Pod Insights Order of Man 7 Strategies for Becoming a Better Father | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES About this episode Most men never receive training for fatherhood - but that doesn't make the role any less important.
In this week's Friday Field Notes, Ryan shares 7 strategies to become a better father and explains why your presence, discipline, standards, and personal growth matter more than you think.
Your kids are watching how you lead, how you respond to adversity, and how you show up every day. Whether your children are young, grown, or somewhere in between, these principles will help you become the father they remember and respect.
This isn't about perfection. It's about intentional fatherhood.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
00:00 Why Fatherhood Matters
02:58 Be Present, Not Just Around
04:50 Model the Man You Want Them to Become
07:09 Discipline Without Losing the Relationship
10:28 Let Your Kids Struggle
13:28 Tell Them Who They Are
17:56 Build Something Together
19:48 Father From a Full Tank
28:55 Iron Council & Final Challenge
29:36 Final Father's Day Message & Outro
If one of these principles hits home, choose one and apply it this weekend.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 And she broke a world record for being the fastest in that event for a blind woman. Because she had somebody pacing for her. She had that man pacing for her. You are that man. And I might get a little emotional as I say this, but you are the pacer. You're that pace car, or you're that person running next to that woman to break a world record. That's your job, guys. And it's a good job. It's a righteous, it's a virtuous job. It's needed more than you might imagine. Guys, there's a man somewhere in your family tree who decided what kind of father that
0:43 Speaker 00 you'd have to either overcome or live up to. And right now, today, you are, if you're a father, that man for somebody else. You know, it's the boy who watches how you handle a flat tire, or your daughter. And she might be quietly deciding what is, what a man is allowed to make her feel. And you don't get to opt out of that. You only get to decide whether you're doing well, or you're doing it by default. Obviously, Father's Day is coming up this weekend, and I want to do something more useful than just hand you a card, give you a pat on the back, give you an ugly tie,
1:27 Speaker 00 or some socks, or whatever it is. Because the reality is, is that fatherhood isn't just, it's not just a hobby that you're good or bad at. It's, I believe, the single most consequential leadership role that most men will ever hold. And the reality also is that most men, just, we don't train for it. You know, look at, look at the data. It's staggering. And it stops just being some sort of sentimental feel-good idea. Kids who are raised without an engaged father are way more likely to end up in poverty,
2:08 Speaker 00 way more likely to drop out of school, to land themselves in prison, to struggle even with their own relationships decades later.
2:18 Speaker 00 And we have spent a generation, probably even more than that, pretending that fathers are just optional. And society tells you that you're not important. You hear it all the time with the feminist movement. "We don't need no man." Well, that's nice, but your kids do. They do. They need you. It's that having a father around is optional, that it's a nice bonus, that it's a good second income stream. And it's not just that, because the absence of a father who's present and engaged and principled
2:59 Speaker 00 leaves a hole. And then society quite literally spends billions and billions of dollars trying to fill with programs and prisons and pharmaceutical companies and drugs and all these other things. And here's the point that I think, I hope, really lands for you, is that good fathers, we don't just prevent disaster. It's not a fail-safe program. Good men, we produce something.
3:31 Speaker 00 A man that fathers well is quite literally forging the next set of men and women who will carry our standards that we pass into them in a world that's really running low on standards and principles. And that's not just some side quest, or side program, or nice to have. That's your mission. That is quite literally the mission of men. So I want to get really practical with you today. Seven ways to be a better father. Not theory, not platitudes, not congratulatory celebration for the things you are not doing, but the things that you can actually do this weekend. Seven things.
4:13 Speaker 00 Number one, men, we have to be present, not just around. Presence, not proximity, I would say.
4:23 Speaker 00 Your kids don't need simply more hours from you, they need your attention. And there's a difference between a man who's in the house, just as a fixture, or as sentient as the lamp or the couch that people sit on, and a man who's actually with his family. Okay, you can sit on the same couch with your son for three hours and give him nothing, because your eyes are on this little device, or your mind is on what's happening Monday at the meeting. But presence is a decision that you make with your attention. And it's not just your calendar, it's your attention. When you're with them, be with them.
5:08 Speaker 00 Put the phone away, put it in another room, look your children in the eye. Kids are really good at seeking out BS. They know the difference between a dad who's listening, and a dad who's just like waiting for them to finish, or them to finish, so he can get back to whatever he was doing. Give them the real deal. It really costs you nothing but a little bit of time, attention, focus, and it's really, from where I stand, it's the most valuable currency you have. Number two, model the man that you want them to become. Your kids are not going to become who you tell them to be.
