The Daily Dad

The ubiquity of the word “energy” these days is probably a sign of how pervasive pseudo-science and charlatans have become. We are inundated with energy healers and energy crystals. You can hire consultants to analyze your company’s energy. You can take a sound bath to remove negative energy, or have an aura reader interpret the energy you put out into the world. Yet for all that nonsense, energy...

It’s easy to think that money is the solution to most of the problems of parenting. After all, we remember our own childhood and the things that money could have provided us. If only we could have had Invisalign instead of those awkward braces...If only we could have lived in a better neighborhood...If only Mom and Dad didn’t have to be so stressed...If only we could have afforded coaches or tutor...

It’s so easy to make threats as a dad. If you don’t stop that, I’m going to turn the TV off. If you don’t start being nicer to your brother, we’re going to go home. You have to pick up your clothes first, or else there is no snack. You do it when they’re little, and if you remember your own childhood, it keeps happening all the way through—about curfew, about grades, about keeping their room clean...

Falling in love with your spouse is great. Making a lot of money is awesome. Crushing it at work is too. It’s nice to have a big house or to go out and have a wonderful night with friends. But nothing is quite like coming home and having your kid rush to give you a hug. When they fall asleep on you on the couch. When they climb on your shoulders. When you hear them coming around the corner, excite...

You can sit your kids down to watch what you think is the greatest movie of all time, and they’ll get bored and fall asleep. You can get floor seats to an NBA game and they’ll roll their eyes. You can introduce them to your fanciest, most important friends and they’ll want to go back to whatever they were doing before you called them over.  It’s almost a rule that kids don’t care about what you re...

Perhaps you’re familiar with the scene in the Bible where Moses—aided by God—parts the Red Sea. It was a miracle of epic proportions that allowed the Israelites to race through and escape the Egyptians who were chasing them. Lesser known about the miracle is what happens next. When Moses released the sea, the Egyptians were trapped. The water crashed around them and thousands perished. Naturally,...

There’s a story that occurs constantly in the biographies of many creative and brilliant people. It goes something like this: As a kid they had a question—maybe it was about how car engines work, or what Antarctica is like. It doesn’t matter if the question is about history or science or animals, because their dads all had the same response. They said, “I don’t know, but let’s go figure it out!” S...

We take care of our own, we say. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water. These are noble sentiments that have encouraged beautiful sacrifice, forgiveness, and accomplishments. One problem with it though is that it too easily justifies provincialism and nepotism.  A recent social critic observed that not long ago when people talked about getting together to do something “for our kids,” wheth...

Emily Oster is a writer and a thinker after our own heart. Frustrated with all the bad parenting advice—most of which seems to be based on old wives’ tales and ridiculously bad data—she set out to apply her economist training to the subject of parenting. What kind of sleep training is best? Formula or breastfeeding? Screen time, good or bad? The result was her book Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide t...

Did you know DJ Khaled has a son? And his name is Asahd? Of course you did, because if you’ve heard of DJ Khaled even once in the last couple years, it’s probably come up. His social media feed is like 100% photos of his kid (Asahd had his own Instagram account with nearly 2 million followers). His dad named his most recent album Father of Asahd. He put a picture of his kid on the cover. In interv...

Seneca was a father, though we don’t know much, if anything, about his son. We know he was a wonderful uncle, and that he struggled valiantly as a tutor to reign in the impulses of Nero.  What kind of father was he? How did he teach his young charges? We don’t have many specifics, but in his essay On Anger , Seneca does give us fathers some advice on how to raise our kids—specifically when it come...

You love your kids more than anything. You think they’re God’s gift (which they are, to you!). You want them to know how you feel about them, and you feel bad when they feel bad about themselves. These are all perfectly healthy and laudable feelings. At the same time, we have to make sure we’re not puffing up their ego with our endless praise and our very natural bias towards their virtues and bli...

