Happy Sunday, dads.
Andrew here. Father’s Day was last week. Hope it was everything you imagined and more.
And now, real talk, we’re back. No holiday. No breakfast in bed. Nobody handing you anything. Just Sunday morning, a cup of coffee if you’re lucky, and your kids are already asking you something before you’ve even opened your eyes all the way.
I love this week, though. And I mean that. Because this is the week that actually counts. Father’s Day is easy. Everybody shows up for Father’s Day. The real flex? Showing up the week after. Same energy. Same intention. No audience. No occasion. Just you deciding that who you were last Sunday, celebrated, appreciated, and recognized, is who you’re going to be every other day, too.
That’s the move. Not riding the high of the holiday. Actually becoming it.
Anyone can show up on Father’s Day. Not everyone shows up the week after. Let’s be the ones who do.
Let’s get into it.
And if you’re new here, welcome to The Dadder Dispatch. You picked a good weekend to show up.
The week after Father’s Day. No fanfare. No occasion. Just strength, and this week, strength looks like doing the thing when nobody’s watching and showing up for your kid when you’d rather not. Both challenges today are about the version of you that exists when there’s no audience.
Do one thing today that improves your life that nobody will know about. No post. No mention. No “look what I did.” Just do it. Clean something nobody noticed was dirty. Read a chapter. Skip a drink. Take a walk. Pay an old debt.
The work you do in private is what builds the man you are in public. Strength built for an audience isn’t strength. Its performance. One quiet win today. You’re the only one who knows. That’s the whole point.
Today, do one thing with your kid that you don’t feel like doing. The board game they love that bores you to tears. The show they want to watch. The questions about their game that you have absolutely no idea how to answer. Don’t fake it. Don’t perform enthusiasm you don’t have.
Just show up. Because they notice when you do their thing without complaint. They notice more than you think. Love isn’t always the big moments. It’s the moments you’d rather skip but don’t. Today is one of those moments. The flex is showing up anyway.
The DadderUp app drops a fresh Dad Flex daily, built for the kind of dad who doesn’t wait for the new year to level up. Download it and start tomorrow.
From our conversation with Josh Michael, President of the State Board of Education in Maryland, a former middle school math teacher, and lifelong education leader.
Josh has spent his career thinking about how you actually change outcomes for kids, not just in schools, but across every system that shapes a young person’s life. And when I asked him what kids really need to succeed, his answer wasn’t about grades, test scores, or getting into the right college.
He broke it down into three things. First, strong foundations, not just reading and math, but the fundamentals of character. Showing up on time. Working hard. Being the kind of person who follows through. Second, space to figure out who they are. Room to experience failure and success on their own terms, to explore what lights them up, to start dreaming about the kind of life they want to build. And third, this is the one that hit me: the confidence and the sense of agency to believe they can actually change the world toward their dreams.
That third one is on you, Dad. Not the school. Not the coach. You. Because kids don’t develop that confidence out of nowhere, they build it by watching the adults closest to them show up consistently, set clear expectations, and treat them like people whose ideas and dreams actually matter.
The week after Father’s Day is a good week to ask yourself: which of those three are you actively building in your kid right now? Which one needs more of your attention?
“What does it actually mean to model good behavior for your kids? I feel like I say the right things, but my actions don’t always match.”
— Ryan, dad of three, DadderUp community
First, the fact that you notice the gap between what you say and what you do is actually a really good sign. Most dads don’t even see it. So you’re already ahead.
Here’s what modeling actually is, and it’s simpler than most people think. It’s not a program. It’s not a speech. It’s just your kids watching you live and taking notes on everything. The way you talk to people when you’re frustrated. Whether you put your phone down when they’re talking to you. How you handle it when something goes wrong. Whether you apologize when you get it wrong. Whether you follow through on what you said you’d do.
They’re not listening to your words as much as you think. They’re watching your defaults. The version of you that shows up when you’re tired, when you’re stressed, when nobody’s making a big deal out of it. That’s the version they’re learning from.
So the fix isn’t about saying better things. It’s about closing the gap between who you say you are and who you actually are in the small moments. Pick one behavior this week, one specific thing you say you value but don’t always practice, and just work on that. Not all of it. One thing. Your kids will notice before you do.
The speeches matter a lot less than the Tuesday afternoon at 5 pm version of you. Work on that guy.
My daughter Daniella turned ten. Double digits. And I honestly don’t know where the time went.
We sat down together, just the two of us, and I asked her a bunch of questions I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the answers to. What’s the best part about being a dad? What do dads worry about? When do you feel least loved by me? And the one that really got me, what does a real dad actually mean?
She didn’t even hesitate. She said a real dad is patient. Present. Not on his phone (she made sure to add that one). He leads by example. He takes care of his health. He passes down morals and values so that when he’s gone, his kids still carry a piece of him. And then she said this: a real dad works at it every single day. Makes mistakes. But he is honest with himself and fixes them. On the good days, he actually enjoys it.
I’ve said versions of all of that in podcasts. In videos. But hearing it come out of my ten-year-old’s mouth, in her words, unprompted, I was done. That was it for me.
She also told me when she feels least loved by me. “When you’re talking to me, and then you stop and go on your phone.” She said it makes her feel upset, mad, and sad. And then she said, “I wonder, am I important enough to him?” Those are her words. My ten-year-old.
Here’s what I took from it. Your kids are keeping score of things you don’t even know are on the scoreboard. Not the big stuff. The small stuff. The phone. The patience. The moments where you were in the room but somewhere else entirely. That’s what they remember. And that’s what they’re going to tell their own kids someday about what a real dad looks like.
The week after Father’s Day is the best time to ask yourself: What would my kid say right now if someone asked them that same question?
What’s the one habit you’re committing to this week after Father’s Day?
We talked about how kids are always watching. Their defaults come from yours. Josh, who’s spent his career changing outcomes for kids at scale, said it best: an escalated adult can never de-escalate a child. If you want to understand what your kids are actually learning from you on the Tuesday afternoons nobody’s watching, this conversation is the one.
I asked Daniella what a real dad means to her. She told me. She also told me when she feels least loved by me, and her answer about the phone hit harder than anything I’ve read in a parenting book. If this week’s Dadder Dispatch made you think about the gap between who you say you are and who your kids actually see, watch this next.
We’ll keep showing up with the emails. All we ask? Think of one dad in your life who showed up this week. Send him this. He deserves it.
