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.

It's not fair. We expect so much of our kids. We push them. We prod them. We tell them what to do.

We punish them, however lightly when they fall short.

What we forget, as we've said before, is just how hard it is to be a kid.

What we lose track of is how impossible our expectations often are for these little humans who lack the decades of life experience were absent-mindedly

taking for granted. Old people are always very impatient with young ones, Winston Churchill once

said in a moment of honesty to his son and his daughter-in-law. Fathers always expect their sons to have

their virtues without their faults.

This was not only achingly true in Churchill's case with his own father, but much less

excusably true with Churchill and his own son.

Churchill fought with his son over reckless spending and impulsive decisions.

Yet he was just as guilty of those things. He was guilty of putting

incredible pressure on his son, too, expecting him to continue the family dynasty, as if there was

some obvious blueprint for all this, as if Churchill's own success hadn't been the result of his

own impulsive decisions, and of course, impossibly irreplicable luck.

There is no blueprint.

And to assume there is or worse, to pretend to your kid that there is one is wildly unfair.

Can we have expectations for our kids?

Yes.

Can we try to make sure they don't fall into the same traps or develop the same vices as us?

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