Happy Sunday, dads.
Andrew here. I want to be upfront about something. I used to think routines were boring. Like something uptight parents obsessed over while the rest of us just lived our lives. Bedtime charts. Chore schedules. Morning routines mapped out like a military operation. Not my thing.
Then I actually tried it. And the difference in my house was immediate. Not perfect, immediate. My kids were calmer. Mornings stopped being a disaster. Bedtime stopped being a negotiation. And I realized I had been confusing structure with rigidity, which are two completely different things.
Structure isn’t about control. It’s about giving your kids a predictable enough environment that they can actually relax into it. When kids know what to expect, they don’t have to spend energy figuring out the rules. They just live. And that changes how they show up, how they behave, and honestly how fun they are to be around.
August is the perfect time to talk about this. School is coming back. The summer free-for-all is winding down. And there’s a window right now to reset the rhythm of your home before September does it for you on its own terms, which is usually messy.
This week is about that reset what you rebuild now, how you bring the structure back in a way that doesn’t feel like a punishment for everyone involved.
Let’s get into it.
And if you’re new here, welcome to The Dadder Dispatch. You picked a good weekend to show up.
Patience is the pillar this week. And I want to be real about it because I think patience gets misunderstood. Most dads think patience is something you either have or you don’t, like a personality trait. You’re patient, or you’re not. But that’s not how it works. Patience is a resource. And resources run out when you don’t refill them. This week’s two challenges are about filling the tank and slowing down the moment before you need it most.
Today, take one hour just for yourself. Not for the family. Not for chores. Not for work that bled into the weekend. For you. Read. Walk. Sit outside. Nap. Whatever actually refills you.
Here’s why this isn’t selfish. The dads who never reset can’t be patient by Wednesday. The version of you that shows up Monday morning is being built right now, today, by whether you gave yourself permission to recharge or not. One hour. Guard it as it matters because it does.
Today, before reacting to something your kid did, ask a question first. “Why did you do that?” “What were you thinking?” Not aggressive. Genuinely curious. Give them a second to actually answer.
Most dads assume the story before they hear it. They react to the assumption and not the reality. And half the time, the assumption is wrong. The story your kid was living in when they did the thing is almost always different from the story you constructed from the outside looking in. Ask first. React after. The reaction that follows, if one’s even needed, will be grounded in something real.
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From our conversation with Kevin Barney, Executive Director of Massachusetts Youth Lacrosse, serving over 21,000 boys and girls across the state.
Kevin has spent his career running one of the largest youth sports organizations in the country. He’s watched thousands of games. Thousands of parents on the sidelines. And he’s noticed something that most dads don’t realize is happening in real time.
Your kids are watching you watch them. The way you react when they mess up. The expression on your face after a bad play. Whether the car ride home feels like a debrief or a safe place to land. All of it is being absorbed and filed away.
What Kevin made clear is that a dad’s sideline behavior becomes lifelong modeling. Kids don’t just learn the sport. They learn how their dad handles frustration, how he handles mistakes that aren’t his. Whether he can stay regulated when the pressure is on, and that’s exactly where this week’s patience pillar shows up in real life, not in theory. On the sideline. In the car. In the moment after a loss when your kid is watching to see how you’re going to handle it.
The routine you’re rebuilding this fall isn’t just bedtimes and homework schedules. It’s also the pattern of how you show up at the things that matter to your kids. That’s a routine too. And it’s one worth being intentional about.
“My kids’ schedules are all over the place, and I don’t know how to get structure back without a huge fight. Where do I start?”
— Devon, dad of two, DadderUp community
First thing I’d tell you is don’t try to fix everything at once. The instinct when things feel chaotic is to come in hard with a full schedule overhaul. New bedtime, new morning routine, new rules about screens, all of it, starting Monday. And what happens is your kids feel ambushed and push back hard, and you end up in a bigger fight than you would have had if you’d just eased in.
Start with one thing. Just one. Pick the thing that, if you fixed it, would make everything else easier. For most families that’s bedtime. Everything downstream- mornings, moods, patience levels, how kids show up at school- is connected to sleep. Move bedtime back by fifteen minutes this week. Fifteen more next week. That’s it: no big announcement, no family meeting, just a quiet shift.
The second thing is don’t do it to them. Do it with them. Sit down and say, “Hey, school’s coming back, and I want us to figure out how mornings are going to work this year. What do you think would help?” Kids who have a voice in building the routine are way more likely to actually follow it. They’re not complying with your rules. They’re honoring their own agreement.
And the third thing, which nobody talks about, is that the fight usually isn’t about the routine itself. It’s about the change. Kids get used to how things are, even when how things are is chaotic. The resistance you’re going to get is just friction from the shift. Push through it once or twice with calm consistency, and it usually settles down faster than you expect.
Start small. Involve them. Stay calm when they push back. The routine builds itself from there.
I want to share something I figured out the hard way. For a long time I thought showing my kids love meant providing for them, showing up to their stuff, and being in the house. That was the baseline, and I was hitting it. What I didn’t realize was that love isn’t just a feeling you have for your kids. It’s something they need to actually feel from you. And those two things are not the same.
So I started being more deliberate about three specific things. The first one is physical touch. A hug in the morning, every morning, before anything else. No matter how rushed, no matter how distracted, that one moment of physical connection before the day starts. It sounds small. It changed the whole tone of our mornings.
The second is verbal affirmation, but specific. Not “good job” and moving on. Something that shows I was actually paying attention. “I noticed how hard you worked on that.” “I saw how you handled that situation, and I’m proud of you.” It takes five extra seconds and lands completely differently than the generic version.
The third is undivided time. Not time where I’m also doing something else. Time where the only thing happening is them and me. Even fifteen minutes of that, fully present, no phone, no agenda, does more for the relationship than hours of being in the same space but somewhere else mentally.
As you’re rebuilding routines this week, these three things are worth building in deliberately. They don’t take long. But they have to be on purpose. Love that isn’t expressed in a language your kid can feel doesn’t land the same way, no matter how much of it you have.
What’s the one routine you’re committing to rebuilding this fall?
Kevin runs one of the largest youth sports organizations in the country and has watched thousands of parents on the sidelines. The way you react when your kid messes up, the expression on your face after a bad play, the car ride home, all of it is being absorbed. This conversation will change how you show up at the next game.
I thought I was showing my kids love just by being there. Turns out being there and being felt are two different things. These are the three specific things I started doing that actually changed the dynamic in my house.
We’ll keep showing up with the emails. All we ask? If this week helped you think about how your home runs, send it to a dad who’s trying to figure out the same thing.
