The Daily Dad

Your kids are going to face stuff in life. Big stuff for sure–failing tests, being made fun of, getting fired, losing something important to them. We may wish we could prevent that from happening, but we can’t. We teach them resilience instead. 

But our kids are also going to face little situations too. The TV is going to have to be turned off at some point, and they’re not going to like it. They’re going to have to get up early for school tomorrow. Their routines are going to change. They’re going to have to try new things. They’re going to be out of their comfort zone. 

This is going to bring up strong emotions: Frustration. Fear. Anger. Annoyance. Sadness. 

The answer to this is also resilience, but in a more specific way. Dr. Becky talks about this in her fantastic book Good Inside, referring to a strategy she calls “emotional vaccination.”

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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

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Most schools and most parents teach reading all wrong. They bully kids into doing it. They pressure them. They tell them, “Reading is what smart and successful people do.” Then they’re surprised when kids who struggled with reading don’t think they’re smart, and they wonder why kids almost wear illiteracy as a badge of honor. They wonder why people say things like, “I haven’t read a book since I was forced to in high school.”

No, the way to teach a kid to read is not to talk about how wonderful literature is and force them to read fancy or pretentious novels. You teach a kid to love books by—as the great lover of books Robert Greene has said—appealing to their self-interest. *Show them what they will get out of books.*Tangibly. Immediately. Show them that quote from Warren Buffet, where he says the single best investment he ever made was buying a copy of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor.

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We spend so much time at the office, trying to get better at our jobs, trying to make a little more money, trying to climb further up the ladder. We spend hours in the gym over the course of a life, trying to get into better shape, trying to hit personal records. We spend mountains of time online, trying to help our fantasy football teams, trying to find discount codes to save money shopping, trying to stay abreast of our friends’ and families’ lives (or so we tell ourselves).

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It doesn’t feel like they listen. In fact, we have pretty visible evidence that they don’t. We tell them not to do this or that and then we watch them do that exact thing. We warn them, remind them, advise them…and then they come to us crying or complaining or in trouble, having heeded none of that guidance.

So you can be forgiven for missing the fact that not only are they listening to what you say, but that your words have an enormous effect on them. So much so that you have to really, really be careful.

Think about your own life. Are there not things that your parents said that still weigh on you? The way your father would call you lazy. The comments your mother made about food or your weight. The way they would tease you. The things they said about your grades. The tone they used when they were disappointed or angry.

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We’ve been quoting recently from the old children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit, about a toy that’s so loved by a young boy that it becomes real. This is a great metaphor for parenting in a way. Because that’s what’s happening to us. We made a decision to have kids many years ago and then for years that decision works on us, shaping, changing, transforming us. No part of that is more powerful than the love and energy of our children—whose joy, whose innocence, whose pain, whose growth is working on us always…even as it takes so much out of us.

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We talked recently about what Dr. Becky Kennedy always tells parents: it’s never too late. 

We’ve talked about Nell Painter’s mother, who became an author late in life (and Nell Painter herself, who went back and was Old in Art School) We’ve talked about Bruce Springsteen’s father finally telling Bruce what he needed to hear. We’ve talked about other parents who got their act together late. 

We should be inspired by these examples. We should be inspired to be this example for our kids. We should show them, it’s never too late. It’s never too late to lose weight, to change, to find a new career, to quit a longtime vice, to try something new, to invest in yourself, to repair or apologize or make amends. 

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On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on  finding common ground and learning to empathize after they had kids, the value of to do lists,  pros and cons from the pandemic & the importance of routine.

If you want to spend time with more dedicated Stoics, if you want to join a culture full of people rising together, we invite you to join the 2024 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. We did the first New Year New You Challenge in 2018, and year after year, we’ve realized more and more that one of the core benefits of the challenge is the community dynamic. Change and improvement comes fastest through culture, results through accountability, and wisdom through exposure to new people and new ideas.

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We’ve said this before, but one of the things we need to constantly remind ourselves of as parents is that our kids are just being kids. If we’re being honest, what’s closer to an accurate description of a kid: those behaviors listed above or being a perfectly quiet, perfectly obedient, perfectly well mannered and well behaved? You know that kids do these things, you know that it’s normal, you know that it’s largely harmless, you know that they have very little control over it, that it’s all part of a process of learning and growing and figuring things out.

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You weren’t the parent you wanted to be in 2023. You weren’t the person you wanted to be in 2023. Almost no one was. Anyone who thinks or says they were is lying…and for most of us, this truth goes back further than a calendar year.

None of us are perfect. We all screwed up. We all back-slid. We all picked up bad habits. And as a parent, that means our kids picked up those bad habits too. Because, as we’ve said before, behavior is the language of children.

For those ready for reformation, as we mentioned last week, we created the 2024 New Year New You Challenge. It’s a set of 21 actionable challenges—presented one per day—built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Our goal is to help you and your family make 2024 your best year yet.

Participants of the New Year New You Challenge receive:

✓ 21 Custom Challenges Delivered Daily (Over 30,000 words of all-new original content)
✓ Three live Q&A sessions
✓ Printable 21-Day Calendar With custom daily illustrations to track progress
✓ Access to a Private Community Platform

These aren’t pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can begin right now to spark the reinvention you’ve been trying for. We’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and why it works. And when adversity inevitably comes around, you’ll be ready.

The 2024 New Year New Your Challenge officially begins on Monday, January 1st. Stop delaying. Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge and sign up NOW! Let’s go.

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