A TikTok dad says any parents-only trip longer than three nights is selfish. I disagree, and in this episode I explain why. I think the job of a parent is to raise kids who can eventually live without us, and that means letting them feel some discomfort instead of rescuing them every time. I share what the Army taught me about "embracing the suck," what our kids learned while I was deployed and while my wife went through breast cancer, and how my son handled emergencies when we weren't home. I also make the case that time alone with your wife is one of the best things you can do for your kids.

We also hit 1,300 streams. Thank you for listening and sharing. If you know a dad whose story other dads could learn from, I'd love to hear about him.

Don't sleepwalk through fatherhood. Be Dadical.

Davin Woodard grew up in Baton Rouge, raised by a single father who scheduled his vacation days around his son’s football games. At 18, Davin walked into the largest parish jail in Louisiana and spent the next several years learning more about human behavior than most people absorb in a lifetime.

Now a detective and TikTok creator at Save Fatherhood, Davin has seen the pipeline from every angle -- the jail, the streets, and now investigations. And the through-line he keeps finding is the same one: a missing father.

In this conversation, Davin shares what it was like to manage 120 men at 18 years old and the lesson that changed everything -- that those men weren’t bad guys, they were just humans who’d never been given the right tools. He talks about what fatherlessness actually looks like up close, why men without a male role model treat authority as a threat, and the juvenile wing moment that made it impossible to call it coincidence.

He also talks about his own dad -- a shift-working single father he calls the closest thing to God he knows -- and what it meant to always be able to look up in the stands and find him there.

If you’ve ever wondered what the data on fatherlessness looks like in real life, Davin has seen it. And he’s doing something about it.

The numbers don’t lie. In 1960, 5% of children were born outside of marriage. By 1990 that number was 30%. The number of kids growing up without a father in the home has essentially doubled in one generation. And somewhere along the way, we decided that was progress.

12 episodes and 900 streams in, I wanted to sit down and share what I’ve actually learned from the conversations I’ve been having. Because something is shifting. Dads are more present than they’ve ever been, and the ones showing up to do this right aren’t bumbling idiots -- they’re deliberate, purpose-driven fathers who understand what’s at stake.

In this solo episode I walk through my four biggest takeaways from the first year of the Dadical Podcast: why loving their mom is the most universal theme I’ve encountered, what it actually means to be present versus just being nearby, why protecting your kids from struggle is one of the worst things you can do for them, and why the most important question you can ask yourself as a dad is -- what am I helping them become?

You want to change the world? It starts in your own home.

You’ve heard Aaron Brooker as a guest on the Dadical Podcast. This week, the tables are turned. I had the chance to sit down with Aaron on his show, @attadad, and answer some of the same questions I ask my own guests.

We talked about what it’s like to parent a 19-year-old while still raising teenagers, why survival mode is so easy to stay stuck in, and what it actually looks like to keep life normal for your kids when your family is going through something hard. I shared a tradition we’ve built in our home around family prayer that has had a bigger impact than I ever expected, and why I wish I had spent more time working shoulder to shoulder with my kids instead of just telling them what to do.

This one is a little different. Same mission, different seat.

If you haven’t already, go give Aaron a follow at @attadad and check out the free resources he has available at attadad.com. He’s putting out great content and the tools he’s built for dads are worth your time.

Aaron Brooker (@attadad) spent 14 years teaching middle schoolers in the toughest part of Omaha before moving into disability insurance. What he learned in those classrooms shaped everything about how he parents his three boys — Elias, Jonas, and Ari.

In this episode, Aaron and Seth dig into the frameworks Aaron has built and shared for free on his site: his cell phone contract, family meetings, and the power of consistency over perfection. Aaron’s dad was a quiet, faithful provider with a stutter — who wrote a Christmas letter every year and gave his son a voice to look back on. That tradition lives on.

They also hit a genuine disagreement: should you go through your kids’ phones? Seth says yes, no illusion of privacy. Aaron says he respects the boundary to stay their trusted advisor after high school. No resolution — just two dads thinking out loud.

