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    

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    

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    

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    

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  

We watch sports with our kids. That’s greatness, we say of some 4th quarter comeback win. They’re the G.O.A.T, we explain–the greatest to ever do it. We talk to our kids about the work that went into that success, the practice, the sacrifice. Maybe we even talk about the incredible rewards that follow such greatness. But it’s important that we also remind them where this skill sits in the overall scheme of things.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

On this weekend episode of the Daily Dad,  Ryan talks with his wife Samantha on doing less by saying no, physically being present and the cost of every opportunity.  ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com 📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Because you’re in charge, because you’re so much bigger and stronger and smarter, it’s easy to get trapped into a battle of wills with your kids. Don’t do that or else! Because I said so. Oh, you think it’s like that, do you? We put our foot down. We tell them how it’s going to be. We argue. Sometimes, at the very, very end of our rope, we lock them in their room.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Is there anything better than the feeling of your kid’s head on your chest? Them running towards you at pick up time? Seeing their name pop up as an incoming call on your phone? Them asking for advice? Them asking to show you something?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube    

Tom Brady has always been relentless about trying to get better. Trying to get his passes out quicker. Trying to get his spirals a little tighter. Trying to optimize his diet. Trying to recover from games faster.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube