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.

Have you really understood this?

The last few years have been incredibly difficult, a pandemic, wildfires, floods, intense political polarization, punctuated by political unrest.

Schools have closed, parents have fought with each other. The economy is whipsawed. Prices have skyrocketed.

Scientists tell us that the change is not exactly perceptible, but it feels like everything is getting hotter like nature's metastructures are breaking apart and everything

is in danger. It's been stressful and hard on you too, yes? Well, how hard do you think it's been

on your kids? Sure, our kids are resilient. They're stronger than some people seem to think, and we've tried to shield them, but there's only so much we can do and only so strong they can be. This has to have been extremely tough on them. How could it not be? How could they not sense and feel what's going on? And whether they're four or 14 or 40, they do not have the skills or experience that you have in dealing with stuff like this. They don't have the perspective. They haven't been through things like this before. They don't yet fully understand the wisdom of that old Zen story about how one should wait and see before deciding whether events have been fully good or bad. So what do they need from you? They need patience. They need space. They need help.

They need someone who encourages them, who picks them back up, who empathizes with them.

They need someone who understands, as we've said, that behavior is the first language of children,

and that you'll see where and how they're struggling long before they're able to tell you.

Maybe your parents couldn't do that for you.

Maybe they didn't get that kind of patience and space and support from their parents,

so they had nothing to pass on to you.

Well, just because they didn't know what to do doesn't mean that you can't learn.

And that's part of the reason you're here, right?

What you can do right now is break that chain and be that anchor,

be that shelter for your kids.

They need it.

The world needs it.

Hey, thank you for listening to the Daily Dad podcast.

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