5:52 Speaker 00 And I get this because it's hard, it's way harder to actually live up to your own ideals than it is just to flap your gums. They will become largely who you are. You know, you can lecture your son and your daughter about integrity for an hour or longer, and then do all of it the moment that he watches you take a shortcut, or cut a corner, when you think nobody's looking. You can tell your daughter she deserves a guy who treats her with respect, and then engrain into her something entirely different by how you talk with her mom.
6:30 Speaker 00 This is the heaviest one, so we really need to sit with this. Your behavior is their curriculum. And we often talk about how the public school system is failing our kids. Are we? Are we failing our children? What does our discipline or lack thereof teach them? Or our temper? Or how we handle a setback? Or whether or not we keep our word? That's the curriculum. That's the lesson plan. And the class, unlike public school where it's, you know, eight to three or eight to four, is always, always in session when it comes to you. And there is some good news here. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to be honest and you have to be trying
7:13 Speaker 00 and you have to be building and growing and developing and getting better. I've found that in my own children's lives, when I can own my mistakes in front of my kids, whether that's telling them, hey, I messed up with this scenario, or hey, I'm sorry for the way that I treated you.
7:33 Speaker 00 That teaches them something way more powerful than a father who just pretends that he doesn't make any mistakes at all.
7:42 Speaker 00 So be the kind of man that you want your sons to be and be the kind of man that you wish your daughter will be with. That is the most important thing you can do. All right, number three. You have to be able to administer discipline without losing the relationship. And this one's hard. This one's hard for me. Because every time my kids aren't disciplined or push back on something that I suggest or, or demand, I feel a loss of respect from them. So it's really difficult for me. And this is one I've had to work on quite a bit personally. And I think a lot of men get this one backwards in one of two ways. Some go just completely soft. Right?
8:27 Speaker 00 It's that, it's that soft parenting. They want to be their, their kid's best friend. So they never hold a line and they raise a kid with no spine and no respect for boundaries. Maybe they've been given everything and so they don't know what it's like to be told no or to have a boundary in place. And then conversely, some men just go way too hard. This is, this was more along the lines of what I did.
8:57 Speaker 00 We confuse fear for respect and, and, and we win every single battle that we might have with our kids, but we lose the war. And I don't think it, maybe that's not even the best way to say it because it's not a battle with your kids. But I hope you understand what I'm saying is that you can win an argument. You can get your kids to comply through threat of discipline or punishment or restriction. But is that what you're wanting to do? Or are you trying to raise good men and women?
9:31 Speaker 00 Cause the, the kind of kids that men like that raise are the ones who grow up and cannot wait to get away from you.
9:42 Speaker 00 I think that real discipline is about teaching, not punishing. It's not punitive. It's educational.
9:50 Speaker 00 The root of the word teaching is to instruct.
9:58 Speaker 00 Your job is not to make your kid afraid of the consequences if he or she doesn't do what you tell them to. It's to help them build that internal barometer, the internal governor, that means that they don't need you just standing and hovering over them all the time. And that requires you to be really, really consistent. They have to know where the lines are. And it requires you to be calm and cool and collected. It requires correction, delivered in an appropriate way. Because if you deliver in rage, it teaches them about your temper and your lack of control,
10:40 Speaker 00 not their behavior. And that's what we're trying to audit is their behavior. We, we want our kids to behave differently. We don't want to teach them that we're out of control or that our behavior is the problem. It requires that your children never doubt, even when you're holding a very hard line, that you are in their corner, that you care about them, that you love them, that you want them to thrive and win and succeed. Number four, guys. This, I'm asking you to do some hard things today. Number four is to let your kids struggle. You do, you have to let them struggle. It runs against every instinct that you have, especially if you grew up without much for yourself
11:25 Speaker 00 and you swore to your kids or yourself that your kids would not experience what you did as a kid. But if you try to remove every single obstacle from your kid's life, that isn't love. You're, you're trying to make your own ego feel better. And what's really happening is you're crippling your kids. You are, you are hurting them. The struggle in life, just like it is for you, is where that growth happens. You know, that kid who's never allowed to fail, never allowed to feel the weight of a hard thing, never has to sit with the consequences of making dumb decisions like we all do as kids,
12:08 Speaker 00 becomes an adult who crumbles the first time you aren't around to cushion the blow. Your job is not to carry your kids. It's to walk right beside them while they learn to shoulder their own weight. And then, of course, to be there, to be steady, to be a beacon of strength and hope and, and stability when, when they stumble or when they're in trouble. But you've got to let your son lose the baseball game and just sit and wallow in it a little bit. You have to let your daughter wrestle with that hard assignment at school or that breakup with her boyfriend,
12:53 Speaker 00 instead of just doing it for her or rescuing her or telling her that she's amazing just because she is. You have to resist the urge to rescue your kids. Because every time that you attempt to solve a problem that they could have solved themselves, you're, what you're really doing is you're teaching them that you don't believe they're capable of doing it.
