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.

Somebody just made this stuff up. The big breakthrough of his life, Steve Jobs famously said,

was realizing that most of the rules and conventions of life were just made up by people.

People, it turns out, were not particularly bright, certainly quite fallible.

What does this have to do with parenting?

Well, first you have to understand that this

applies to most, if not all, of the practices of parenting. Yes, of course, there are some tried and

true practices rooted in thousands of years of human experience, but most of the practices we follow as

parents are not nearly so old, nor, as it turns out, are they based on particularly solid science?

And that has been one of the refreshing and fascinating parts of Emily Oster's research.

You can check out her book's crib sheet, expecting better and family firm, which I carry at the

painted porch. She finds that many of the certainties of modern parenting are not supported by the

data. Once we realize this, we can stop being so hard on ourselves and stop being bullied by the

expectations and judgments of others. Most importantly, we have to teach our kids what Steve Jobs' parents

helped him realize. The things should be questioned,

that we need not be deferential to authority, or if we trust, let's first verify. We shouldn't

take limitations or impossibilities as gospel. In fact, all the progress of the human race has come

from people pushing, risking, challenging, undermining, and disrupting.

Having kids who do this might seem like a nightmare. That's the paradox. If you beat into your kids

the ideas of obedience, of respect, of deference, of being seen and not heard, you might have a

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