The conversation ends with legacy: “Dad loved us for who we are. He apologized often, forgave fast, and was patient. And it all pointed toward something bigger.”

Find Aaron’s free resources at attadad.com | Follow him @attadad

Nav Prasad's dad left Fiji at twenty years old with no high school diploma, no connections, and no plan. He worked hotel kitchens and theater jobs, battled racism, found his way into car sales, and became one of the top ten car salespeople in the country competing from a small town against people from New York and Florida. He brought his siblings over and helped them build lives. He is now seventy one years old and still works by appointment only.

Nav watched all of that from a distance.

Now he is trying to do for his boys what his dad did for him. Just closer. More side by side. More present.

Nav has two sons. His oldest is nineteen and autistic. His youngest is ten and will walk up to a stranger in a grocery store and start a conversation without hesitating. Nav will tell you that did not happen by accident.

In this conversation Nav talks about what it meant to grow up watching a father build something from nothing and what he is deliberately passing down to his own boys. He talks about parenting a child with autism, what the diagnosis at fifteen clarified, and what he learned from those early years that he applies to his younger son today. He talks about youth sports as a vehicle for building resilience and why so many parents are wasting one of the best opportunities they have to connect with their kids. And he shares the framework that might be the most practically useful idea we have discussed on this show.

Failure is information.

Not an identity. Not a destination. Data. It tells you what to work on. And teaching your kids to see it that way might be one of the most important gifts you can give them.

Nav downloaded TikTok four weeks before we recorded this conversation. One month and a million views later he is clearly onto something.

New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts by searching Dadical or visit dadicalpodcast.com

Some stories are hard to hear. This is one of them.

Jason Miller grew up without a father. As the product of a one-night stand, he was raised in an abusive home with no father figure and very few positive influences in his life. His grandfather was murdered when he was ten. He was abused by the son of a pastor who was supposed to protect him. And by the time he reached high school he had run out of reasons to believe his life was worth living.

He found one anyway.

Today Jason is a husband of 25 years, a father of two, and the lead pastor of a church of nearly a thousand people. He coaches leaders for a living. And he builds resilience in others out of the exact places where his own was forged.

In this conversation Jason talks about what it felt like to grow up feeling completely unwanted and unworthy of love. He talks about the men who showed up for him when no one else would and what those moments of unexpected kindness did for a kid who desperately needed them. He talks about the long and non-linear work of healing — not recovering, but being redeemed. And he talks about what he is most deliberate about giving his own children because of everything he had to find on his own.

Jason taught us that a few chapters do not make a novel. You cannot choose your circumstances. But you can choose to take control of your story.

This one is worth your time.

If you or someone you know is struggling help is available. Call or text 988.

New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts by searching Dadical or visit dadicalpodcast.com

Most of us picture fatherhood on a fairly predictable timeline. Finish school, start a career, meet someone, start a family. Chris Stream's path looked nothing like that.

Chris spent his twenties and thirties building his career and searching for the right person to build a life with. He did not get married until his late forties. And when he did, it came with more moving pieces than most people navigate in a lifetime.

His wife Brooke was a widow. Her daughter Campbell had never known her biological father. Chris became an instant dad to a five year old while simultaneously marrying for the first time and navigating the legal complexities of adoption. Then came a premature baby who spent three months in the NICU. Then a son born into a family that was still finding its footing.

He will turn sixty this year. His son is eleven.

In this conversation Chris talks about what it means to be an older father, the deliberate advantages it brings, and the challenges nobody tells you about. He and Brooke had the financial stability to invest in experiences over things, but that created its own parenting challenge: how do you build resilience and work ethic in kids when it would be easy to just give them everything?

He also talks about parenting a child with Tourette's without defaulting to medication, why he has always talked to his kids like adults rather than children, the weekly family ranking system he uses to keep his kids competing for his attention, and how his son Calvin at eleven years old articulated something profound about the difference between the family you are born into and the family you build.

Chris is a college professor, a Las Vegas native, and one of the more unconventional dads we have had on the show. His path to fatherhood was anything but typical. What he built when he got there is worth hearing about.

New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts by searching Dadical or visit dadicalpodcast.com