The Daily Dad

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    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our parents weren’t everything we needed. Maybe it was more time we needed. More understanding. More kindness. More support. More love. More just them having their act together.

But they weren’t this. Sadly, they also weren’t what the world needed either. Few generations have been. They kicked problems down the road. They started wars that cost blood and treasure to little purpose. They abused the environment. They averted their gaze, turned their hearts away from sufferings and injustice.

In a recent interview on Marc Maron’s podcast, Arnold Schwarzenegger talked about how his own life, as a parent, as a politician, as a person was largely driven by the desire to go in a different direction than the example of his father and his father’s generation. His father had been a Nazi, his father drank too much, his father smacked his kids around.

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

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

George Dewey was a kid who got in trouble a lot. His father was always bailing him out. Finally, as a last ditch effort, he secured his son entrance into the U.S Naval Academy in 19XX.

“George, I’ve done all I can for you,” his father told him as he dropped him off. “The rest you must do for yourself.” We talked a while back about how you have to let your kids fail, you have to let them struggle. As we’ve said before Luctor Et Emergo—from the struggle they emerge (we have a cool challenge coin as a reminder for parents).

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

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The bike was nice. So was the trip to Disneyland. So was being able to graduate from college without student debt. They appreciated the presents. They appreciated the clothes that fit. 

Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they took for granted what it cost for you to buy a house where they could have their own room. Maybe they didn’t understand what it took out of you to give them a better life than you had, to pay for all this stuff, to pay to go to all these places. 

Maybe they didn’t understand because that stuff wasn’t really what they wanted, even if they said they did. Because—and you know this already, you do—all they really wanted was you. They wanted you to be present, more than they wanted presents. They wanted your love, your attention, they wanted your acceptance. They wanted your support. They wanted you to be proud of them. They wanted you to apologize. They wanted you to understand them. 

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

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy on how we emotionally vaccinate, the ability to cope through stress, educating our kids on emotions and her new book Good Inside

Dr. Becky Kennedy is an American clinical psychologist who is founder and chief executive officer of the Good Inside company, an online parenting advice service.  She has been called the "millennial parent whisperer" by Time Magazine and is a number one New York Times bestseller for her book Good Inside. As a mom of three, when she was first starting out, she practiced a popular behavior-first, reward-and-punishment model of parent coaching. But, after a while, something struck her: those methods feel awful–for kids and parents.  She put together everything she knew about attachment, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and internal family systems theory, and translated those ideas into a new method for working with parents. 

www.GoodInside.com

IG: (drbeckyatgoodinside)

Podcast: Good Inside with Dr. Becky

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

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.