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.

Show them what they will get out of this. Most schools and most parents teach reading all wrong.

They bully kids into it.

They pressure them.

They tell them reading is what smart and successful people do.

And then they're surprised when kids who struggled with reading don't think they are smart.

And they wonder why kids almost wear illiteracy as a badge of honor.

They wonder why people say things like,

I haven't read a book since I was forced to in high school. No, the way to teach a kid to read is not to

talk about how wonderful literature is and force them to read fancy or pretentious novels. You teach a kid

to love books by, as the great lover of books, Robert Green has said,

by appealing to their self-interest.

Show them what they will get out of books, tangibly, immediately.

Show them that quote from Warren Buffett where he says the single best investment he ever made

was buying a copy of Benjamin Graham's, the intelligent investor. Better yet, find them a book that

will have a big payoff for them. Joe Biden has talked about how reading about Demosthenes helped him

overcome his stutter. You think an experience like that early on doesn't turn a person into a reader

for life? Find them books that will entertain them

that will help them get a boy or a girl to like them that will make them laugh, that will piss their

teachers off. Focus on the ROI because that's what books are investments. You put down a few dollars,

...