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.

The struggle with struggle.

We all know that what we went through in this life is what made us who we are, the breakups,

the failures, the losses, and the mistakes. Some of us grew up poor. Others grew up rich with

absent parents. Others grew up around addiction or dysfunction. We didn't like any of this,

but we know it was formative.

There is no growth without struggle.

We know this.

In Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath, he talks to several highly successful men and women,

people like Brian Grazier, Gary Cohn, David Boys, who suffered from dyslexia as children.

Their stories are all the same, Gladwell writes. They don't think they succeeded in spite of their disability. They think they succeeded because of it. Knowing how

formative this struggle was in their lives, knowing that they believed it helped them develop

skills and perspective they would have not had otherwise, and how responsible that was for their success.

Gladwell then asked a critical question, would you want your kids to go through it too,

so they could reap the same benefits? Grazier shuddered at the thought, Gladwell recounts.

Gary Cohn was horrified. David Bowes has two boys who are both dyslexic, and watching them grow up in an environment

where reading early and well counted for everything nearly broke his heart.

It's perfectly logical and illogical at the same time.

No parent would ever wish pain or struggle on their children, ever, not one ounce of preventable

...