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.

It's good practice.

Stephen Ronella began taking his kids hunting and fishing as soon as they were old enough.

Why?

Well, for starters, because it's his job, as an outdoorsman and author, but also because he, like all

parents, tries to find a way to balance work and life.

But the other reason is because there are all sorts of lessons in it.

One of the beauties of hunting and fishing, Rinella writes in his book, Outdoor Kids and

Inside World, is that they force kids to reckon with failure and to struggle against their

own impatience, being cold and wet, being bored, being tired, needing to be quiet,

needing to make hard decisions, doing everything

right and coming up empty, screwing up, as that Jimmy Carter story we told recently illustrates,

having to figure out how to master your equipment, facing life and death, experiencing the joys

of success. In short, it's all practice. Now, certainly you're free to have your own

ethical objections to hunting or fishing or both, but that only means you'll have to be more creative.

What activities are you finding for them? What activities are you doing together? It challenges them

in this fashion. It's forcing them to reckon with the failure and impatience,

as Ronella discussed, because life will demand these skills from them on a daily basis.

Will they have the practice that they need?

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