Ryan talks to his friend and writing partner Nils Parker about why it's important to say no to things that you don't need to do, how important the time that you get to spend with your kids is, and more.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Jimmy Carter was a pretty buttoned up guy. He was known, even under the stress of the Oval Office, to be remarkably poised. The angriest an aide ever saw him though, came over a last minute scheduling change. It wasn’t the poor communication that bothered him. It wasn’t that he was going to be late–something the ever punctual Carter despised. It was because the secretary had bumped Carter’s plans to take his daughter to the circus.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

It’s one of the most beautiful and haunting songs ever recorded. The version written and recorded by Sting is pretty good, but the Johnny Cash version? It’s like he was meant to put that track down.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

The things we say to our kids matter. The tone we use, the rules we enforce, the standards we hold them to–they feel it. They feel it profoundly. Kids always have and always will.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

As we said recently, the wonderful thing about parenting is that it opens you up. It expands your heart to a new capacity, a level you didn’t think possible. The problem, of course, is just how exposed this makes you feel.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

The comedian and actor Rob Delaney’s son Henry was healthy and beautiful, but then he got sick. Delaney and his wife Leah didn’t know what to do, so they took Henry to the doctor. It took a long time but eventually, the doctor found that Henry had a brain tumor. They operated on it, and he got better. But sadly the tumor took Henry’s life at just two years old.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

David M. Rubenstein is a successful entrepreneur and an innovative philanthropist.He is the co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group and host of “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations” on Bloomberg TV. He is the the author of several books, including the best seller How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers, and most recently, How to Invest: Masters of the Craft. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

In his book, The Vanishing American Adult, then-U.S. Senator Ben Sasse pondered what might strike a person from the distant past as odd about our modern society. Aside from the technology, he said, they’d notice the extreme age segregation. Invariably today we spend time almost exclusively with people our own age.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

If you’re one of those kids who didn’t get everything you needed from your parents–and let’s face it, pretty much everyone is–you probably carry something with you as an adult today. Maybe you’re angry or sad. Wounded or resentful. You wonder what could have been, who you’d be, if they’d been around more…or been more patient…or loving…or understood you.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

Of course, we want our kids to have class. That is to say: A strong sense of decency and taste, restraint and grace, with a set of values that have become virtues by virtue of having consistently lived those values. The question is: How do you teach this? How do you pass on this sort of ineffable, effortless sense of self?✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com📱 Follow Daily Dad: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube