The Daily Dad

"As dads, one of the hardest things to think about is our kids experiencing hardship. So maybe we teach them to turn away from the things that are hard, to take the easy way, to forgo difficulty whenever possible. Maybe we teach them to look at hardship as failure, as unfairness, as the end of the story. It just wasn’t meant to be, we might say, there’s nothing you can do about it. What if we taug...

"The writer Ambrose Bierce was a notorious cynic and curmudgeon. He was also fearless and hilarious and a father. At some point in his life—we’re not clear on the details—he went through a painful split with his wife and the mother of his three children. Beneath his hard exterior, he was a sensitive man, and although we don’t know what happened, we get the sense that it was an enormous betrayal. W...

"There are so many books you want your kids to read. The books that influenced you. The ones that changed your life. The ones you have so many fond memories of. The ones that speak truths you know they need to hear.  But it’s essential that you don’t rush this… or at least understand that timing is going to matter." Ryan discusses the patience you must exhibit as a parent in today's Daily Dad Podc...

"We talk to our kids about doing what’s right. We talk to them about thinking for themselves. We talk to them about being kind, we talk to them about so many important things.  But what do our actions say?" Ryan discusses the actions of one brave woman and the example she set on today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts...

"You remember the famous scene from Breaking Bad. Walter has messed up his life. He is struggling. He meets Gus Fring, who is all the things he is not: Secure. Confident. Powerful. Gus gives him a speech that puts a spine in Walter, that both inspires him and rationalizes everything he is being tempted to do." Hear Gus' speech and learn more about what he means in today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If...

"What is being a father but worry? We talked about that great image from Obama a while back. Being a parent, he said, is a little like taking your heart outside your body and putting it in a vulnerable person who makes bad decisions.  And that was said by a guy whose children are guarded 24/7 by the Secret Service!" Ryan talks about why worrying about your kids is natural, and how we should keep i...

"You work hard. You have so many responsibilities. So many people depend on you.  Which is precisely why you must work to become unreachable." Ryan tells us why it's so important to keep work and home life separate in today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to...

"We love our kids, that’s why we hate to see them struggle.  But maybe that’s precisely the wrong way to think about it? Because we love our kids, we have to let them struggle. We need them to struggle." Ryan discusses why it's so important to let our kids experience challenges on today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcas...

"Too often, as parents, we focus on the results. We care about their grades. We care about whether they’re turning in their homework. We care whether they know their times tables or whether they’re making it to work on time for their summer jobs.  Obviously these things are important, but by doing this we can end up skipping over some of the more important parts of the process—and end up missing o...

"Trevor Ariza chose family over basketball. He chose his son—a month with him—over $1.8 million dollars in salary. He made the right choice, although it couldn’t have been an easy one. This year’s NBA season has already been cut short. Who knows what the future of sports will hold? But for Trevor, in the middle of a custody battle over his 12-year-old son, decided that this one-month, court-appoin...

“Your kids can’t tell you they’re having a hard time. They don’t know that they are. They don’t understand what’s happening in the world. They don’t appreciate what the disruption to their schedule, to their school, to seeing their friends has really meant. Even if they’re older, even if they could tell you, would they? Do they really understand why they feel the way they do? Or is it just manifes...

In the 2008 American presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously used the Reverend Wright scandal as what he later called a “teachable moment”—a chance to discuss race with the American people. Ryan describes what Obama did with that teachable moment, and why we should always be on the lookout for teachable moments of our own, on today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast,...

"What gives you the right? What’s your purpose on this planet? Why do you work so hard, why do you fight for the causes you fight for, why do you put up with all the crap you have to put up with in this life?" Ryan describes the ultimate obligation of fatherhood in today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps wit...

"You’ve been working for this moment your whole life. To make it into the league. To sit behind the big desk. To command the squadron. To have the power.  It was for these things that you sacrificed a lot, but now you think your family really has to sacrifice. Don’t they understand how important this is?" Ryan re-orients us toward the truly important thing, the one that's always more important tha...

"There are so many sad examples: The father who can’t bear to be contradicted. The parents who refuse to admit when they are wrong. The mom who spends all her energy trying to impress other people. The father who is jealous of his own son, or threatened by the attention his daughter gets.  All these parental failings—and make no mistake, they are failings—share a root cause: Ego." Ryan describes t...

"What do you think drew Steph Curry to basketball? It must have been many things, but chief among them has to have been the time he spent in arenas watching his dad play. The lights before the team ran through the tunnel. The cheers of the crowd. The pounding of the music. The sound of the buzzer. Seeing dad do his thing." Ryan discusses how you can prepare your child for life by showing them your...

"So much has happened and so much now remains uncertain. Do we go back to work? Do we let the kids go to the park? Do we stay inside? Do we start homeschooling? A pandemic raises questions. It explodes the status quo. Suddenly everything seems in flux. Suddenly our foundation has been shaken." Ryan describes how this pandemic, although unique, is not unlike situations that our predecessors have de...

"When Margaret Thatcher was in school as a young girl, she was assigned books like we all were. Some were boring. Some were exciting. Some were strange.  But without fail, her father—with barely a high school education himself—took interest. He wanted to discuss what she was reading. He wanted to read them with her." Learn about the impact that this simple gesture can have on today's Daily Dad Pod...

"When you hear these three words, there can be only one response. To drop everything and look. To engage. To be flattered and excited, to love every second and to stare with rapt attention at your child’s latest discovery, achievement, experiment, daredevil attempt." Find out what those magic words are, on today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leav...

"It doesn’t matter if you’re the president, a doctor, or an internationally touring musician—they all agree that the hardest job is being a parent. Because it’s not just a job. It’s the job that you have to do on top of your other jobs. It’s the one job you can’t quit or get promoted or retire from. It’s the one job where the responsibilities are never clearly defined and always seem to be changin...

"Should you let your kids have screen time when they’re younger? How young is too young to give them their first phone? What about sugar and processed foods? Should they get an allowance? Should you make them get a job? Do they have to clean up after themselves or can the parents help? Should they do their own laundry?" Find out the right answer—that there is no "right answer"—on today's Daily Dad...

"F. Scott Fitzgerald lived a glamorous life and then he cracked up. All his talent. All his money. All the beauty and the passion evaporated. His wife, Zelda, wasn’t blameless in this collapse—both of them had partied hard, had prioritized things far less important than their beloved daughter Scottie. He was a man with demons, and those demons eventually won a terrible victory.  "And yet, even wit...

"It would be nice if the world was nice. It would be nice if it was easy to be a kid. Unfortunately, it isn’t. It’s hard to be the smart kid. As Stefan Zweig said, 'no one suffers more than the gifted pupil' in an average world." Ryan discusses the importance of empathizing with your children in today's Daily Dad Podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review...

"School doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t. Have your grades from elementary school ever come up once in your life? Even a Harvard GPA is unnecessary on a resume. That 'permanent record' your teachers were keeping on you turned out to not be so permanent and nobody cares that you got suspended several times in 8th grade. The whole thing is an exercise in made up rewards and punishments, an artificial...

"Every father is different, yet when we hear the descriptions, or see the portrayals of fathers on film, it can feel like we’re the only one who is different. Every other dad, apparently, felt an instantaneous and profound connection to their kids from the moment they first held them." Not all dads feel the fatherly bond at the outset of their child's life—Ryan explains this feeling in today's Dai...