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 okay for your kid to be effective.

There is perhaps no remark responsible for more banal evil than this one.

I don't want my kids to be negatively affected. This is what parents say and have said for generations

and objections to just about any change, whether it was integrating schools or equal playing

time in youth sports. Sure, we say to ourselves, I'm as sympathetic as the next person

to the plight of others, but I don't want my kid to fall behind. I don't want to sacrifice their

college admissions chances. I don't want them to lose this opportunity, or lose, period. As we've

talked about in this hyper-competitive world of ours, the most dangerous thing to lose sight of is the

distinction between your kids and our kids. We can come to see even the slightest effort towards

collectivism or helping the less fortunate as a threat, as if the world is zero-sum, as if the only

lesson to teach your kids is that winning matters most. It's okay for your kids to be negatively affected from time to time.

They'll survive. How can you be confident of that? Because they have you. They have parents who

can use this as an opportunity to teach them what's really important, what their obligations are as human

beings, to teach them how to be resilient, how to understand that the obstacle is the way.

The world is better when more people have it better, not when a privileged few have every advantage

secured and every difficulty eliminated. Waiting in line builds character, being around people

different than you, builds perspective and empathy. Learning you're not that special is critical

to keeping ego in check. Of course, you want your kid's life to be good, but that doesn't mean

...