The Daily Dad

Latest Episodes:

It’s A Window. See It As A Window Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

The tantrum. The whining about going to school. The punch that’s thrown. The slipping grades. The sneaking out. The lie. The shouting. The moping around the house.

These are not things you like to see your kids do. Maybe these are things you’ve talked to them about before, maybe a million times. But maybe that’s the problem. You’re seeing the wrong thing. You’re talking about the wrong thing.

In her wonderful book Good Inside (yes, we love it), Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that “on the surface we see a behavior, but underneath we see a person.” We’ve said before that your kids are always talking to you—just not necessarily with words. “Throwing the cereal box wasn’t the main event,” Dr. Becky explains. “It was a window into the main event. Behavior, in all its forms, is a window: into the feelings, thoughts, urges, sensations, perceptions, and unmet needs of a person. Behavior is never “the story” **but rather it’s a clue to the bigger story begging to be addressed.”

What a wonderful gift it would be to your family, to everyone you met, if you could start seeing behavior not as a thing to be upset about but a window into how someone is doing, what is going on with them. We’ve said it many times—they’re telling you that they’re hungry, that they’re tired, that they’re scared, that they’re lonely, that they’re overwhelmed or stressed. But they don’t know how to say that…so they lash out, so they hide in their room, so they call you something mean.
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Ryan Holiday And Nathan Barry On Simple Parenting Techniques Feb 03, 2024

Show notes

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, and the process of Emotional Vaccination.

IG, and, X,

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Your Character Determines Everything Feb 02, 2024

Show notes

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. Who a person is determines what will happen and what they can do. It should surprise no one that a culture that has put character at the absolute bottom of the list of requirements for its leaders—below whether they tell us what we want to hear, below how clever their tweets are, below how they look on television, below whether they’ll pass short-term measures that benefit us financially, below whether they belong to this party or that one—would find itself in crisis after crisis.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

This is Power Feb 01, 2024

Show notes

Rich is how much you get to see your kids, we said recently. We were redefining wealth away from material items and salary—although these things are nice as far as they go—and towards a thing that pretty much everyone wishes they had more of: time with the people you love most.

Is it really a rich life if you are missing out on something so priceless?

Perhaps it’s worth also taking a minute to do some similar considerations about power. There are the obvious trappings of power: The corner office. The gatekeepers. The influence you have over world events or an audience. The presidency. The title.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

You Ain’t Got Time Jan 31, 2024

Show notes

Maybe you did before, but you can’t now. Before you could afford to get sucked into drama, to gossip, to get into long arguments with your buddies, to be petty, to hold grudges, to follow the latest breaking news or celebrity.

But now? Now, you need to remind yourself: I ain’t got time for that.

Because you don’t. You have kids now. You have people you’re responsible for. You have a big enough struggle on your hands.

Your crazy coworker is their own problem. That actor who cheated on their spouse is in their own mess. Your dumb neighbor with the flag for the political cult they’ve joined…Your sibling’s poor financial choices…That person who is embarrassingly wrong on the internet…You ain’t got time for that.

Not one second. You ain’t got one second for that anymore.
TEMPUS FUGIT
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

It’s Never Too Late To Do This Jan 30, 2024

Show notes

We’ve said before that it’s never too late. It’s never too late, as a parent, to follow your dreams—to show your kids that they can too. It’s never too late to start showing up. It’s never too late to deal with your demons. It’s never too late to change. Sooner is better of course, but it’s never too late.

It’s also never too late to do that thing we’ve been talking about a lot recently—repair. “Repair can happen ten minutes after a blowup, ten days later, or ten years later,” Dr. Becky Kennedy writes in Good Enough. “Never ever doubt the power of repair—every time you go back to your child, you allow him to rewire, to rewrite the ending of the story so it concludes in connection and understanding, rather than aloneness and fear.”
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

You Have To Come Down Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

It’s a wonderful state—being in flow. Getting caught up in your work. Getting caught up in the moment. And before you had kids, you lived for this…in fact, you may well have lived in it.

Life was simpler then. You would get lost for days at a time in a project. You could spend years, it would seem in retrospect, in the building stages of a company, in the pursuit of a dream, in finding yourself, in exploring the world.
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Ryan and Sam Holiday on Protecting Your Headspace Jan 27, 2024

Show notes

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on how Sam prepares for writing Ryan, Integrating his routine in a well adjusted life, how this year is going to be different, all while protecting their headspace.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Make Them Do It On Their Own Jan 26, 2024

Show notes

There is a great story about a young Spartan woman, Gorgo, who would one day become queen. Despite her royal status, like all Spartans she was raised to be self-sufficient, and without any frills or needless luxury. So imagine Gorgo’s surprise when she witnessed a distinguished visitor to Sparta have his shoes put on by a servant. “Look, father,” she said, “the stranger has no hands!”

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Help Them Understand This Distinction Jan 25, 2024

Show notes

We have emotions. We experience stressful situations. We have intrusive thoughts.

So really what we have to teach our kids, Dr. Becky writes in her incredible book Good Inside (must read!), is how to differentiate urge from action. “Having the urge to bite is okay,” she explains, “biting a person is not. Having the urge to hit is okay; hitting a person is not okay.” We know this to be true in our adult lives—that there’s a big difference between being angry and then doing something rash or irresponsible or hurtful out of anger. We know that we can type the email and not send it. We know that we can want to quit on the spot but think better of it.

✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected