Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you

with your most important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy,

by practical wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

Give them this stuff.

The novelist John Steinbeck used to write his novels with pencils. In 1952, he was wearing himself

out with his greatest novel east of Eden. He was also wearing down his pencils one by one as the words

poured out. I detest short pencils, he wrote in his journal. I think I will discard the short ones today

as I finished with each one.

I take them to Tom, his seven-year-old son, who uses them to draw with. To him, they are not short pencils.

Isn't that beautiful? As we say, one man's trash is another man's treasure. That metal box that

something came in at work is not just packaging to a kid. It's literally a

treasure chest. Your old car is not a lame piece of junk to a teenager. It's a ticket to freedom.

The nosebleed seats you got from a client are a memory you and your daughter will never forget,

and on and on and on. We have to go through this world with an eye for how children would see it.

It's easy to be jaded. It's easy to get spoiled. But we forget. To them, there is no such thing as a

short pencil. In fact, the short ones are actually better. If we can remember that, not only will

we find many opportunities to make them happy, but we will make

ourselves happier too, because we will be seeing the joy and things. Look for the treasure,

and you will find it. I think one of my favorite things about being a parent is sort of made me

a kid again in a weird way. So every night,

my wife and I have a bowl of Magic Spoon cereal. It's the dessert we have. We try to generally

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