The Daily Dad

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Watch What Happens Feb 28, 2024

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In her book Good Inside, Dr. Becky Kennedy shares something that a mom wrote to her. “I feel guilty for all those years I punished my daughter and gave time-outs,” the woman wrote. “I always thought, ‘It’s too late, I messed up my kids forever.’” But of course, as we’ve been talking about, it’s never too late—never too late to change, never too late to repair. That mom decided she wasn’t just going to feel guilty, she was going to talk to her kids about it. “I told my 8-year-old that I’ve learned more about what kids need and that I wish I hadn’t given her so many time-outs in the moments she needed me most. I saw her body soften. I really did. We hugged. It felt really important.”

Well, we can’t make our parents do that. We can’t change what happened then or in the early days of our own parenting journey. But we’ve learned some stuff since then, we’ve gotten better. And so we can repair. Nothing is messed up forever—not if we choose to be vulnerable enough, loving enough, brave enough to try to address it. We can do that. We must do that. Watch what happens when we do.
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You Are Different Now Feb 27, 2024

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There’s even an expression (one we’ve rebutted before) about how a stroller in the hall is the enemy of great art. Parenting comes with so many obligations, so many stresses—it is so all-consuming, it can’t help but be a distraction. But the writer Stephen Marche (who has an amazing little book on writing), once explained that “Being a writer and being a parent, I have found, are in conflict but not for the reasons most believe—the loss of time, the sleeplessness, the responsibility for another life, the fixedness in place, the need to make money to support them. Having children, like losing your virginity, changes the nature of meaning.”

You have seen something, finally gotten something that people tried to tell you but you just couldn’t understand. Happiness is not in achievement, it’s not in stuff, it’s in people—specifically, it’s with these people. It’s in the stillness. The presence is the present, the gift that never gets old. And once you get this, you can still succeed and achieve, to be sure, but you can never go back to how you were before.

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It’s Almost Too Painful to See Feb 26, 2024

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Only when it’s over will we realize it. Only when it’s all been stripped away will we be able to see.

How not present we were. How much we took it for granted. How often we prioritized the wrong thing. How needlessly strict or harsh we were.

For Joan Didion, whose beautiful (but haunting) books A Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, we have been learning from and talking about, this came when she lost her husband and her adult daughter in short order. The books she wrote were about grief sure, but not just grief at what had disappeared but also grief at the unavoidable realizations that came from that loss.
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Ryan Holiday And Nathan Barry On Parenting Advice And Applying Stoicism In Our Routine (Part 2) Feb 24, 2024

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On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks to creator, author, designer, and the founder of ConvertKit Nathan Barry on having kids earlier in their career, their interest in farms and outdoors, the process of Emotional Vaccination and applying stoicism in our parenting routine.

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We’re In This Together Feb 23, 2024

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When we say “our own” we don’t think Americans or whatever country we live in, we think race. Or we think our blood relatives. That’s awful. This system we live in demands that we think of ourselves as more than just parents to our own kids. We have to think generationally. We can’t just think about getting ours, or protecting ours. We have to think like a village, like a group.

The Stoics remind us that we are “made for each other.” Marcus Aurelius spoke dozens of times about the “common good.” He didn’t just care about his kids. He cared about everybody’s kids. Because that’s what justice—what doing the right thing—demands of us.

It’s better to think of “our kids” as everybody. We’re all in this together, every single parent. We’re all better if we’re doing better, together.
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It’s Only Been Given For An Hour Feb 22, 2024

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Seneca knew from experience. In one of the most dreadful periods of his life, he lost his livelihood, his home and then his young child. He was exiled on false charges. He buried an infant.

Fortune…she can be cruel.

As Seneca wrote to Marcia, the daughter of a prominent Roman historian, in his beautiful and moving “Consolations” essays:

“Snatch the pleasures your children bring, let your children in turn find delight in you, and drain joy to the dregs without delay; no promise has been given you for this night—nay, I have offered too long a respite!—no promise has been given even for this hour.”

Two thousand years later, that hard-won reminder holds true. Nothing is promised. The future is not certain. It’s a scary world—one we’re hostages to, as we’ve said. But we can’t dwell in sadness or fear.

All we can do is hold our children tight. We must snatch the pleasures they bring us and bring them pleasures too. Drain joy to the dregs together. Enjoy the hour…because not one second more is guaranteed.
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It’s Like This For Everyone Feb 21, 2024

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We talked about Lincoln recently, who used to bring his “brats” to the office, in the words of William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner. As much as he hated the noise, Herndon actually seemed to admire Lincoln’s ability to deal with this. “The boys were absolutely unrestrained in their amusement,” he noted. “If they pulled down all the books from the shelves, bent the points of all the pens, overturned inkstands, scattered law papers over the floor or threw the pencils into the spittoon, it never disturbed the serenity of their father’s good nature.”

The lesson here is twofold. First off, it’s a reminder that you’re not alone in raising absolute hellions. That’s just what kids are—and they never really stop being them (they find new ways of stirring stuff up when they’re older!). Two, really the only part of this that reflects on you is how you respond to it. If it turns you into a monster, if it makes you mean or nasty or makes you throw a fit in response to their fit? Well that’s the real problem.
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You Won’t Be Able To Do This Feb 20, 2024

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Nobody likes it when their kids are sad. It breaks our hearts when they feel lonely, ashamed, or frustrated. We’d like to just make this all go away, to protect them from all this, so they can feel happy all the time.

But that’s not possible (nor is it, as we’ve talked about, actually a recipe for happiness).

In Good Inside, the great Dr. Becky writes, “I don’t know one adult who has ever said, ‘Wow, my parents really got all those uncomfortable feelings out of me! The disappointment and frustration and envy…they convinced them all out of me! They successfully distracted me so much that now, as an adult, I never feel these things! I am happy all the time!’”

You can’t—just as your parents couldn’t—tell them to stuff their feelings down. You can’t gaslight them into thinking the negative feelings aren’t there. You can’t make life so wonderful and fun that they’re never sad or angry or jealous or frustrated.

We can’t do it. We shouldn’t try to do it.

Instead, we have to try to raise and cultivate kids who know how to deal with those feelings. We can teach them how to deal with frustration. We can inform them that, sadly, frustration is an inevitable part of life—that things don’t always work out, that stuff breaks, that obstacles arise. We can empower them to understand their feelings, to be aware of them, to process them, to find healthy outlets for them.
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You Gotta Cut Them Some Slack Feb 19, 2024

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It’s hard to be a kid, as we’ve said many times. It’s hard to make transitions between worlds. It’s hard to come home after a long day of behaving and not misbehave. They want personal space. They want some freedom. What they need is some empathy and understanding. You want and need these things and you’re an adult who has a lot more practice, has a lot more resources and a lot more maturity.
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Ryan Holiday And Austin Kleon On Maintaining Healthy Habits & Growing As Parents (Daily Dad Book Tour Pt 2) Feb 17, 2024

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Ryan speaks with his longtime friend fellow father Austin Kleon during a stop along his book tour for The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids. They discuss the life habits that they maintain in order to help fuel their creative success, why the most effective form of parenting is indirect, what parenting skills they are working on right now, how adopting a daily journaling habit vastly improved their lives, and more.

Austin Kleon is a writer, author, artist, speaker, and blogger whose work focuses on creativity in the modern world. Although he is most known for his five New York Times bestselling books Steal Like An Artist:10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, Show Your Work!, Keep Going, Steal Like An Artist Journal, and Newspaper Blackout, Austin has spoken for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and The Economist. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and sons. You can follow his work at austinkleon.com, Instagram @austinkleon, and Twitter @austinkleon.