Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from

parents just like you all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Again, you can't do this. As we've said before, Winston Churchill experienced firsthand what an

absentee father looks like and swore never to become one. He was constantly chasing his father,

hoping for affection, attention, even interest from the man he idealized and idolized. And he never

got it. With his own children, Josh Ireland writes and Churchill and Winston would invite his children into his bedroom and read aloud to them for an hour or so, make them late for bed and himself late for dinner. He might even help them with their essays. And while this was wonderful and beautiful, it was not sufficient. As Ireland writes, no matter how

fond Winston was of his children, he rarely spent anything other than very short bursts of time with

them. Churchill was fun and attentive, but then immediately turned back to other matters where he spent

the bulk of his time throughout his adult life. And certainly this was better than his own father's

outright neglect, but it still perpetuated the same intergenerational trauma, creating needy

children who felt the need to chase their father, who feared being frozen out or forgotten.

We have to make time for our kids, but holidays and birthdays are not enough.

We have to make time consistently.

We have to do it in concentrated blocks.

Our kids are not diversions.

They are not things we can turn off and on.

They require and they deserve our full focus.

They deserve extended periods of time.

They deserve to feel like a priority. They deserve the security of time. They deserve to feel like a priority.

They deserve the security of paternity.

Doing better than our own parents is a low bar.

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