The Daily Dad

There are a lot of kids out there. There are fewer parents. Not just because most families have more than one child, but because unfortunately, tragically, not everyone who has a kid decides to be a parent . ✉️ 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 Notic...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with actor Matthew McConaughey about his new course: Roadtrip – the Highway to More ,  the importance of being close to the ones you love and how “You Are The Toy” when it comes to your children. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube     See Privacy Policy at https://art19...

Seeing your own parents now, as an adult, is stressful. There’s a great Ram Dass line that the comedian Pete Holmes has used in relation to his own parents: You think you’re enlightened—go spend a week with your family. ✉️ 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...

We say we’re trying to raise kids who are kind, who help others, who are generous, who are not selfish, who are not cruel, who treat everyone equally, who hold themselves to high ethical standards. We say that virtue, that doing what’s right is more important than anything else, than money or success or getting ahead. But what do we show?  What do we show? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: Daily...

Yes, it’s true you only get so much time with them. Yes, it’s true you flew halfway around the world for this trip, you took time off work. Yes, it’s true that it’s convenient, that it will only take a few minutes, and save you a lot of trouble. Yes, it’s true that it could be a special experience they remember forever. But you know what else it could be? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyD...

In some ways, the ancient world seems so remarkably similar to ours. Marcus Aurelius has a passage in Meditations pepping himself up to get out of bed early in the morning . His name was Marcus–maybe your name is Marcus today. People liked sports then, they fell in love, they liked eating olives. There’s a passage in Seneca’s Letters where he talks about getting impatient as he waits for his table...

Health matters. Wealth matters. These things matter not just to us, but to our families. You only have to look around to see people who don’t optimize for these things and the way that ripples through not just their own life, but the lives of their children–children who see dad not taking care of themselves, mom who never quite realized her potential. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.c...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on a second round of doing less and seeing the results, and how self-awareness impacts our families in the end.  ✉️ 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 https://art...

You’re wondering if you’re doing something wrong because your kid can’t ride a bike. You’re wondering why they’re not more athletic…or more academic. You feel like a failure because they dropped out of college or because your divorce has been hard on them. And all of these feelings are more pronounced when you look across the street or across the parking lot at school and see other families nailin...

The hot button political issue of the day is “parental choice.” In Florida and D.C., Chicago and California, parents of differential political persuasions are fighting with their school boards, their librarians, their universities over a host of culture war issues and their right to choose what their kids learn about (or don’t learn about). Some of the issues are serious. Some of them are made up....

There is an inherent tension, a conflict of visions even, at the heart of every family. They want to live happy, fulfilling, interesting lives, and as the parent… you want nothing bad to ever happen to them . Sure, you want them to be happy and have fun, but most of all, more than anything, you want them to be safe. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , In...

It was a timeless scene, one that might have happened in your house just this past afternoon. The kids are playing with bubbles. They are laughing and yelling. Blowing and darting around trying to pop them. Finding the most wonderful joy in the simple magic of soap and air. Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow...

Do you know the story of Cincinnatus? He was a Roman general who had retired to his farm until he was called to rescue his country from an invasion. Made dictator in these desperate times, he had unlimited power, which he used to save the empire… only to immediately relinquish the power and return to his farm. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagra...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan shares an article from a Father's Day read from The Free Press on the upstream choices we have to make and continuing to do less as parents with discipline and trade offs. ✉️ 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...

Being two minutes late to school. The fourth discussion about cleaning up before company comes over. The grouchy tone. The broken vase. The mischief with their friends. The I told you to turn off the iPad and come help me downstairs!!!! ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy...

It’s a good reminder, one that we can zip past too easily because we’re busy, because we have so much on our plate: You only get 18 years with your kids. It’s a reminder not just to soak in the time you have with them, but to make sure you’re really parenting in those 18 years. Because soon enough they’ll be gone, they’ll be living with someone else, listening to someone else. ✉️ Sign up for the D...

Almost every talented and successful person can remember their introduction to whatever it was that became their thing. In Mastery , Robert Greene explores countless examples of this beautiful process by which some of the world’s most notable experts discovered their “life’s task.” He talks about Martha Graham’s first time watching a dance performance, for example, and he tells the story of the co...

As a society, we have very attuned ears for what words are offensive. There are words that religious people find offensive. There are the words that collectively we have decided are hurtful…as well as the words various groups are trying to get people to understand are potentially hurtful. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube...

It would be wonderful if it ever eased up, but it doesn’t. You worried when they were in the womb, and here you are all these years later, still worrying . Are they doing ok? Are they getting enough nutrients? Is something going to happen to them? Are they happy? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube      See Privacy Policy a...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks about the straw that breaks the camel's back and relaxing the impulse to force things. ✉️ 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 https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Your job today as a father is to do one thing. It’s to read this poem, which dates back to 1895, and then to think about how to incorporate its lessons into how you raise your kids . Ignore the gendered language (it was written as advice to the poet’s son) because it doesn’t matter. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube     ...

We try to inspire our kids. We try to motivate them. We try to incentivize them. We want them to care about winning–that’s why we push them into sports. We want them to go to a good college–that’s why we reward them for their grades. We want them to succeed in this world–that’s why we tell them stories of the greats (that’s the idea behind The Girl Who Would Be Free and The Boy Who Would Be King ,...

It’s clear some parents take things too far . They push their kids too hard in sports. They push them too hard in school. They solve every problem for them, indulge every whim and desire, shelter them from discomfort and the slightest independence. They celebrate the most minor of accomplishments, they encourage the most unusual of behaviors. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Fol...

When a young Florence Nightingale began making moves toward volunteering in hospitals, her aristocratic parents were horrified. It had been difficult enough raising a precocious child. Now she wanted to debase herself with work below her station? They were embarrassed. What would their friends think? How would it look? Like a lot of parents with determined, independent children, they felt rejected...

We watch sports with our kids. That’s greatness, we say of some 4th quarter comeback win. They’re the G.O.A.T, we explain–the greatest to ever do it. We talk to our kids about the work that went into that success, the practice, the sacrifice. Maybe we even talk about the incredible rewards that follow such greatness. But it’s important that we also remind them where this skill sits in the overall...