The Daily Dad

When Kobe Byrant took off in his helicopter from downtown Los Angeles on January 26th, he was a 5 time NBA champion. He was a 2x Finals MVP. He was a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist. He had won an Emmy and was a New York Times bestselling author. He had earned hundreds of millions of dollars in his career and raised a venture capital fund of more than $100 million, with stakes in companies like Cholula Hot Sauce and Alibaba. 

Yet it goes without saying that he would have traded all of those incredible accomplishments, if he had been lucky enough to be offered the choice, for just one more day as a dad to his four girls. And you, whatever accomplishments you have piled up in your life, would do the exact same thing. 

Who wouldn’t? 

We know this. If asked, we would say it. Yet...yet...yet...look at our choices. You’d give up so much for one more bedtime with your kids, and here you are, on your phone while they’re in the bath. No amount of money could compensate you for one more morning with them, and here you are, grouchy because it’s early, put out because you’re sitting in traffic as you drive them to school. You’re away from home, chasing a business deal. You’re preoccupied with email. You’re thinking about whether the grass is greener on the other side of the marriage fence. You’re planning that trip with friends. 

You have, right now, in your grasp the thing that Kobe Bryant, that Stuart Scott, that John F. Kennedy would have traded the Sports Center desk for, traded the presidency for, traded all their trophies for. Do.not.waste.it. Do not take it for granted. Do not trade it away for nothing. 

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These kids have changed your life. There are so many things you used to do that you no longer can. Traveling with no notice. Staying out all night. Sleeping on an airplane...sleeping in at all. 

You used to have so much more energy for your job, for your friends. You used to have time to do lots of things. And now it’s a real crapshoot whether you will get a shower in today...let alone keep up with the ambitious upstarts coming behind you. 

So let’s not be sanguine about the sacrifices this decision has required you to make. But these days, society does a pretty good job discussing all the costs—financial, physical, social—of having kids. You see it in every article about the celebrity or artist who chooses not to have a family. You see it in the arguments of every activist or politician who pleads for sympathy for working parents. 

What seems to get mentioned much less often is what you’ve been given as a result of becoming a father, the wondrous happiness you feel despite all the disruption. “One doesn't tend to associate kids with peace,” the venture capitalist Paul Graham observed recently in his fantastic essay about being a parent, “but that's what you feel. You don't need to look any further than where you are right now.

All those ordinary moments: Playing in the yard. Getting pummeled when they jump in your bed in the morning. Watching TV on the couch. Being a family. It’s just so amazing. Even the garbage time together is great—and well worth what you’ve traded away to get it. 

“Most of the freedom I had before kids,” Paul Graham wrote, “I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.” It’s true for you too. It’s true for all of us. We’ve paid a high price for these kids, but we have gotten—we will keep getting—so much. 

Sometimes it’s helpful to tell ourselves that. 

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You’re upset because you just blew it in that meeting. You’re kicking yourself because you meant to get up early and ended up sleeping through your alarm and missing a flight. You’re stressed about the business, you wish your marriage was better, you hate the way your house looks from the street. You can’t watch the news without being disgusted or outraged or worried. 

What should you do? How can you deal with the creeping overwhelm that each of these problems has come to represent?

Go spend time with your kids. Seriously. 5 minutes. 15 minutes. 5 hours. Watch as those feelings melt away. Not because you’ve ignored them, but because they’ve been placed in perspective. Your kid doesn’t think you’re garbage because you messed up at work. Your kid doesn’t care about the economy. They’re not anxious. They’re not cynical. They’re not riding you about anything. 

They’re present. They’re happy. They’re grateful. They’re wonderful and they think you’re wonderful. Soak that in. Let them rub off on you. Have fun. Be reminded of what life was like before all these responsibilities fell onto your shoulders. And then, properly refreshed and reset, go back and tackle your problems the only way you can: one at a time, in the way that’s best for you and the people you love. 

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In one of F. Scott Fitzerald’s funniest short stories, “Head and Shoulders,” a certifiable genius falls in love with a showgirl. The plot and moral of the story aren’t relevant for today’s email—though the story is highly recommended—instead there is a little passage in it that introduces a concept that is worth thinking about:

“I was a ‘why child. I wanted to see the wheels go around. My father was a young economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system of answering every question I asked him to the best of his ability.” 