One of the unusual side effects of our modern lives is how siloed work is for most people. “Work” is a place you drive to in the morning and come home from in the evening. It’s what you’re doing while your kids are at school, or in other cases, while they’re asleep at night. Great dads (and healthy people) aspire to what we call “work life balance” which only further perpetuates this silo. Work is...

It makes sense that you and mom would make most of the decisions for your kids. You guys know more. Your kids basically know nothing. About life. About what the weather is going to be tomorrow. How the world works. You, on the other hand, have been 7 as well as 17-years-old before.  Not only does that give you a lot more experience, but it’s also pretty obvious that most decisions don’t matter. Yo...

Do you remember when you were in fourth grade and you looked across the playground and saw the sixth graders? They looked so much older. So much bigger. Their lives seemed so much different than yours. Then time passed and eventually you took the place of those sixth graders on the playground. But did you actually feel that much older and bigger and different? Of course not. You didn’t feel anythi...

There are going to be moments in fatherhood—when you’re dancing to Baby Shark to entertain your kid, or you’re way into the third book in the Twilight series for your daughter or you’re making the lamest dad joke of all time—where you might be tempted to step back and think: Oh God, what would the twenty year old version of me think of this? I told myself, I’d never be this guy, and here I am sett...

Punishments aren’t supposed to be fun. They’re suppose to deter bad behavior. That’s why kids get grounded or sent to their room. That’s why we take away their toys or iPad privileges. It’s supposed to send a message: Listen or you lose out.  Randall Stutman is probably one of the most influential coaches you’ve never heard of. Basically every Wall Street bank and hedge fund of any significance ha...

Because women can seem so much better at this parenting stuff, because historical gender roles have often decided for them that most household duties are their responsibility, there is a secret strategy that father’s have been relying on for generations: Pretend to be bad at something and your wife (or your mother or a well-meaning neighbor) will take care of it for you.  Feign like you can’t figu...

In her famous and controversial book Bringing Up Bébé , the author Pamela Druckerman talks about Le Pause— The Pause—as the secret to French parenting, and their sleep-trained infants. Basically, instead of rushing in as soon as their kids start to cry, French parents pause. They wait a few minutes, understanding that newborns often cry between sleep cycles, and that if you disrupt them (even to c...

We were all deprived or hurt in our childhoods. Even the best parents left something to be desired. Maybe we were ignored. Or maybe we were pressured too much. Maybe Mom’s insecurity was a burden to us. Or Dad’s sense of humor cut too deeply. Maybe our family was poor. Maybe our family was too rich, too materialistic.  We wished then that things would be different. We wished that they could just u...

The philosopher Stilpo of Megara had a daughter who had a bad reputation. We don’t know what for, it could have be deserved or it could have been one of those ridiculously minor violations of etiquette that the ancient world was so obsessed about. They weren’t exactly shy about double standards back then, especially when it came to women. But that’s beside the point. Someone once tried to shame St...

Even the most patient dad gets bored. Or has somewhere to be. Or really doesn’t see what makes this flower--the 400th one drawn in a row--so special. So we want to prod our kids along.  Dinner’s almost ready. We’re going to be late. The game’s about to start. It’s really hot out here. The entrepreneur Derek Sivers has talked about how hard he works to override these instincts. Because the truth is...

One of the most interesting passages in Marcus Aurelius is this one: Epithets for yourself: Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Try not to exchange for others. These were essentially the words he wanted to live by—his principles expressed in the fewest syllables possible. At DailyStoic.com we’ve spent the last couple years talking about how important it is to figure out what these...

In her memoir, Composed , Rosanne Cash talks about how she wished she was as a parent of small children and how different that was from the reality. She recalls that her biggest rule ended up being no juice after 5pm. Why? Something about sugar before bed. In any case, although she knows she did the best she could, Rosanne looks back and wishes she had imposed more structure, more rules on her you...

There are brief moments where you get a glimpse inside your kid’s soul. When they meet their baby brother or sister for the first time and start to cry because of how much love they feel. When they say something truthful and real in a way that adults would never dare. When they offer to share what little they have with somebody else, without any prompting from you.  It’s in these moments that you...