The Daily Dad

The house is noisy. It is messy. It is expensive, and not easy to maintain. It’s filled with toys, and sharp Legos that you step on in the middle of the night. It’s dirty. It’s got one obligation after another.And yet it’s wonderful…so, so wonderful. The whole job of it. The whole mess of it. “We must think of ourselves as ministers and priests in our own house as in a temple,” the Stoic philosopher Hierocles once said, “chosen and consecrated to nature itself.”✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Your career used to be the only thing you had. It was just you. You had your ambitions. You had as many hours as there were in the day. And you were willing to work–incredibly hard, do anything–to get ahead.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you had an early flight, you’d get up no problem. If you had a chance to go see old friends or your favorite band, you’d stay up late without even thinking about it.But your kids wake you up early or cut into sleep? Ugh! You’re full of complaints.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“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.”Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.On this episode of the Daily Dad Podcast, Ryan talks to Casey Neistat about the discipline you have after having kids and building better parenting routines through stoicism. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Each of us, no matter how old or successful, has things we wish we knew how to do. We wish we could speak another language, or change the oil in our own car, or play the guitar. It’s not that we aren’t up for learning these things now—more so even than when we were young—but it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, as they say, even when the dog wants to learn.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“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.”Yes, it’s not good to be late. Yes, you’ve got places to go. You’ve got emails to respond to. You were hoping to get a workout in today. You were hoping to have a few minutes to relax on the couch.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

After having kids, every parent quickly realizes just how much less freedom they have. Your schedule is different. Your sleep is different. What you can watch on TV is different. Where you can live is different. Kids are, as we’ve said, a dose of unavoidable reality–a reality where you are indisputably, almost laughably not in charge.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You hear people talk about “mom guilt”–the feeling that moms get for not being perfect, not measuring up to their own impossible standards, or the impossible standards they think other moms have. Of course, there’s dad guilt too–all good parents feel like they’re falling short, like they’re not doing enough, like they’re not good enough.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.We talked recently about the Spartan who pointed out that it wasn’t right to say that “the better man won” at the Olympic Games. The better wrestler had won, he said. And it’s an important point: there are lots of winners out there who are actually losers. A lot of achievements that turn out to be costly victories because of the means used to achieve them.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on the skill set that comes with exploring curiosity, and teaching our kids how to build courage.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sometimes it’s good to acknowledge our biases. And one of the biggest biases in our lives is our kids. Not just a bias in the sense that we prefer them, but a bias like one of those ones that cognitive behavioral scientists point out that prove we’re totally and utterly irrational.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We all sit up at night and wonder if we’re doing a good job, if we’re failing our kids, if we’re raising them right. We kick ourselves for what we feed them, whether we’re meeting all their needs, whether we’re learning…whether they’re learning.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It doesn’t matter how many decades old you were. It doesn’t matter what you’d experienced, what you knew, how smart or powerful you were. A turning point was reached when you had kids.The Parent-To-Be: A Daily Dad Parenting Challenge✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You have a very important job. You have so much going on. That’s the terrible part about having kids, for both men and women–for most of us, it comes right in the prime of our careers, in the prime of our lives. Can we afford to slow down? To stop? Do we want to?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It was Seneca who said that a wise philosopher doesn’t just study in their particular school of thought, but surveys widely, taking and absorbing ideas from any and all thinkers. He would say he read like a spy in the enemy’s camp, and that he’d quote even a bad author if the line was good.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of the Daily Dad Ryan talks on the importance of illustrating different versions of ourselves while away or on vacation, and how you carry those moments back to your actual life. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.You have to give them space. Not just space right after school or soccer practice, as we’ve talked about, but making sure you don’t bombard them with questions or instructions. But your kids need literal space too. A room of their own, literally and figuratively.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine that you’re gone and able to look down now and see your kids from above. Or imagine that somehow you had magical powers and could see inside their heads and read their thoughts. What is it that you would never want them to witness? What is it that you would never want them to feel?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“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.”The thing about having kids is that it’s so fleeting. They grow up so fast, as we’ve said before. They are in a constant process of leaving you, leaving who they were. And scarier still, as the last few years have shown, is that life is unpredictable and even tragic.No one is here forever. Things can change in a tragic instant.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

​Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.Marriage is hard. Perhaps yours is especially hard. You both work very hard…or maybe only one of you works hard and that’s the problem. Perhaps one of you has worked very hard on this relationship and the other hasn’t. Perhaps it’s been a very long time, perhaps you’ve drifted very far apart. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you’re just tired.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“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.”There’s all these things we want to make sure our kids learn. We agonize over which school to put them in, what their grades are. We try to interest them in the right career, try to fire up their ambition. You push them to play sports, you teach them an instrument, you send them to summer camps. You read a thousand parenting books, you try all the latest strategies.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on unavoidable reality, flexibility within their household, and creating space in your life for your love ones. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today’s episode is brought to you by LifeForce.Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.If you’re in your 30s, then your parents raised you through the global financial crisis, SARS, the bursting of the tech bubble, and 9/11. They saw two wars in Iraq, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Black Monday. If you’re in your 40s, they experienced that and the crack epidemic, the AIDS epidemic, stagflation, Chernobyl, and the final saber rattling of the Cold War. If you’re in your 50s, then your parents raised you through Vietnam and Watergate and the Berlin Wall. If you’re in your 60s, they raised you through the Civil Rights movement, the counterculture revolution, the draft, Vietnam, the Kennedy assassinations, MLK’s assassination, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you’re older than that… well, now we’re getting into even headier territory: the war in Korea, the Iron Curtain, the Second World War, the Marshall Plan, and god knows what else.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s been this way for a long time. Parents who ignored their kids. Parents who were too busy working, surviving, to be there emotionally. Parents who drank. Parents who pushed too hard, who asked too much. It’s been generations of this, it is the human story, written in the private lives of families, written in the history books, explaining so much of why we are the way we are.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sometimes just a title, just a concept can be enough. Wherever You Go There You Are is a great book…and a great mantra. The Obstacle is The Way, and Ego is the Enemy were intended to have a similar effect. Even if you don’t crack the covers, just the concept is enough to provide a little guidance.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.Nothing keeps us up, nothing haunts us like the thought that something could happen to our kids. We dread even the good things that take them away from us, moving out, going to college, that job across the country.But there is, in this fear, a certain ingratitude, isn’t there? Not just for the present moment in front of us that we are neglecting, but for all the wonderful things we’ve already gotten to do–with our kids, with our spouse, with all of us together.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are a lot of kids out there. There are fewer parents. Not just because most families have more than one child, but because unfortunately, tragically, not everyone who has a kid decides to be a parent.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with actor Matthew McConaughey about his new course: Roadtrip – the Highway to More, the importance of being close to the ones you love and how “You Are The Toy” when it comes to your children.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seeing your own parents now, as an adult, is stressful. There’s a great Ram Dass line that the comedian Pete Holmes has used in relation to his own parents: You think you’re enlightened—go spend a week with your family.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We say we’re trying to raise kids who are kind, who help others, who are generous, who are not selfish, who are not cruel, who treat everyone equally, who hold themselves to high ethical standards. We say that virtue, that doing what’s right is more important than anything else, than money or success or getting ahead.But what do we show? What do we show?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Yes, it’s true you only get so much time with them. Yes, it’s true you flew halfway around the world for this trip, you took time off work. Yes, it’s true that it’s convenient, that it will only take a few minutes, and save you a lot of trouble. Yes, it’s true that it could be a special experience they remember forever.But you know what else it could be?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In some ways, the ancient world seems so remarkably similar to ours. Marcus Aurelius has a passage in Meditations pepping himself up to get out of bed early in the morning. His name was Marcus–maybe your name is Marcus today. People liked sports then, they fell in love, they liked eating olives. There’s a passage in Seneca’s Letters where he talks about getting impatient as he waits for his table before dinner, and then sits frustrated as they stick him with a bad one.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Health matters. Wealth matters. These things matter not just to us, but to our families. You only have to look around to see people who don’t optimize for these things and the way that ripples through not just their own life, but the lives of their children–children who see dad not taking care of themselves, mom who never quite realized her potential.