A “why child”—what a delightful phrase! Isn’t that what we’re trying to raise? We’ve talked about raising a child who knows how to “figure things out” but this is part and parcel of that. A why child isn’t content to take things at face value, or simple explanations. They not only want to see the wheels go round, they want to know why, they want to know how, they want to know where they came from in the first place.

Can this be annoying? Absolutely. It can even get them in trouble (isn’t that the whole message of the Curious George series?). But curious is better than complacent, annoying is better than ignorant. 

You must seed this habit. You must make sure you water it too—and do your best never to stamp it out, just because you’re tired, or just because the question is inappropriate. The more questions they ask the better. Not just to their parents, but for their whole life. 

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We’ve all done it. It’s happened to almost all of us. We see a thing. We want to try it. It’s hard. And…we give up. Whether it’s karate, business, piano, reading, learning another language...every new skill has a “pain period” and, most of the time, we never get over it.

Because we lack encouragement or any visible progress, we quit. In a way, this is a kind of costly cognitive error. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about something he calls “The Plateau of Latent Potential.”  This plateau can be likened to bamboo, which spends its first five years building extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks. Or to an ice cube, which will only begin to melt once the surrounding temperature hits thirty-two degrees (or the resulting water that only boils at two hundred and twelve degrees).

Just because it sometimes takes longer than we’d like to see the results of our efforts doesn’t mean that our efforts are going to waste. In fact, most of the important work—the build up—won’t seem like it’s amounting to anything, but of course it is. We struggle with realizing this as adults...so imagine being a kid. They’ve never experienced the elation of suddenly breaking through that plateau. They don’t even have enough experience to understand the bamboo analogy!

Which makes this a key area for a dad to exert important influence. You have to keep encouraging them. You have to help them see even the microscopic progress they’re making. You have to help manage their expectations. It might not seem like doing this piece of homework or trying hard in practice matters. It might not seem like any of it is making a difference, but you can show them how it is. You can show them why it matters. 

It’s not that they should never quit things (especially things you forced them to do against their will). It’s that if you want them to get across the threshold, they’ll need your help. They’ll need you to encourage them. They’ll need your help developing grit. They’ll need you to convince them that a payoff is coming. 

Because it is. Especially if they can learn this as a general life lesson. 

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It can be easy to question your parenting. To feel like you’re not doing good enough, that you’re not nearly enough. You see what other parents are doing, or hear what other fathers say they are doing, and it can seem like you’re the worst parent ever: The food you give them isn’t healthy enough, their education isn’t good enough, you’re not patient enough, you’re not dedicated enough. 

But it’s important, when you start to feel this way, that you step back. Don’t just compare yourself to the dads you see around you—that can be dubious and unreliable—compare yourself to your own father and his father before him. When Jerry Seinfeld was on Jimmy Fallon a few years ago, he quipped, “You know what my bedtime story was when I was a kid? Darkness!”

Compared to not too long ago, you’re the greatest dad ever—you’re spoiling your kids rotten and protecting them in a bulletproof, bubble wrapped hug. John D. Rockefeller could not give his kids half of what you do—even with his wealth, the collected wisdom and modern technology you have access to was way beyond his grasp. Just think of what fathers used to let their kids do, think of the basic things fathers used to not do. You would never tolerate that.

Because you care and are committed in a way that is generationally and historically completely unprecedented. You are present and home to a degree that fathers never have been before. Even as lopsided as household chores remain between genders, the small amounts of progress that have been made are providing a dramatically better example for your kids than ever before. The sensitivity that you feel towards their feelings, the openness you have about your feelings—even if you are a pretty closed off guy—is still better than any generation before. 

You are doing better than you think. It’s just hard to see that because you’re surrounded by so many other dads doing the same, who for the first time ever are expected to do the same. So give yourself some credit. 

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Have you ever heard your kids say something that just stops you cold? One of those remarks that instinctually makes you do a double take? It can be an unexpected curse word, or some preposterous old-timey expression, or one of those heartbreakingly earnest statements about love or happiness. 

Where did that come from, you think? Where did they hear that?

Of course, you know. They heard it from you. You’re the one who cursed. You’re the one who told them about how annoying your neighbor is. You’re the one who turned on the TV and let them sit there. 

The point of this is not to shame you, it’s to remind you. Your kids are always watching. A little fellow follows you...eyes, ears, and heart open and absorbing. Don’t be the parents in A Christmas Story, washing their son’s mouth out with soap, yelling at his friend’s mother, pretending that there is anyone else to blame but yourself. Don’t be the parent who underestimates their power to teach, who thinks that your kid is lost if they don’t have access to the most expensive and prestigious schools. 

