The Daily Dad

It’s a noisy world out there… and most of us add to the din. We chatter on social media. We chatter on the phone. We chatter over email. Even as parents, we tend to do a lot of talking. There are all the things we tell our kids. The things we remind them about. The lessons we try to teach them. The books we read to them . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitte...

Maybe someday, you’ll get there. It’ll probably be too late –your teenager will be grown up, the phase will be over, things will have calmed down. You know these things you seem to have strong opinions about…the tone of your kid’s voice. Whether the music they listen to is any good. How they want to style their hair. What they want to major in. Who they marry. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: D...

It happens so often that you hardly even notice it anymore. Your kids said they weren’t hungry and now of course they are. You told them to go to the bathroom before you left (they ignored you), and now they want you to pull the car over so they can pee. You knew they’d like this movie, you knew they’d have fun, you knew that other kid was trouble. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com...

Here’s a test of your own childhood: Imagine you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. You’re in the kitchen making a snack. You and a friend are hanging out upstairs. And then you hear the garage door going up. Or you hear keys in the front door. The car pulling into the driveway. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      Se...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on starting with the idea that your kids are good inside,  what truly is our role in helping our children instead of whats wrong, and more parenting tips from Dr. Becky Kennedy and her book Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twit...

Family is wonderful. None of us would be here, the writer Aaron Thier once put it, if people hadn’t taken care of us when we were small. Somebody birthed us, raised us, drove us to school, kept us safe. ✉️ 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 at...

We had this idea of what we wanted , needed our lives to be. How much money we wanted to make and through what career path. We wanted a new house. We wanted to go on trips. We wanted to live somewhere exciting and interesting. We wanted to do cool stuff, we demanded a lot out of life. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube   S...

Yeah, some people won’t get it. Yeah, some people think it’s weak. But you? You know it isn’t. Which is why you make no secret about your other life–about your kids, about what being a good parent demands of you, how it competes for your time (and interest) at work. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Privacy Polic...

“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.” There was that moment after they were born that you found yourself looking forward to when they could crawl. It will be so fun, you thought…right up until they started crawling away and getting themselves into dangerous situations. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Da...

We all want better for our kids. We want them to have a better life than we had. We want them to have better parents than we had. That’s why we’re trying so hard. That’s why we wrestle with our demons–going to therapy, reading books, putting in the work. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Privacy Policy at https:/...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks to Steven Rinella about the sense of wonder, respect & adventure for nature, spending time with family, and his new book  catch a crayfish, count the stars: fun projects, skills, and adventures for outdoor kids . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com   📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Privacy...

There is so much we want to teach our kids —so much that fathers are expected to teach their kids. How to ride a bike. How to swim. How to throw a punch. How to tie a tie. How to read . How to get up the guts to talk to someone. All of this is important, of course. All of this must be done. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTu...

The last book you read was Goodnight Moon . The last series you binged was Harry Potter . You know more about the latest scandal at your daughter’s high school than the 2024 primary candidates. You’ve spent so much time in the sun at soccer games and baseball practice that you might be fried inside. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Faceboo...

The two boys who look just like you. The daughter who lights up when you pick her up from school. The teenager who wears your old band t-shirts. The mischievous prankster who makes you roll your head back in laughter. The nerd who plays video games with you. The foodie who loves to cook with you. The kid going off to college . The one sitting behind the store counter of their first job. ✉️ Sign up...

“She’s not good at hearing people,” the musician Mikel Jollett writes of his mother in his haunting memoir Hollywood Park . “If we tell her we’re hungry, she’ll say, ‘No you’re not. You ate earlier.’ If one of us says ‘I’m sad,’ she tells us that it’s not true, that we’re happy now because we’re with her.” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram ,...

When they’re grouchy, when they’re glass-eyed, when they’re stuck, when they’re making choices that don’t quite make sense …there could be many reasons why your kids are acting this way. They could be tired, as we’ve said before . They’re almost certainly hungry– as we said , that’s at the root of most problems. They could be depressed, they could be going through something and just not understand...

“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 comedian Christina Pazsitzky on balancing work and life, and raising kids while being a good parent. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Faceboo...

You knew it that day in the hospital. You felt it the first time they threw their arms around you. You are reminded of it every time they do something decent and kind and good. You were given something very special. You have been entrusted with something very special. A bundle of genes and circumstances that will never exist ever again in history, that’s never ever existed before–something, someon...

When your teenager sits you down to come clean to you about something…When you’re on vacation and wondering whether you should try to squeeze one more thing in…When your adult kid decides to get divorced…When you’re frustrated and resentful about something with your spouse and decide to have a talk, there is something you should keep in mind. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Fol...

“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.” It’s fitting that one of the most important things you can do as a parent requires you to think about something that’s very nearly impossible for a parent to consider. It comes to us from Marcus Aurelius by way of Epictetus. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email...

If you want to spend more time with your kids, as we said recently, the important thing is that you don’t drive them away . Yet that’s what so many of us do, isn’t it? Because we worry, because we care, because we can’t quite strike the right balance, our efforts end up backfiring. Think of John O’Connor’s mom whose smothering tendencies drove her son to move from California to Arizona just to get...

Imagine you’ve come to the end. You’re leaving this world, leaving your kids behind. Or worse, more unthinkably, your kids are leaving you. They’re off to college. They’re moving across the country. Time or distance or conflict separates you. They’ve been in an accident. You’ve both lived to ripe old ages, but they go first. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twi...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on stepping outside of our own upbringing and challenging the conversation more as parents when it comes to the freedom of our children.  ✉️ 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 Privac...

This change we’ve made, this decision to become dads—it has uprooted everything. It’s like we were hit, suddenly, with a crossfire hurricane. The house is a mess. The schedule is grueling. There is never enough sleep , never enough time in the day. Even the cool, quiet dark is pierced by the shriek of a man who has stepped on a pile of Legos… and the shriek is coming from your mouth. Yet to be goo...

You weren’t wrong. You did have some experience on the matter. You only wanted what was best for them. You wanted them to stay in school. You didn’t want them messing around with something that could cause them trouble. You wanted them to be safe. You wanted to make sure they stayed the good and innocent and promising kid you used to carry around. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com...