Part 3: When the System Learns the Family
The art of tweaking systems to meet the spirit of your family, not rule them.
Hey 👋 I’m excited for this 4-part series I’m co-writing with Leo Rule from Align the Family. We come at intentional parenting from different angles. Leo focus’s on systems and visibility, I focus on regulation and presence. We realized our approaches aren’t opposites. They’re complements. This series explores how the best parents tap into both.
The reading system started the way most good systems do.
With a clear intention and a lot of optimism.
Twenty minutes of reading for each boy.
A tracker on a clipboard.
Books carefully picked to be just a little above their reading level, enough to push them.
Science-backed timing spread across the week so they’d grow up to be super readers.
Overly planned.
Simple for them.
Measurable.
Reasonable.
Possibly laminated.
On paper, it made perfect sense.
In real life, it was a disaster.
Different reading levels. Different attention spans. Different interests. One kid melting down while another finished early, while another was secretly playing in the basement. Someone upside down on the couch. Someone passionately arguing that graphic novels “don’t count.”
What I imagined would be a calm, focused rhythm, maybe even twenty quiet minutes for us parents to read and breathe like competent adults, felt loud, uneven, and honestly exhausting.
The system wasn’t producing what I hoped it would, even though it was perfectly crafted to run itself.
And that’s where this part of the work showed up for me…
when the system finally had something to learn.
When Awareness Changes the Work
That moment Leo described in Part 1, when the system was working but he wasn’t really in it, is familiar. I’ve lived that moment more times than I can count.
Everything is technically running.
And yet, nothing feels alive.
I’m white-knuckling it, trying to convince myself this is what the research says is good, while my kids are in, out, or somewhere in between depending on the lunar cycle.
That tension is part of why I started the Daily Dad Reset. Not to throw out structure, but to notice when it’s time to reset how I’m showing up inside it.
Because systems rarely warn you when they’ve turned you into a facilitator instead of a dad. Awareness does.
That awareness is the spirit side of the work for me.
What I finally noticed was how differently each of us was showing up.
The kids. And me.
They were reading.
But the energy was compliance, not curiosity.
The system didn’t need to be stricter.
It needed to adapt to my kids.
Adjusting the Shape Without Losing the Structure
So we didn’t throw the system out.
We adjusted the shape.
More morning snuggles with a book instead of forced focus at night.
Independent reading where graphic novels were not just allowed, but welcomed.
Family reading nights where one book belonged to all of us.
Eventually, we added a simple incentive. When the family book ended, we watched the movie together. Think less bribe, more shared finish line.
That opened the door to great debates. Which was better, the book or the movie?
Themed movie nights. Specialty dinners. The occasional costume.
My third son even informed us that he clearly needed to work on his imagination, because the Harry Potter movie looked nothing like what he’d pictured while we were reading.
The structure stayed. Twenty minutes a day.
Most days, they read and we read…
and somehow it worked better than anything I’d designed.
The spirit brought it to life and gave it a rhythm we could return to.
Snuggles. Graphic novels. Shared stories.
More fun.
More laughs.
More memories.
I widened the doorway,
and the system took care of itself.
And slowly, the love of reading began to lead the system instead of the other way around.
The rule held, but the rhythm is what stuck.
One Thing to Try This Week
Try this once.
Pick one system you’re already running.
Bedtime. Reading. Dinner. Homework.Notice how your kids are actually engaging.
Not whether they’re complying. How they’re showing up.Adjust the shape, not the intention.
Keep the structure. Let awareness refine it.
Small shifts compound when they’re allowed to.
Why This Matters
Rigid systems eventually break.
Sometimes they break themselves.
Sometimes they break the people inside them.
No systems at all eventually causes drift, as goals fade and attention finds something else to attach to.
Living systems adapt.
To people.
To seasons.
To rhythms.
We want them to remember how it felt to be inside it. Or better yet, to grow into loving the very thing the system was meant to support.
Reading.
Chores.
Teamwork.
Faith.
With memories light enough to carry forward,
without tension settling back into their shoulders.
Closing Reminder
You don’t need better systems.
You need systems that are willing to listen.
That’s where spirit does its work,
and where systems become rhythms your family can trust.
P.S.
This post is part of a 4-part series on Systems & Spirit, written with Leo from Align Your Fam and Jeremy from The Daily Dad Reset.
In Part 1, we named the core tension: systems without spirit create managers, spirit without systems creates drift → check it out here.
In Part 2, Leo did a deep dive on his side, how visibility protects families from drift when done right → check it out here
In Part 4, we’ll bring it all together with a simple model for knowing when to hold the line and when to hold your kid.
 | A guest post by
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A great system does wonders. But staying adaptable is how you keep returning each day to some form of that ideal system.
Rigid systems crack under pressure. Living systems flex. That’s true in the cockpit and at the dinner table. Loved how you widened the doorway instead of throwing it out.