The Daily Dad

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You Don’t Even Realize How Much You Say It Mar 22, 2024

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So why on earth do we so often signal the opposite? Literally and figuratively, we send the message that they’re bothering us, that they’re a distraction, a burden, annoying. As Evelyn McDonnell writes in her fascinating book The World According to Joan Didion, Didion’s daughter Quintana Roo once wrote down a list of her mother’s sayings. They were: “Brush your teeth,” “Brush your hair,” and “Shush, I'm working.”

Only later do we realize what we’re saying to them—as Didion did tragically in her haunting book Blue Nights—how this hurt them, how it contradicted what we felt deep down inside. We were just busy in that moment! We just needed to finish something real quick! We didn’t mean anything by it!

Of course, we have to make a living. Sometimes we do have to finish things. Some things are important. We just have to make sure that we value what really is important, that we remember, as we say in the March 22nd entry in The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids, our kids aren’t a distraction from our work, they are our work.
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Learning is Frustrating Mar 21, 2024

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Being a kid is tough. It’s tough because they’re learning—often by painful trial and error—an endless number of lessons about life. What they’re allowed to do and not. What happens when you touch something hot. How other people act. What feels good and what doesn’t. Plus they’re also in school learning academic knowledge too—math and science and reading and history.

Well, here’s a piece of advice from the great Dr. Becky (from her amazing book Good Inside) that we can translate to our kids, but also to ourselves:

Things are tough, things are frustrating because we’re learning, we as parents, them as kids. It’s fun to learn but it’s also exhausting. It’s supposed to be this way, just as lifting weights is supposed to make you sore. It’s the price you pay to get the thing you want—which is to learn, to be smart, to be capable, to get the hang of this life thing.

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You’re Not Trying To Raise Well-Behaved Kids Mar 20, 2024

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We have so many things we need to do as parents. There’s the logistics of it. The survival aspect of it (food and shelter). There’s the education we have to give them. There’s the experiences we want them to have. There’s the values and character we know need to be instilled.

We’re not trying to raise well-behaved kids. **As we’ve said before, we’re not trying to raise kids at all. The whole point of parenting is to raise our kids into adults, it’s trying to raise these little people into good human beings.

Of course, behavior matters but it’s not the end all be all. Tantrums aren’t great. Kids are sometimes going to be crazy. But as parents we need to remember that our primary job is teaching our kids how to manage and regulate their emotions and urges—it’s not to stamp them out because they embarrass us.
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A Much Better Way To Motivate Mar 19, 2024

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It’s important that we look for examples of people who have done great things as a result of their parent’s ability to believe in them, support them, and make them feel secure. We’ve talked about Jim Valvano many times here and tell the story in Daily Dad about how his dad packed his bags and told his son he was ready to watch him coach in the Final Four. We posted a great video of the comedian Andrew Schultz recently. Andrew told his father that his dream was to perform at Madison Square Gardens someday. Everyone else laughed or dismissed it. His father just looked at him and said, “I can see it.”
We think this idea—that you have to be your kids’ biggest supporter—is so important that in The Daily Dad book, the entire month of August is on the theme. The month of August in The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids is titled, “Always Be A Fan”—it is, as we’ve said, the greatest gift you can give your kids.
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Tackle This First Mar 18, 2024

Show notes

“Connection first,” is Dr. Becky’s advice in Good Inside. Connection as opposed to shame, to criticism, to questions, to doubt, to consequences. There will be time for all that (except shame) later. “Now, to be clear,” Dr. Becky writes, “connection does not mean approval…Connection is an opening that allows for movement. Connection is when we show our kids, ‘It’s okay to be you right now. Even when you’re struggling, it’s okay to be you. I am here with you, as you are.’”

Let’s start by slowing down. Let’s start by letting them know that this doesn’t change how we feel about them. Let’s start by letting them know that we’re here to help, that we’re on their team. Let’s start by letting them know that we love them (which, as we’ve said, you really cannot ever say too much). Once this is established, then we can get to work.

Connection is not at odds with accountability, with learning a lesson, with consequences or even criticism. In fact, it makes the chances of all these things landing even higher. Because they’ll be listening, they’ll be less on guard, they’ll see it not as part of the problem, but part of the solution.

