The Daily Dad

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 get the sense that humans are born with inherent goodness. It’s not something we are just taught. It’s a gift that comes to us at birth. There is purity there. Innocence. And yet, as a grown up, you’ve seen enough of the world to know that most people are no longer innocent and pure and good.

So what does that mean? It means your job as a dad is to protect and encourage and nurture that goodness. In Cormac McCarthy’s haunting novel, The Road, he calls this “the fire.” A dad’s job is to help their child carry the fire, to keep them safe long enough that this goodness can pass onto the next generation, and that hope and light can remain in this dark world a little longer. 

That’s what you have to do today and every day. Help them carry the fire. Protect the gift. Pass on the light.

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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 epithets are and to make sure we are living by them.

But here is another way to look at. What if as a father you sat down—ideally with your co-parent—and fleshed out what those words mean for each of your children too? As in what kind of kid are you trying to raise? What are the watchwords that you are attempting to move them towards with your parenting?

Some obvious ones:

Kind.

Loyal.

Moral.

Honest.

And maybe some more specific ones to help them succeed in the world

Creative. 

Bilingual. 

Hard-working. 

A lifelong learner.

Maybe to some dads it’s important for their kids to be athletic. Another, a reader. Others still that their kids live a life of service. There is a lot of room here for choice and most of the answers are right. But if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how can you expect to hit a target? How do you know you’re not accidentally teaching them to exchange one epithet for another? 

The truth is you can’t. So get writing.

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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, most of the stuff we’re rushing to is not that urgent. “Whatever he’s doing right now, that’s the most important thing,” Derek wrote. “So I encourage him to keep doing it as long as possible. I never say, ‘Come on! Let’s go!’ Of course my adult mind wanders to all the other things we could be doing. But I let it go, and return to that present focus.”

There is a certain amount of Zen in that, which is valuable to us for its own sake. But with regard to our kids, it’s also teaching them a valuable skill. Shouldn’t we want them to develop the ability to focus and pursue their curiosity? Isn’t it worth it for them to get a little dirty or for you to show up to the birthday party a bit late because they were really, intensely alive for a few minutes? And isn’t this a better problem to have than struggling to motivate a bunch of screen addicted zombies, as is so often the case for modern parents these days?

Encourage your kids. Resist the urge to hurry. It’s not really time to go. You’re exactly where you—and they—need to be.

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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 figure out the car seat? Here, I’ll do it.

Make a couple really bad dinners. Here, I’ll do it.

Act really overwhelmed. Here, I’ll hire a babysitter to help while I’m out of town.

Any dad can tell you, this works. Deep down, they also know it’s incredibly manipulative and unfair. It’s a violation of a basic principle of adulthood, too, because instead of stepping up for ourselves and our commitments, we’re letting someone else do it for us. 

The Stoics said that we are responsible for blowing our own noses. We are. And when we became dads, we signed up to blow our kids noses until they were old enough to do it themselves. We can’t just pass these responsibilities onto our spouse or their mother or even hired help. We have to do a lot of it ourselves. Because we signed up for it. Because it sets a bad example if we don’t. Because we’ll be better and more confident if we get some wins under our belt.

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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 understand. That they could just give us what we needed. It didn’t happen. And that hurt. 

But now we have a second chance. Now we are the parent. You are Dad. The question then is what are you doing to do it differently? How are you going to handle this second chance? 

The past can’t be undone. But we can heal old wounds by being for someone else what we needed ourselves. And we can make a better world by being for our kids, what our parents were not for us.

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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 young children. 

That’s something we have to think about as dads. Part of the job of a parent is to come up with the rules of the house and to enforce them (and for them to make sense too!). Winging it might seem better, except that means you’re judging every situation anew—deciding in the moment what to allow and what not to. Letting things slide might seem easier, but the chaos that flows from it is much more difficult.

So what are the rules of your house? What’s expected of your kids—in terms of chores, behaviors, and habits? What’s forbidden? What don’t we do in this house? Are you firm about the rules? Do you make sure everyone follows them, including yourself? And then, crucially, what is the logic behind these rules and can you explain them in a way that gets real buy in and understanding? A father is not a tyrant...but a person who makes arbitrary rules without explaining them is. 

Create some rules. Stick to them. Be fair about them. Your kids might not love them now, but when they look back on their childhood, they will at least be grateful for the structure and the clarity they provided.

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Even if it wasn’t such a relief for overworked dads and moms, it’d hurt a little to think about how much our kids love their grandparents. It almost seems like they prefer grandma and grandpa sometimes, don’t they?

Why is that?