13:20 Speaker 00 Believe in them. Believe in yourself. Believe in humanity even, that they're tough enough and strong enough and courageous enough and resilient enough to just let life be a little hard. The caveat to that is that if your kids are in imminent danger, of course, we're gonna come in. Our motto is protect, provide, preside. There's gonna be times where I have to protect my children. And there's gonna be other times where it's more like me protecting my own feelings than it is protecting them. Alright, number five. You have to tell them who they are. Your children are in their most formative years right now. They are trying to figure out who
14:04 Speaker 00 they are on this spinning rock. They're trying to figure out their identity. And they're desperate, desperate for validation and approval from you. And they may not ever admit it, but if you don't tell them who they are, or even who you expect them to be, guess who will? The world. The filthy, degenerate entertainers of the world will tell them. The filthy, degenerate politicians will tell them. The schoolteachers who don't have your best interest or your children's interest at heart will tell them. And they'll believe it, because children are looking to
14:46 Speaker 00 authority. They don't know what to do. You can see it in a child who's two or three years old, and they'll look at you like, Daddy, what are we doing? Where do we go? They're looking for advice and guidance. The world is not kind. The world is not righteous. It's not even accurate what the world teaches our children. It's gross. It's degenerate. It's devoid of principle.
15:17 Speaker 00 You can see it in the transgender issues. You can see it in the way that we open up our borders. You can see it in the way that we view race in America. You can see it in every aspect of life. It's gross. It's harmful. So I think that we could do a better job of praising our children when they do good. Like, what good do you see in them? What should they be proud of? What did they accomplish that was on them? And it's not empty praise. And I'm willing to be honest about my kids. Like, when my kids don't do well, and they say, "What do you think, Dad?" I'm like, "I don't think you performed your best." If one of my sons says, "Hey, Dad, what'd you think about the game?" I would tell them, "Hey, I'm frustrated
16:02 Speaker 00 because I think you had more in you, and I think you left it on the field, didn't leave it on the field. I think you brought it back with you. What do you think?" But then if they do well, I celebrate that. I honor that. I respect that. I call it the American Idol Syndrome, where so many parents will just tell their kids, "You're great. You're wonderful. You can sing. You can do so great." And then they go into the world, and they stand in front of Simon Cowell on American Idol, or America's Got Talent, I think it is now, and he rips them to shreds because at least he's willing to be honest where you weren't.
16:39 Speaker 00 Kids can see through, "Hey, good job, bud. You did good." But if you really observe what they're doing, and you tell them, "Hey, I saw how you stood up for that kid when no one else would." That's courage. That's what Nicklers do. And that's who you are. You're gonna get to hand them a narrative, an identity, a belief system, that they will carry around for decades, even if it doesn't feel like it sticks immediately. Make it a real one. Make it a true one. Make it a principled one. Make it a strong one.
17:14 Speaker 00 And tell them that you love them. My, my children, my oldest son, who's 18 years old, and all of my kids will do this. They will say in front of their friends, "Dad, I love you." And I will say, "I love you," in front of their friends. I'm not embarrassed about that. I'm not ashamed about that. I will tell them in front of their friends, "I'm proud of you for who you're being. I'm proud of the way that you showed up. I'm proud of the way you did that thing." And by the way, I also tell that to their friends, too, that I'm familiar with. Because there might not be a man in those kids' lives who are telling them that. A lot of us were raised by men who, who did love us, but they never expressed it.
17:58 Speaker 00 And then we felt this big gap. You don't, don't pass that down. Love on your kids emotionally, mentally, physically. Hug them. Put your arm around them. Cry with them. You know, not, not at the expense or, or, or of your own authority in their lives, but like, be there with them. Tell them when they do good. Tell them when they don't do so good. Give them the real answers. All right, number six, build something together. Enlist them in the, in the growth. Connection does not happen when you sit a kid down and you say, "Hey, let's connect, buddy. I really want to talk with you about how your day was."