No, they are always learning, always watching, always little vessels ready to be filled. What will they hear? What will you pour? That’s the question. 

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In his book, The Vanishing American Adult, Senator Ben Sasse pondered what might strike a person from the distant past as odd about our modern society. Aside from the technology, he said, they’d notice the extreme age segregation. Invariably today we spend time almost exclusively with people our own age. 

Our kids go to school with other kids. We work with other adults. Our own parents and grandparents are shunted off to retirement communities and old folks homes and cruise ships. The average age in the US Senate, where Sasse works, is around 61, and there are only 10 people in it under 50 years old. When was the last time you stayed under the same roof as someone twice your age? How many conversations do you have with people who grew up without the things you completely take for granted?

In Lori McKenna’s song, Humble and Kind, she talks about “visiting grandpa every chance that you get.” It actually requires more than that, more than just seeing your own family. You have to make sure your kids aren’t stuck in a bubble, living their lives away from anyone but other children. Instead, you have to expose them to wisdom. Expose them to people who remember the good and the bad things that humans did in the recent and not-so-recent past. Expose them to people who have learned painful lessons. Expose them to people who have accomplished incredible things. 

The famous Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes died two days short of his 94th birthday. But in those years, he managed to shake hands with John Quincy Adams (the 6th US President) and John F. Kennedy (the 35th US President), who were born almost exactly 150 years apart. Indeed, the 19th century remains just a handshake or two away. A few handshakes more and you’re back before the founding of America, a few handshakes more and you’re in uncharted territory. This is humbling. This is inspiring. This is eye opening. This is a human wormhole to timeless wisdom.

People born today might live for a very long time. But the people born a long time ago don’t have many years left. Meet them while there is still time. Let your kids learn from them while there is still time. 

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Have you ever watched someone sit and play with a little kid for hours? Like totally engrossed, never checking a phone, never rushing, never getting bored or frustrated, never pulling the adult card? Maybe your spouse can do this, maybe you’ve seen a grandparent do it, maybe you’ve pulled up and watched the teachers at a daycare do it (or maybe you’ve watched them calmly, quietly put 10 kids down for a nap at the same time).

When you see this sort of effortless presence and patience, it’s humbling. It’s an incredible feat of human endurance and focus; one that doesn’t seem to come naturally to all of us. And that’s the point: It doesn’t come naturally. Like all other feats of endurance and skill, it takes work. You build the muscle before you can use it to move mountains...or put a dozen toddlers to bed.

But here’s the real question: Are you actually putting in enough of that kind of effort? Or are you just throwing up your hands and saying, “That’s not me. I can’t do it.” You would not be alone. But you would also not be more wrong. 

Try. Start small and try. 

Leave your phone in the car when you come home. Play LEGOs for the next hour, with no interruptions. Write the rest of the afternoon off. Put as much work into this parenting thing as you do with your work. Try to be all-in, just for a bit.

See what happens.

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General Jim Mattis has talked about his idyllic childhood in Pullman, Washington. There he spent time outdoors, explored, got in trouble, and had an all-American childhood. He talks lovingly of a house filled with books—as we’ve said, a house without books is not a home—and parents who not only encouraged their children to read them, but questioned and interacted with them. 

“They introduced us to a world of great ideas—not a fearful place,” he said, “but a place to enjoy.” What a thing to say! A target for each of us to try to hit with our own children. 

It’s so easy in these partisan, political times to live not only in a bubble of our own beliefs...but to actively denigrate the beliefs of others. Think of the families hunkered down, watching Fox News, refusing to interact with any information that contradicts their worldview. Think of the parents who are no better than book burners, arguing that Huckleberry Finn should be pulled from schools or that trigger warnings need to be put in front of everything remotely controversial. These people are teaching their children that ideas are dangerous, that disagreement is an offense and that you can make things go away by pretending they don’t exist. 

You must teach your kids to be curious, to be open, to be willing to explore. Your job is not to make them believe what you believe or to prevent them from ever encountering what you dislike or think is repulsive. Your job is to teach them how to make their own informed opinions, how to decide for themselves, how to be comfortable with uncomfortable topics. Don’t model contempt. Don’t model close-mindedness. Don’t model fear. 

Ideas are our friends. They will serve your children well, and your children will serve them well, if you teach them early and often. The world is a place of great ideas. There is nothing to be afraid of...except fear and ignorance. 

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