The Daily Dad

If the Stoics have taught us anything it is that we should focus only on the things we can control . We can control what kind of parents we are. We cannot control the outcome of our actions, of course, but we can control how we talk to our kids , how we raise them , how we discipline and reward them , what we expect from them , and what they can expect from us . ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email:...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan sits down with former actress and stoic Karen Duffy to discuss her latest book stoic inspired parenting book Wise Up   and the importance of valuing people and relationships. ✉️ 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 Califor...

There are few scenes in literature that capture love and loss and the terrifying but also inspiring moment of becoming a father quite like the end of A Farewell to Arms . And nothing quite captures love like this quote from it: “When you love, you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.” ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , In...

It seems like it would be easy but as we have found out in the course of our own lives, it’s one of the hardest things in the world: Figuring out who you are, figuring out what your purpose is. ✉️ 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....

You’re at the store and you see a parent talking rudely to their kids. Or letting them run around like it’s their house. You read some news story about some terrible parenting strategy that drives you nuts. Or maybe it’s closer to home and you don’t like how much time your spouse is spending on their phone . You know what you should do about this? You should focus on being a better parent yourself...

It won’t be the recitals. Or the graduations. Or the expensive trips to theme parks. Or the birthdays or the Christmas mornings. When you think back on your life, the moments that fill you with nostalgia and love will be rather ordinary. We are just there. We don’t need it to be anything other than what it is…which is ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email:...

Some people’s houses look like they don’t even have kids. You see it on the Instagram accounts of the picture-perfect influencers. Or you go to a dinner party at a house that seems way nicer than yours. Where is the evidence of the kids? The mess. The piles of toys. The smudges on the windows and the walls. You know these people have kids, but somehow it looks like regular people live there instea...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan sits down with writing partner Nils to talk about how parents can get things wrong when it comes to maintaining a relationship with their kids and how they can end up driving them away when all they want is their presence. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube   See Privacy Polic...

It’s important that you teach your kids about gratitude . Because it’s so easy to take life, to take the gifts we have been given, for granted. Especially when we’re stressed, when you’re a kid with homework or acne or a room to clean. This is a wonderful time to be alive. Even if it wasn’t—it’s amazing that any of us are alive at all. The odds are astronomically small that we are. ✉️ Sign up for...

Regardless of what some people say, it never hurts to give your kids a positive word, or to tell them that you love them and are proud of them. In fact, that’s our job.  Our job is to encourage and support and believe–not minimize or cut down to size. It’s to help them be what they are. They need that, from you most of all. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twit...

Every parent knows that kids make a great excuse. When people ask us to do something we’d rather not do, if we need a way to get out of a commitment we mistakenly agreed to, we have the perfect out: Sorry, something came up with the kids. Sorry, I can’t, I have to grab the kids. If we’d actually wanted to, we’d have found a way. But they don’t know that! ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDa...

This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We start thinking about what we call “resolutions”—the promises we make to ourselves about what we’re going to do in the next 12 months. Why is it that we wait to demand the best for and of ourselves? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Faceboo...

It can sometimes feel like everything is falling apart. No one is behaving. No one is listening. Everyone is yelling. Causing problems. Making messes. In exasperation you find yourself shouting What is going on? Why is everyone giving me such a hard time today? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube See Privacy Policy at https...

Here on Christmas, and throughout this holiday season, take some time to think about what it will take to have that. Think about the choices you’re making with your kids now so that they’ll choose to fly from their homes to yours when they’re older and have families of their own. Think about the gifts you have to give them today—your love, your support, your presence—to receive the gift of a crowd...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast Ryan shares a compilation of his best thoughts on how to form the best habits from this past year. Ranging from journaling, rules and expectations, and how to cultivate good physical and mental health, Ryan provides these excerpts to help prep you for what parenting in 2023 will bring you.  Sign Up For New Year New You Challenge Here ! ✉️ Sign up fo...

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. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/priv...

Nobody wants to be like their parents…or like the adults they remember growing up. The ones who were clueless…or uncool. The ones who seemed to forget what it was like to be a kid. The ones who rhapsodized about the good old days and the way things used to be. But here’s the cold hard truth: You’re not different. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Insta...

You weren’t the parent you wanted to be in 2022. You weren’t the person you wanted to be in 2022. Almost no one was. And anyone who thinks or says they were is lying. None of us were 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, as we’ve said before, behavior is the language of children . ✉️...

Nobody’s listening. Everyone is grouchy. Grades are slipping. Siblings are fighting. What is happening , one spouse says to another. Why are the kids such a mess today? The answer is there in plain sight: The kids are a mess because *things are a mess .* ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art1...

We encourage our children . We want to set them up to succeed. But we can’t merge their glory into our own . We can’t let them think they have to impress us, make us proud, or worry that they have let us down or failed us. ✉️ 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 Pri...

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan speaks with Susan Cain about parental relationships, not just with their children but their own parents and how past grievances can influence your role as a guardian. Susan Cain is a long time friend of Ryan, she also is the author of the bestsellers “ Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverted Kids ,” and “ Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A W...

Way too many parents are competitive . They see the car their neighbor is driving and they want to get a better one. They hear that a friend’s kid got into a fancy school and they think, “My kid is smarter. I’ve got to get them in there too.” We want to make more money than other parents, we want our kids tobeat other kids in sports, we want our kids to be cuter than other kids, we want our houses...

Epictetus said that the root of beauty was beautiful choices. “If your choices are beautiful,” he 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. ✉️ 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...

We’re rightfully disappointed when we hear about a kid getting caught cheating. Whether it’s on a test or a violation of some NCAA policy, it’s good that we take these things seriously. The problem, of course, is the lack of self-awareness– on our parts. We must ask ourselves where did they learn this from? ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter , Instagram ,...

We all know how hard our home life is, we know how it affects us–weighing on us, distracting us, making us act out. Well, we can safely assume that the same is true for everyone else. So we should then act with the corresponding empathy and understanding. Everyone is going through something . They don’t need more crap from you. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad:...