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Ryan And Sam Holiday On Raising Well Adjusted Adults Not Well Behaved Children Mar 16, 2024

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On this episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan Holiday and his wife Samantha dive into the nuanced art of raising well-adjusted adults rather than merely well-behaved children. Drawing from their own experiences as parents, they emphasize the importance of fostering independence, resilience, and critical thinking skills in young minds.

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This Is The First Step Mar 15, 2024

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As Claire Tomalin writes in her book Jane Austen: A Life, we can trace the beginnings of Jane Austen’s greatness to her father’s library. “Their father’s bookshelves were of primary importance in fostering her talent,” she writes, “given that the first impulse to write stories comes from being entertained and excited by other people’s.” And her father had quite a library, **some 500 volumes.

It’s a crime, we’ve said, to raise a kid in a house without books. Our job is to surround our kids with great ideas, great writers, great art. We can’t expect it to turn all of them into groundbreaking creatives, but it will have that effect on some of them. In every case though, it will give them windows into other worlds, it will teach them empathy, it will entertain them and teach them lessons about life and human nature.

And more than just surrounding them with books, we have to demonstrate what being a reader looks like. Not on our phones, not on audiobooks, but good old fashioned reading.

We think this idea—that you have a responsibility to make reading a part of your children’s life—is so important that the month of September in The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids is all about it and titled “Raise A Reader.” It’s 30 days full of stories and lessons in learning, curiosity, and how to raise a reader.
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You Have To See What’s Really Going On Mar 14, 2024

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All that did happen. It shouldn’t have. It’s not ok that it did. But before you do anything, can you try this? Can you say to yourself, as Dr. Becky writes in Good Inside (a great book!), “Ok, one second. Let me take a breath. Let me see if I understand what’s happening here…”

In a sense, can you be a Stoic about it? Can you put your first impressions to the test, as Epictetus tells us, not be overwhelmed by the moment, as Marcus Aurelius said, and see what’s really happening? Because what’s really happening is that they are frustrated after being prodded and provoked by their siblings for days on end. What happened is that they’re overwhelmed by school, and they need help. What happened is that they’re desperate for connection. What happened is that they’re having bigger feelings than they’re equipped to deal with.
Talk to them, talk it through. Don’t be distracted by what’s on the surface, what is frustrating or inappropriate, but go to what’s really happening and help them there.
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This is The Cure Mar 13, 2024

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It doesn’t matter how driven you were. It doesn’t matter how much money is on the table. Having kids humbles you. We said recently that having kids changes you because it brings you up close and personal with something that actually means something and all your other worldly stuff naturally pales somewhat in comparison.
As the writer Stephen Marche describes (he has a great little book on writing and life), “the physical changes that occasionally transpire with women after birth—eczema disappearing, once intractable allergies going away—have a psychological equivalent. The flesh of little children is the cure for self-importance. Everything matters less. Having children does not necessarily make writing harder, but it makes it a lot harder to pretend that writing matters.”

It makes it harder for that business trip to matter. Not when your son is struggling in school. It makes it harder for that big exit for your startup to matter…now that pursuing it has made your spouse contemplate an exit from your marriage (and now you’re staring down the heartbreak of shared custody). You thought it was all so important. You thought you were so important.
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Easy Like Sunday Morning Mar 12, 2024

Show notes

Why is your house so stressful? Why is everything such a fight? It doesn’t need to be. Sure, school is important. Rules and respect and basic cleanliness matter. But these things aren’t that important. Indeed, most conflicts that pop up while getting ready for school or sitting down to dinner or finishing household tasks aren’t that important.

Here’s a magical phrase worth thinking about as a parent. It’s from that great Lionel Richie song (and Faith No More cover): Easy like Sunday morning…

What if more of your days were like that? When you had less you were trying to force through? When you were slightly more relaxed? If you understood that it was your kids’ day too, that there was nothing that really had to happen?
P.S. If you’re looking to avoid falling back into bad habits when stress inevitably announces itself, consider checking out our Daily Stoic Spring Forward challenge. We all think of March as the month we tend to get started on our spring cleaning, but how many of us spend the time to get our whole houses in order? Not just our physical spaces, but our minds, our routines, our assumptions? The challenge is designed to push you to examine those parts of your life, your choices, your relationships, and move you closer to living your best life. Become the person you aspire to be and enroll at dailystoic.com/spring today!
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