The 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 o...

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 tha...

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 incredibl...

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 s...

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 t...

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: Twitt...

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 anyth...

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...

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...

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...

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 ,...

“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 Podcast, Ryan reminds us to raise a resilient child by resisting the urge to intervene,  helping them manage their emotions, showing them that everything thing can be figured out, and lastly leading by example. ✉️ Sign...

We’ve talked about this before : Being a father is a second chance. It’s a fresh start. It’s an obligation to work on yourself so your kids pick up where you’ve left off, benefiting from the struggle and progress you have made. You can’t pass them the baton of your weaknesses and flaws. You cannot let them be worse than you. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twi...

No one is the parent they want to be. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most of us are better parents than we were. ​ We’ve talked a lot about the big choice we all have to make . Are we just somebody who has kids? Or are we a parent? And while this is a choice, it’s also more of an aspiration. You don’t magically, suddenly become the perfect parent. How could you? There’s so much you don...

Most times, we’re in need of all the help we can get. We read parenting books, or watch parenting videos, trying to find those keys to make our lives just a little bit easier. That’s why we created the Daily Dad email, after all. Seneca said that we ought to acquire one thing per day – whether that’s a quote, a story, a relationship that makes us better, it doesn’t matter. We try to deliver that o...

We’ve been talking about Dr. Becky’s wonderful book Good Inside recently (a must read!), and she has a great little section where she’s talking about a parent who ends up having to pick up and physically remove their child from a situation where they are hitting their younger sibling. There’s guilt and frustration and fear and so much that comes up in these situations. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad...

It’s dark stuff. It’s not pleasant. We wish it wasn’t true. But that doesn’t mean we can hide it from our children. Because it did happen. And it can easily happen again if we’re not careful. John G. Burnett knew this. That’s why on his birthday in 1890, he finally told his children what happened when he was in the army in 1838. He told them what he saw at what’s become known as the Trail of Tears...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on understanding the alternatives later and making the decision, while teaching our children the correct instincts while their away from home. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California P...

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: Tw...

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...

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 , Faceb...

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...

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 ris...

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      See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice a...

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 i...