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on a second round of doing less and seeing the results, and how self-awareness impacts our families in the end. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You’re wondering if you’re doing something wrong because your kid can’t ride a bike. You’re wondering why they’re not more athletic…or more academic. You feel like a failure because they dropped out of college or because your divorce has been hard on them. And all of these feelings are more pronounced when you look across the street or across the parking lot at school and see other families nailing it in all these areas.Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The hot button political issue of the day is “parental choice.” In Florida and D.C., Chicago and California, parents of differential political persuasions are fighting with their school boards, their librarians, their universities over a host of culture war issues and their right to choose what their kids learn about (or don’t learn about). Some of the issues are serious. Some of them are made up.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There is an inherent tension, a conflict of visions even, at the heart of every family. They want to live happy, fulfilling, interesting lives, and as the parent…you want nothing bad to ever happen to them. Sure, you want them to be happy and have fun, but most of all, more than anything, you want them to be safe.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It was a timeless scene, one that might have happened in your house just this past afternoon. The kids are playing with bubbles. They are laughing and yelling. Blowing and darting around trying to pop them. Finding the most wonderful joy in the simple magic of soap and air.Visit mylifeforce.com and receive $200 off your membership today.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Do you know the story of Cincinnatus? He was a Roman general who had retired to his farm until he was called to rescue his country from an invasion. Made dictator in these desperate times, he had unlimited power, which he used to save the empire… only to immediately relinquish the power and return to his farm.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan shares an article from a Father's Day read from The Free Press on the upstream choices we have to make and continuing to do less as parents with discipline and trade offs.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Being two minutes late to school. The fourth discussion about cleaning up before company comes over. The grouchy tone. The broken vase. The mischief with their friends. The I told you to turn off the iPad and come help me downstairs!!!!✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s a good reminder, one that we can zip past too easily because we’re busy, because we have so much on our plate: You only get 18 years with your kids. It’s a reminder not just to soak in the time you have with them, but to make sure you’re really parenting in those 18 years. Because soon enough they’ll be gone, they’ll be living with someone else, listening to someone else.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Almost every talented and successful person can remember their introduction to whatever it was that became their thing. In Mastery, Robert Greene explores countless examples of this beautiful process by which some of the world’s most notable experts discovered their “life’s task.” He talks about Martha Graham’s first time watching a dance performance, for example, and he tells the story of the compass that Albert Einstein’s father gave him as a present when he was five years old:✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As a society, we have very attuned ears for what words are offensive. There are words that religious people find offensive. There are the words that collectively we have decided are hurtful…as well as the words various groups are trying to get people to understand are potentially hurtful.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It would be wonderful if it ever eased up, but it doesn’t. You worried when they were in the womb, and here you are all these years later, still worrying. Are they doing ok? Are they getting enough nutrients? Is something going to happen to them? Are they happy?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad, Ryan talks about the straw that breaks the camel's back and relaxing the impulse to force things.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Your job today as a father is to do one thing. It’s to read this poem, which dates back to 1895, and then to think about how to incorporate its lessons into how you raise your kids. Ignore the gendered language (it was written as advice to the poet’s son) because it doesn’t matter. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We try to inspire our kids. We try to motivate them. We try to incentivize them. We want them to care about winning–that’s why we push them into sports. We want them to go to a good college–that’s why we reward them for their grades. We want them to succeed in this world–that’s why we tell them stories of the greats (that’s the idea behind The Girl Who Would Be Free and The Boy Who Would Be King, for instance).We want our kids to be ambitious.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s clear some parents take things too far. They push their kids too hard in sports. They push them too hard in school. They solve every problem for them, indulge every whim and desire, shelter them from discomfort and the slightest independence. They celebrate the most minor of accomplishments, they encourage the most unusual of behaviors.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When a young Florence Nightingale began making moves toward volunteering in hospitals, her aristocratic parents were horrified. It had been difficult enough raising a precocious child. Now she wanted to debase herself with work below her station? They were embarrassed. What would their friends think? How would it look? Like a lot of parents with determined, independent children, they felt rejected. They thought her choices rebuked theirs.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.