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.

Let's get to the bottom of it. They have questions. You have answers. That's how this works,

right? Sure, if you want to be the human form of a Google search. But if you want your kids to know how to figure stuff out, well,

you'll have to teach them how to figure stuff out. The author Susan Cheever tells a story of

Henry Thoreau, who before he was a great writer was a teacher. The school he taught out was close to a river,

and it was a source of endless fascination to the kids, mainly what made so many of the interesting

sounds that came from the water. It has been disputed whether the noise was caused by frogs,

one student reflected later. Mr. Thoreau, however, caught three very small frogs and two of them

in the act of chirping,

while bringing them home, one of them chirped in his hat.

Isn't that lovely?

Thoreau didn't just dismiss their question with an obvious answer.

He showed them how to go to the source of things.

He showed them the importance of following your curiosity.

And Thoreau was full of demonstrations like that.

For instance, he gave each student a

small plot of land and taught them how to survey together, how to grow plants, and how to observe

what was happening on their plots. So yes, we're busy. Yes, we know stuff. But we're trying to

teach them as we've written that everything is figureoutable. We're trying to teach them how to figure stuff out.

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