It’s pretty simple. Because grandparents have outgrown most of their baggage. They have let go. Even a lot of grandparents who were demanding and exacting parents seem to finally settle into themselves and manage to be exactly what the generation once removed needs. And kids can sense this: Grandma loves me for me. She’s so nice all the time. Grandpa just wants to hang out. He doesn’t try to make me do anything. He doesn’t boss me around or correct me, he just listens.

Of course, this isn’t universally true...there are lots of bad grandparents out there. But what makes the great ones great is that they’re present, accepting, and proud. Traits that are unfortunately easy to lose sight of as busy, stressed out, and well-meaning parents.

Which makes it a decent test to consider when we get really worked up or worried or upset with our kids: How would a grandparent think about this? What if I wasn’t such a dad about this? Would that make things better?

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You’ll hear other dads talk about the need for “quality time” with their kids. It’s sort of a strange phrase, if you think about it. Because it implies a kind of hierarchy of time that nobody has ever really bothered to define. There’s a judgement to it too, that maybe the time or experiences you—the busy, ordinary, doing-the-best-you-can dad—give your kids is not enough. 

The comedian Jerry Seinfield, who has three kids—an 18-year-old daughter, a 16-year-old son, and a 13-year-old son—pushes back against that. Special days? Nah. Every day is special. Every minute can be quality time:

I’m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about "quality time" – I always find that a little sad when they say, "We have quality time." I don’t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That’s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o’clock at night when they’re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that’s what I love.

Your job is not to entertain them. Or to curate every minute of their lives so that everything is meaningful and important and edifying. Your job is to be their dad. You job is to be there. To help them see that quality is what we make it, that it’s always within our reach if we so choose. Eating cereal together can be wonderful. Blowing off school for a fun day together can be wonderful—but so can the twenty minute drive in traffic to school. So can taking out the garbage or watching a garbage truck meander through the neighborhood. 

All time with your kids is created equal. What do you with it is what makes it special.

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In her wonderful book On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz takes a series of walks in different environments. What does a geologist see on a city block? What does a naturalist see walking through a park? What does a dog see on a short walk around the block? But the most interesting walk was the one Alexandra took with her 19-month-old. 

The idea was that she would take her young son and really try on his perspective about the world. So they walk out of Alexandra’s apartment, down the hall to the elevator, down and out of the elevator, and across the lobby to the front door, where they would start the walk. And as Alexandra went to check in with her 19-month-old son as they headed out onto the city street, she suddenly realized...that the walk had begun the second they started getting ready in the apartment.

To an adult, things have official beginnings and ends. Parties have start times. The gift is given when it is unwrapped and opened. A fun family dinner kicks off when everyone sits down. It ends when the last bite of dessert has been eaten. Everything else is prep or clean-up. Of course, this is all a product of our adult labeling-minds. To a kid, anything can be special and fun. A walk doesn’t have to be outside. Dinner can be anywhere and at anytime. How many stories have we heard or pictures have we seen of young children spending hours on Christmas morning playing in the cardboard box that the actual gift came in? 

This sincerity and presentness is wonderful. As fathers, we have to appreciate it. We have to encourage it and make sure we don’t crush it with subtle corrections and insistence on the “official” way things are or should be. Most of all, we have to learn from this love of the moment, and add it as much as possible to our own lives. For, the walk truly can begin when the shoes go on, not just when they first hit the pavement.

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The economist Russ Roberts is a guy who understands how the world works. He knows about the laws of the economy and government. He knows about philosophy and he knows about history. He lives his life by a number of rules and rituals. He keeps Shabbat, for instance, and he commits to regularly tithing a portion of his income. He has another rule, specifically for dads, that is worth thinking about today:

If your child offers you a hand to hold, take it

The preciousness of childhood, the preciousness of this day, today, this moment when your child wants your hand for comfort can be hard to appreciate in the moment. You might be tired. Or just tired of holding your child’s hand. Take it anyway. As they get older, they assert their independence. That’s good. But in the meanwhile, hold their hand, take care of them with an open heart. And when they ask to hear Curious George for the nth time, read it again as if it were the first. 

Life and relationships are an endless dance of reaching out and pulling away. You reach out to your kids, they pull away—they’re busy, they’re in front of their friends, they’re mad at you. You try to help them and they don’t want it. You want what’s best for them but they don’t understand. 

We can’t control that. It’s going to hurt sometimes. Signals will get crossed. It’s heartbreaking but it’s part of growing up. What we can control is that whenever they reach out—whenever they offer us a hand to hold—that we take that opportunity. When they want to lay in our bed with us, we can let them. When they call on the phone, we can answer—even if we’re in a meeting. When they ask to talk about something, we can listen, whatever it’s about. We can hold them tight every chance we have. 

We need to make a rule of it.

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