18:43 Speaker 00 They, kids don't want to do that. They want to do something shoulder to shoulder in, in doing, especially boys. We, we as men, we open up sideways. Women open up face to face, men open up sideways. So not across a table, but while you're both working on something. When's the last time you taught your kid how to change a tire?
19:08 Speaker 00 When's the last time you just sat and built Lego with them? Or, or built a workbench with them?
19:16 Speaker 00 Boys need their hands busy, eyes on a task. And then the conversation that you're hoping to have with your kids shows up in the truck, in the garage, on the trail, halfway through the project you're doing and you can't figure it out. Build something, like fix the fence with them. Teach them a skill you have. Maybe you're good at jujitsu, or shooting guns, or fixing plumbing, or painting, or building websites. Take on hard things as a team with them. Hey bud, let me show you this. I'm doing this thing right now. Let's do it together.
19:54 Speaker 00 And I'm not saying that they're always gonna be real excited about that, right? Like when I tell my kids, "Hey, I need help with this thing," they're like, "Ugh." And I get it, I wouldn't have been excited about it either, but if I make it fun and engaging, and even if I don't, they're gonna remember that forever.
20:10 Speaker 00 Because the beauty in that is that your kids will get to see you solve problems. They'll see you frustrated, but push through it and, and finish it, complete the task. That's the memory that they need. That's a lesson that will be embedded into their code, into their DNA.
20:28 Speaker 00 And guys, the last point that I want to make on this Father's Day weekend is I really want you to father from a full tank.
20:37 Speaker 00 This one might be the hardest for men. You cannot give your kids the steadiness and the stability and the strength they need that you don't have. If you're suffering, or you're running on empty,
20:52 Speaker 00 or you have no mission of your own, no brotherhood, no, no physical discipline, no spiritual growth, you have nothing to draw on when your kids need you the most.
21:05 Speaker 00 I know this because this was me. I showed up irritable and distracted, very reactive, impatient. I had, I had nothing left in the tank. And this is why your own development isn't selfish. It's actually the foundation for development in your children. The work that you do on yourself, the standards you hold for your own body, and your mind, and your soul.
21:35 Speaker 00 That's, that's character. That's what fills the tank that you're gonna be drawing from, siphoning from, to give to your children for the next, potentially 20 years. Take care of yourself, guys. It's okay, it's not selfish. The way that I view selfishness is you're doing something at the expense of others. But I don't think it's selfish to do something for yourself that aligns with the interests of the people that you have a responsibility for. So I don't think it's selfish for me to wake up early and go to the gym, because it aligns with what my children need from me. I don't think it's selfish to go on a hunting trip every once in a while,
22:18 Speaker 00 not all the time, but every once in a while, because me going to spend time with my friends, doing something that I love, pursuing something meaningful and exciting to me lets me come back more engaged and aligns with what they need from me as their father. That is not how I define selfishness. Now, do you get some benefit from it? Of course. But because in its alignment with their goals, or what they need from you, you can take the negative connotation of selfishness out of it. Now, look, if I went on every hunting trip that was presented to me, then I'd be gone every single weekend, and that would be selfish,
22:58 Speaker 00 because at that point, we've crossed the boundary from self-care to distancing myself from my children and being not present, like one of the points we talked about earlier. So that would be selfish. Take care of yourself so you have something to give. Surround yourself with other men who hold you to a standard. I don't believe that the father of our, or excuse me, the quality of our fathering, or the quality of our life in general, will outpace the quality of our skillset. How could it? How could you produce the amount of wealth that you want to produce if you are lazy?
23:41 Speaker 00 How could you produce the types of relationships that you want in your life if you don't love yourself, if you hate yourself?
23:52 Speaker 00 How can you raise your children in righteousness if you are not righteous? How can you do that? You can't. You have to be the barometer by which your children measure themselves. Not as a comparison trap, not as I can't ever step outside of my father's shadow. Not at all, because the other things I talked about are important as well. But you have to be the benchmark. I was watching this beautiful clip the other day. And it was this woman, and it's probably, maybe even at this point, a decade old. It's this, it's this female athlete. And obviously, she's very talented, fit. She can run. She's just an incredible athlete. And she's blind.
