The Daily Dad

"Bruce Springsteen has three children: Evan, Jessica, and Sam. One of them is an Olympic-level equestrian (which can not have been a cheap or easy interest to encourage, nor always a fun one to watch). His son, Sam, recently became a New Jersey firefighter (a scary thought for any parent). Clearly, Bruce and his wife Patti have figured out how to help their children become who they are, and to rea...

"Arthur MacArthur was a vain and conceited man. He was a war hero at age 18 at the Battle of Missionary Ridge. From there he went on to become a colonel, then a major, then lieutenant colonel, and then held several other prestigious military positions. He was notoriously self-absorbed and ambitious. As one former aide would say, Arthur was the 'most flamboyantly egotistical man I had ever seen.'"...

"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." Yet as Ryan describes in t...

"Right now, you and your family are stuck at home. Or you trying to dig yourself out of the wreckage of a situation that wasn’t your fault, that is stressful, confusing, and overwhelming. There is a lot that is uncertain right now, a lot that we just don’t know. But one thing is a given: Your kids are watching you in this moment .  They might not be in school. They might think that this is time of...

" Last week, we talked about some words that become magical when you become a dad. Although “I love you” is always powerful, suddenly, when you have kids, the phrase “as a family” becomes one of the most meaningful expressions in your life. It sets your priorities. It defines your existence.  But there is another short phrase—a question, actually—that also has the power to melt your heart." Find o...

"Sometimes it can feel like being a dad is just an endless series of errands. It’s the call from the bedroom that they need a glass of water. It’s the call from college for you to come to take them shopping for something they need for their apartment. It’s the running around town getting soccer cleats, or picking up concert tickets, or bringing them the homework they forgot. " Ryan discusses how t...

"We talked before about Kipling’s poem “If,” which was written as advice for Kipling’s son, John. It’s a beautiful poem about toughness and virtue, honor and duty. But there is one line that doesn’t get as much attention, maybe because it’s a bit confusing..." Find out more 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....

"Most schools and most parents teach reading all wrong. They bully kids into doing it. They pressure them. They tell them, 'Reading is what smart and successful people do.' Then they’re surprised when kids who struggled with reading don’t think they’re smart, and they wonder why kids almost wear illiteracy as a badge of honor. They wonder why people say things like, 'I haven’t read a book since I...

"Before you had kids, 'I love you' was that powerful three word phrase. You said it to your future wife or your future husband and you loved hearing it. But now there is another phrase even more beautiful. It’s these three words: as a family." Ryan describes the beauty of being part of a family in today's podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple...

"...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.  But it’s worth remembering that ancient saying: Two ears… one mouth." **** 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 peopl...

"It doesn’t matter how old you are or how old your kids are. You have more experience than them. In some cases, that’s a couple decades. In other cases, it’s many decades. But whatever the age difference is between you and your kids, you’ve lived longer and been through more." What to do with all that hard-won experience? Ryan explains in today's Daily Dad podcast. *** If you enjoyed this week’s p...

"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.  So naturally we feel an affinity and obligation to our family, as we hope our own children will. Being around them is comfortable. It’s familiar. It’s primal. But it’s also important that we real...

"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.  But there is a lesson underneath all these lessons that matters more." Find out the lesson in this week's e...

"These are challenging, uncertain times, no question. What’s at the root of it? How did we get here? And what can fathers do about it? The answer comes to us, as it often does, from an ancient prescription: Character is fate." Listen to learn more about why character is so important in raising your children into amazing adults—and how to do it. *** If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for...

"Right now, most of us are stuck with what you might call dead time. We’re trapped indoors. We’re working from home… or not at all. Kids are out of school, and who knows when it will be back in. We’re in the snow day of all snow days, except we can’t go outside and take advantage of the time off because the snow might make us all sick." What ways can you convert this experience, from "dead time" t...

"Does your dog’s gender matter to you? Like have you ever once thought about whether they were capable of this task or that task because of their sex? Has your understanding of their gender changed how you play with them? Do you think about whether to get them this toy or that toy based on its color? Or its name?" Ryan discusses how you should treat your child depending on their gender, i.e. exact...

Your kids will do all sorts of ridiculous things. They will trip and fall, and yes, you will sometimes laugh. You will tease them about this and that. They’ll make hilarious mistakes. They’ll look back on their own childish ridiculousness with bemusement. Your family will have all sorts of inside jokes. This is fine. This is wonderful.  It’s what binds people together—the ability to bust each othe...

It wasn’t until many years into his coaching career that Pete Carroll really settled into his philosophy—the system by which he built his teams, and his athletes around. It seems simple but it’s actually a profound one. As he describes it: Always compete. Compete. Isn’t that what sports are about? Where’s the innovation there? According to Carroll, competition isn’t about beating someone or someth...

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...

By now, you’ve almost certainly lost count of how many questions you’ve been asked by your kids. From the moment they can talk, that’s what fatherhood is—answering questions. Some you can’t wait for them to ask, some you hope they’ll never ask (or ask their mom), some so absurdly, brilliantly child-like you never could have guessed they were coming in a million years.  Samuel Edison, the father of...

F. Scott Fitzgerald knew the long term damage of being spoiled rotten. Not only was he a prime and painful example himself— as we’ve written about —but as he observed and studied the rich men and women of the Jazz Age, he saw how indulgent people quickly became the “careless” monsters that he portrayed in The Great Gatsby .  In Fitzgerald’s stories, the rich are always expecting life to be easy, e...

The world is a scary place right now. Your retirement accounts have taken enormous hits. Events are getting cancelled. Government officials are failing, publicly and embarrassingly, to protect us. Nobody knows quite what the next few weeks or months will look like.  But one thing that is certain? Your kids need you to be calm. They need this as much as they need anything right now. Because this wa...

On their deathbeds, fathers think about a lot of things. They think about the world they’re leaving to their sons and daughters. They think about how they parented. They think about the mistakes they made. They think about what they did right. They are warmed by the thoughts of their children, and, if they are lucky, they find themselves surrounded by them, the hospital bed serving as the final cr...

Each of us, no matter how old or successful, has things we wish we knew how to do. We wish we could speak another language, or change the oil in our own car, or play the guitar. It’s not that we aren’t up for learning these things now—more so even than when we were young—but it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, as they say, even when the dog wants to learn.  It can be a frustrating experience...

Sometimes it’s good to acknowledge our biases. And one of the biggest biases in our lives is our kids. Not just a bias in the sense that we prefer them, but a bias like one of those ones that cognitive behavioral scientists point out that prove we’re totally and utterly irrational. We love our kids and love makes us crazy. It is irrational. And that’s okay. In Herman Hesse’s beautiful novel Siddha...