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 you, you know. They are so like you, so like their mother. They have the same affect. They have

the same bad habits, the same hopes, the same fears that you did when you were their age. And this

helps you be patient with them, helps you connect them, helps you get them what they need. You

understand or so you think. There's the great line in the use of Kat

Steven song where the son sings of his father, but really of all older people. It's them,

they know, not me, he says. Every generation condescends, every parent projects, purports to grasp

something that the young person is still

developing and figuring out from scratch, something inherently ungraspable. Every person is

unique and new and their own, none more so than our own kids. Our own experiences, our own work can

give us a glimpse into other people, but we have to accept the limitations of that knowledge.

We have to be humble and deferential as a matter, of course.

If we want to be an understanding parent, then we've got to understand that there's some things we're never going to fully understand.

We're going to have to listen. We're going to have to trust.

We're going to have to let them do things we don't get.

Go in directions we're unsure of.

We're going to have to let them be themselves.

Going to have to let them get to know themselves.

It's not our job to know.

It's our job to support them.

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