24:36 Speaker 00 And there's a man running beside her. And you can see it. He's, she can feel him. Maybe, maybe it's his arm or his leg rubbing against her as she runs. He's probably communicating verbally to her, although the video does not show the exchange they have. And she broke a world record for being the fastest in that event for a, for a blind woman. Because she had somebody pacing for her. She had that man pacing for her. You are that man. And I might get a little emotional as I say this, but you are the pacer. You're that pace car, or you're that person running next to that woman to break a world record.
25:20 Speaker 00 That's your job, guys. And it's a good job. It's a righteous, it's a virtuous job. It's, it's, it's needed more than you might imagine. Or maybe you do fully imagine. Maybe you do fully know. Maybe your dad wasn't around and you get it. Or maybe he was. Or maybe he passed away and that was the greatest loss you ever experienced.
25:51 Speaker 00 Obviously, this is Father's Day weekend. It's a big deal. Don't dismiss the value you add to society. Don't let other people dismiss what you do. Don't let society and culture and entertainment and academia make a mockery of the way that we show up as men. It is not to be mocked. It is to be celebrated. It's to be honored. It's to be embraced. Be present, guys. Model masculinity and manliness. Discipline your children with love. Let them struggle under your watchful care.
26:27 Speaker 00 Tell them who they are. Build things together. And father from that full tank we just talked about. So here's what I want you to do this weekend.
26:40 Speaker 00 Don't try to fix everything in the next 48 hours. Because your kids and maybe your wife are gonna be like, "What in the world has gotten into this guy?" And they may not believe you or may not be bought in. But pick one thing. Maybe it's just being more present. Putting your phone away. Maybe it's letting them come into the workshop and build something with you. Maybe it's not rescuing them every time they run into a problem. Just pick one. The hardest. The one that landed most for you. The hardest thing.
27:10 Speaker 00 And there's a reason that one of those things probably really landed for you. And then act on it this weekend. While it's here, while it's in front of you. Have that conversation with your kids. Tell your son and daughter you love them. Hug them. Say, "Hey, let's go build something together. Let's go on a hike." Say the words that you've been meaning to say. No one's gonna do this for you. Nobody can do it for you. And even if I could or somebody else could, it won't land as well as it can from coming from you. If I tell your children that they are loved, that means nothing compared to you saying, "Hey, kids, I love you."
27:49 Speaker 00 Your kids didn't choose to be here and you didn't either. You, you brought them into this world. It's hard. It's, it's beautiful. It's amazing, but it's hard. And the kind of men and women that they'll become will be shaped more than anything else. And I hope this is true by you and how you showed up. Or how you didn't. So this Father's Day, be the guy who shows up. And not just this weekend, but every single day for the rest of their lives. I've often said that a man's job as a father is to render himself obsolete. And that is true. I still stand by that.
28:31 Speaker 00 Your job is to render yourself obsolete, but that doesn't mean that when they go out into the big wide world on their own, that you aren't going to be there for them. My oldest son just graduated. He's going out on his own. He's going to college and he's playing sports in college and, you know, it's like, I still want to be there and present every day, all day. I want to be present for him. It's going to be different. The dynamic's going to be different. I'm still important in his life. So guys, if you're a father, first, first and foremost, well, last and foremost, I wish you a happy Father's Day. Where all of society or much of is telling you that you're a joke, that you're a mockery, that masculinity is inherently bad and that you don't know what you're doing and you don't, the world don't need no man.
29:15 Speaker 00 I'm here to tell you the opposite. You are what makes things move. You are the person that your children look up to for guidance and insight and direction and discipline and focus. So let's be that. I've got four kids. I can do better. I know you can too, and I know you want to. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if that weren't the case. So again, happy Father's Day to you fathers. What a beautiful day. Enjoy your family. But remember it with those seven points in mind. Go work on yourself. And if you need some pointers or tips, we'll be here. The Iron Council is a great resource. We have fatherhood channels. A lot of guys talking about how to be better fathers because it is such a pressing issue. Head to orderofman.com/ironcouncil.
30:02 Speaker 00 All right, guys. We will be back on Tuesday for an interview. Until then, go out there, take action, become the father that you are meant to be.
30:12 Speaker 01 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be? We invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.
Previous Invest in Self-Improvement, Take a Year For Yourself, and Never Seek Validation | ASK ME ANYTHING Next GEORGE from TheTinMen | Why Men Are Killing Themselves Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
