The Daily Dad

It can be hard to express your feelings as a father sometimes. Not so much because men are expected to bottle up their emotions, but because the emotions that come with being a dad can be so overwhelming and complex. It’s a rush of a million feelings: love, joy, fear, absurdity, exhaustion, responsibility, motivation, and primal attachment.

No one prepared you for any of this…and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever dealt with before. How do you express it? How do you let your family know what they mean to you? How they have you wrapped around their finger, how they are your everything?

Maybe the line from The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse will suffice. “Sometimes I want to say I love you all,” says the mole, “but I find it difficult.” “Do you?” says the boy. “Yes, so I say something like I’m glad we are all here.”

✉️ 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.

A parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child, goes the expression. And even if that wasn’t true, even if it didn’t directly impact our own happiness, would any of us want our children to be unhappy? Of course not. We love them so much. The last thing we want is for them to feel pain.

We want their lives to be wonderful. We want them to have fun. We want them to have a great life. We want them to be happy!

There’s nothing wrong with this…except that oftentimes trying to make someone happy is a recipe for failure. “Happiness is not my ultimate goal for my own kids,” Dr. Becky Kennedy writes in her amazing book Good Inside (which we continue to rave about). “Unhappiness certainly isn’t my goal for them, but here’s a deep irony in parenting: the more we emphasize our children’s happiness and ‘feeling better,’ the more we set them up for an adulthood of anxiety.”

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

He was a young man fresh out of the Naval Academy and a stint in the submarine service. He was being interviewed by Admiral Hyman Rickover for a coveted spot in the nuclear program. Then he got the question that changed his life.

“How did you stand in your class at the academy?” Rickover asked. “Sir, I stood 59th in a class of 820,” future president Jimmy Carter answered. “But did you do your best?” Rickover asked. And when Carter could not honestly answer that he has always done his best, Rickover simply said, “Why not?” and then ended the interview.

✉️ 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 wanted it so badly and we never got it. We still haven’t got it. Dad was withholding, dad was hard to please—we wanted to make him proud, but we just couldn’t. That’s partly why we’re working so hard today.

There’s some part of us that thinks if we can just accomplish enough, make enough money, win enough awards, surpass him then maybe, finally, we’ll get that begrudging pat on the back. We’ll get him to acknowledge us. He’ll let us know he respects us, loves us, and appreciates us. But somehow it never seems to be enough.

✉️ 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 are things you would have never done before. You’d never have sung a crazy song in public. You’d never have painted your nails. You would have vomited before you sucked snot out of someone’s nose (as Hasan Minhaj did). You’d have rather starved than put on a McUniform and work extra hours at some job you hate.

✉️ 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.

“This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/dailydad and get on your way to being your best self.”

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan reminds us to raise a resilient child by resisting the urge to intervene,  helping them manage their emotions, showing them that everything thing can be figured out, and lastly leading by example.

✉️ 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 talked about this before: Being a father is a second chance. It’s a fresh start. It’s an obligation to work on yourself so your kids pick up where you’ve left off, benefiting from the struggle and progress you have made. You can’t pass them the baton of your weaknesses and flaws.

You cannot let them be worse than you.

✉️ 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.

No one is the parent they want to be. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most of us are better parents than we were.

​We’ve talked a lot about the big choice we all have to make. Are we just somebody who has kids? Or are we a parent? And while this is a choice, it’s also more of an aspiration. You don’t magically, suddenly become the perfect parent. How could you? There’s so much you don’t know, so many lessons you haven’t learned, so many gifts you haven’t been given yet. So much stuff hasn’t happened yet.

✉️ 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.

Most times, we’re in need of all the help we can get. We read parenting books, or watch parenting videos, trying to find those keys to make our lives just a little bit easier. That’s why we created the Daily Dad email, after all. Seneca said that we ought to acquire one thing per day – whether that’s a quote, a story, a relationship that makes us better, it doesn’t matter. We try to deliver that one thing in each email. 

But of course, we couldn’t do it alone. When trying to deliver that one thing to you each day, we often need one thing ourselves to inspire us, to help us become the best people and parents that we can be. Some of these things are books. Some are items to carry with you, or to keep on your desk. Some make for great holiday gifts. Some you might want to share with new or expecting parents. 

In any form, check them out…and pass them along if they work. 

The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Love, Parenting, and Raising Great Kids by Ryan Holiday 

In each of his letters to his friend Lucilius , Seneca would include a quote, something to chew on, a thought to guide the day. “Each day,” he told Lucilius, you should “acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well.” Just one thing.


Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy 

When we talk about parenting books that completely change your perspective about raising your kids, we’re probably talking about this one. We’ve talked about it plenty of times before (like here, here, and here), and will inevitably keep returning to it, not only because it’s a book about becoming a better parent, but it’s also about simply becoming a better person. It’s about building empathy.

How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes by Melinda Wenner Moyer 

At some point, we’ve all been scared that our kids will be bad people, that they won’t be the respectful and hard-working person we thought we raised them to be. 

✉️ 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 been talking about Dr. Becky’s wonderful book Good Inside recently (a must read!), and she has a great little section where she’s talking about a parent who ends up having to pick up and physically remove their child from a situation where they are hitting their younger sibling. There’s guilt and frustration and fear and so much that comes up in these situations.

✉️ 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.