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.

Make them do their own stuff.

There is a great story about a young Spartan woman who would one

day become queen. Despite her royal status, like all Spartans, she was raised to be self-sufficient

and without any frills or needless luxury. So imagine her surprise when she witnessed a distinguished

visitor to Sparta have his shoes put on by a servant.

Look, father, she said, the stranger has no hands out of the mouths of babes, right?

But the truth is, for some of us, it could just as easily be deduced that our kids have no

hands and no brains. We put on their clothes for them. We make their decisions. We clear

the road in front of them like a snowplow. We hover like a helicopter just in case nothing

goes wrong. We do everything for them. And then we wonder why they're helpless. We wonder why they

have trouble with anxiety or low self-esteem. Confidence is something you earn. It comes from self-sufficiency. It comes

from experience. When we coddle and baby them, when we take away their hands, we deprive them of

these critical assets. And that's not right. And it's not fair. Obviously, we talk about this in the

Stoic Parent, Ten Commandments for Being a Better Parent.

We talk about how to raise resilient, self-sufficient kids.

You can check that out at dailystoic.com slash parent.

I think it's some of the best stuff we've written here at Daily Dad about parenting.

You can check that out.

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