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.

Only later will you see this. Only later, Joan Didion wrote of her daughter, did I see that I had

been raising her as a doll. Grieving, heartbroken over the sudden and tragic loss of her family,

which is detailed in the moving books a year of magical thinking and blue nights. Joan Didion

was almost certainly being too hard on herself.

And yet, aren't we all a little guilty of this? The way we dress up our little boys is cute

gentlemen. The way we dress our daughters up as princesses. The way we try to shape them to fit our

fantasies as athletes or Ivy leaguers from the time they are born. The way we try to pick their major, set them up in a career or a business, try to get them to fit our fantasies as athletes or Ivy Leaguers from the time they are born. The way we try to

pick their major, set them up in a career or a business, try to get them to follow in our footsteps.

Also the way we hover over them, the way we pose them for pictures that we can post online,

the way we try to protect them from everything that could damage or break them in life.

As if they are not their own people, as if they are incapable in life, as if they are not their own people,

as if they are incapable of resilience, as if they are here for our happiness and validation,

as if they are reflections of us, as if they need a puppet master.

Later the cringe of all of this will be clearer. It may well be clear because they tell us,

and not happily so.

It'll be clear because we'll see them later as independent self-sufficient adults, if we do not

screw them up too badly, and we'll regret how we were. It'll be clear because we'll see them

with their own children, hopefully learning from our mistakes, and we'll wonder, why couldn't we have understood

...