Happy Sunday, dads.
Andrew here. Quick question. When was the last time your kid was bored? Like actually, genuinely, staring-at-the-ceiling bored with nothing to scroll, nothing to watch, no notification pulling their attention somewhere else?
If you’re struggling to remember, you’re not alone. And honestly, the same question applies to us. When was the last time you sat with your own thoughts for more than thirty seconds before reaching for your phone?
We are raising the first generation of kids who have never known a world without algorithms. Platforms designed by the smartest engineers on the planet, specifically built to capture attention and not let go. Your kid’s brain is being shaped by what they consume every single day, and most of the time, nobody’s curating that. The algorithm is.
That’s not a reason to panic. But it is a reason to pay attention. Because the dad who understands what’s actually happening inside those screens is the dad who can have a real conversation about it with his kids. And the dad who’s honest about his own relationship with his phone is the one his kids are actually going to listen to.
This week is about that. Not a lecture on screen time limits. A real conversation about what it actually means to raise a kid and be a dad, in a world that’s constantly competing for your attention.
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 algorithm optimizes for the next scroll. This week we’re optimizing for the next five years. In a week where we’re talking about screens and what’s competing for your kid’s attention, these two challenges pull in the opposite direction, way out into the long game. One asks you to picture the dad you want to be five years from now. The other asks you to plant a seed in your kid that might not fully grow for twenty years. Both of those things happen in small moments. Starting today.
Tonight, write three sentences about who you want to be as a dad in five years. Not what your kids will be doing. Who you’ll be. The man. The father. The presence in their lives. Be specific. Then look at this week honestly. Did you take any steps toward that version of yourself? Because five years is closer than it sounds. And the dad you want to be in five years is being built by the choices you’re making right now, this week, not someday. Three sentences. Tonight.
Today, say one sentence to your kid that imagines them as a parent someday. “When you have kids, you’ll remember this.” “When you’re a dad, you’ll see what I mean.” “When you raise your own, you’ll get to choose how you do it.” It sounds simple. It lands deeper than you think. You’re not just raising them. You’re raising the next generation of parents. And the seed you plant now, the idea that they’re becoming someone who’ll do this themselves, grows for decades. One sentence today. That’s the whole flex.
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 Dr. Natasha Cabrera, Professor at the University of Maryland, Director of the Family Involvement Lab, and one of the world’s leading researchers on fatherhood.
Dr. Natasha has spent decades studying what father involvement actually does to kids. And I mean really studying it, not just talking about it. This is someone who has run the numbers, tracked the outcomes, and built her career around understanding what happens to children when their dads show up and what happens when they don’t.
Here’s the thing that hit me hardest from our conversation. She said your dad identity- the story you tell yourself about what kind of dad you are and what kind of dad you’re capable of being- is one of the strongest predictors of how involved you actually become. Not your job. Not your schedule. Not how much money you make. The story.
Dads who believe they matter to their kids show up as they matter. Dads who see themselves as secondary, as a backup parent, as someone who’s just there to provide, show up like that too. And the kids feel the difference even when they can’t name it.
What I took from Dr. Natasha is that this identity isn’t something you’re born with. It’s built. Intentionally. Through the daily decisions, the small moments, the way you talk about yourself as a dad even when nobody’s listening. The belief comes first. The behavior follows.
So before you write those three sentences in tonight’s Solo Flex, read that again. Who you think you are as a dad is who your kid gets.
“How do I raise a kid who has a healthy relationship with technology when I’m not even sure I have one myself?”
— Chris, dad of four, DadderUp community
This is the most honest question I’ve gotten in a while and I respect it. Because most dads ask how to fix their kids’ screen habits without ever looking at their own. You’re already ahead just by acknowledging the whole picture.
And I’ll be real with you, I’m in this too. I run a business, I create content, my whole work life lives on a phone and a computer. There are days where I put the phone down, and there are days where work pulls me back in, and I look up and realize I’ve been half-present for the last two hours. I’m not standing here with a perfect track record on this. I’m standing here as someone who’s actively working on it, just like you.
Here’s what I’ve learned, though. You cannot teach what you don’t model. If your kid sees you reaching for your phone the second there’s a quiet moment, scrolling at dinner, half-listening while you check notifications, that’s the relationship with technology they’re going to absorb. Not what you say about it. What they watch you do with it every single day.
So the answer to your question is actually two answers at once. You work on yours, and you involve your kid in the process. Instead of coming to your kid with rules handed down from on high, you come to them with honesty. “I’ve been thinking about how much time we both spend on our phones, and I don’t think it’s great. What do you think we should do about it?” That conversation does three things. It models self-awareness. It gives them ownership. And it makes the solution something you built together instead of something you enforced on them.
Kids don’t need a perfect parent. They need an honest one. The dad who says “I’m working on this too” and then actually works on it is more powerful than any screen time rule you could ever set.
Start with yourself. Involve them in the fix.
For a long time, I thought I was a present dad because I was physically there. I was home. I was in the room. I was around. And in my head, that counted.
What I didn’t see was what my kids were actually experiencing. They weren’t getting a present dad. They were getting a dad who was technically there but actually somewhere else, in whatever was on the screen, in whatever notification just came in, in whatever work thing I told myself couldn’t wait.
The version of me I thought I was showing up as and the version of me they were actually getting were two completely different people.
It took me a while to close that gap. And honestly, I still have to work at it. But the shift started the moment I stopped measuring my presence by how many hours I was home and started measuring it by how many of those hours I was actually in the room in a way my kids could feel.
That’s a harder standard. It exposes a lot. But it’s also the right one.
If you’ve been telling yourself you’re present because you’re physically there, this week is a good week to look a little closer at what “there” actually means to your kids.
How do you handle screen time in your house?
The full conversation. Dr. Natasha has spent her career running the numbers on what father involvement actually does to kids. The thing that hit me hardest was this: the story you tell yourself about what kind of dad you are is one of the strongest predictors of how involved you actually become. Worth every minute.
I thought I was a present dad because I was physically there. I was wrong. This is the moment I realized the version of me I thought my kids were getting and the version they were actually getting were two different people, and what I did about it.
We’ll keep showing up with the emails. All we ask? If this landed, forward it to a dad who’s fighting the same battle with screens. He’s not alone.
