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.

How not to punish your kids. There is no avoiding the need to punish our kids from time to time.

When they speak back to their mother, when they hurt their little brother, when they fail the

vocab test, we have to do something. But what? If our goal is to deter the behavior in the future,

what should we do? Well, sometimes it's helpful to begin

with what we shouldn't do. A little while back, the political and communications consultant,

Liz Mayer, gave us parents a lesson in what not to do. Mayor took to Twitter to share,

I have resorted to burning Pokemon cards as a punishment when my kid doesn't do basic stuff he

has to do. In a follow-up tweet, she added the example that sometimes her son comes home from school

with a full lunch box. He doesn't eat his lunch. Card burnt. Now, of course, this jumps out at us as such

terrible parenting that it's not quite clear whether Liz was being serious or not.

But the sad truth is that it's not actually all that different from some typical forms of

punishment we've probably all used. Have you ever grounded your kids? Have you ever told them to go to

their rooms? Have you ever taken away their toys or their iPad privileges? These all send

the same message

as does burning their Pokemon cards. Do what I want you to do or lose out. And this might work in

the short run, but as the writer and actor Seth Rogan tweeted back, save the valuable Pokemon

cards so they can pay for therapy when they're older. Punishment shouldn't be about withdrawing and withholding

and taking away. Punishment, as we've said, should make them better. Like a coach who punishes

poor performance with extra conditioning or a judge who punishes a minor infraction with a community

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