’re multitasking. All from the convenience of a device in your pocket smaller than the smallest book.  But that’s...

You know your kids are good. You’ve seen their sweetness, their cuteness since the beginning . You’ve seen them try. You’ve seen them feel shame when they’ve messed up. You also know how hard it is to be a person , let alone a kid, in this world. Life is frustrating. Life is tough. It’s full of temptations. It’s easy to make mistakes . It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Dr. Becky Kennedy - Good Inside...

“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.” How flexible you were then. How much energy you had. What you could eat without consequence. The innocence. The earnestness. The sweetness. You had it once and now, it’s gone, disappeared beneath the years and the experiences and everything else. When Taylor...

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      See Privacy Policy at https://...

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...

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 real...

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...

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 , t...

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’...

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.  Sh...

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 w...

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, tryi...

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 s...

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 tha...

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 . ...

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...

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 kno...

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,...

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—becaus...

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...

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 Chall...

“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 s...