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.

You've probably seen me in a bunch of the Daily Stoic and Daily Dad videos over the years wearing a blue hat. That hat is made by today's sponsor, Mellon. When I'm putting on a hat, I don't usually want it to have a bunch of brands on it. I want it to last. I want it to be durable. I want it to be able to get wet, which is why I love today's sponsor. Melon makes premium hats

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use code Daily Dad for 20% off. Pick one up and let me know what you all think. The most wonderful

things, the most wonderful time. Yes, it is terribly difficult and stressful and

expensive and overwhelming physically and emotionally, even sonically. Noises, demands, unfixable

problems, not nearly enough sleep. Yet there is no question that you will remember their earliest

years fondly, increasingly so as the years go by. That's just how the world works. The writer,

Caitlin Flanagan, reflected in a piece for The Atlantic about a moment recently when she flashed back

to an ordinary day when her twin boys, now adults, were little. I saw the faces of those little

boys who aren't here anymore, she wrote, the ones who lived with me in the dream time of early childhood.

My husband worked. I stayed home in five long days a week. We did things I knew they would never remember.

Like the first time they heard the music of an ice cream truck. I bought them each a Pokemon Popsicle.

Here's the mind-blowing thing. They had no idea what was

inside those rappers until I took them off. When I gave them those astonishing, perplexing,

never before seen popsicles, my Popsicle is raining, said one of them in confusion when it started

dripping. They looked at me the way they often did in the dream time as though I was the most

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