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.

There's a reason we tell these stories.

There's an interesting half- elliptical sentence in book 11 of Marcus Aurelius'

meditations. Think of the hill-dwelling mouse and the house mouse, he writes, and the agitation

and the trepidation of the latter. Some people will have no idea what this means, but parents,

at least parents who have been reading the right stuff to their kids, will know exactly

what he's referring to. They'll notice right away that 2,000 years ago, Marcus was summarizing to

himself a lesson from ASOP's then some 800-year-old fable about two mice from different environments

and what they learned spending a weekend in each other's worlds.

Marcus happens to be relating to the country mouse, drawing from the fable, the serenity and peace

of a quieter life away from Rome. But really the impressive thing here is that even as the

most powerful man in the world, Marcus was still returning to the lessons of his youth.

And this is precisely why we must continue to teach lessons like these and the fables into which they are stitched. Notice that

Marcus is not referencing silly kid's stories, nor is he recalling fondly the drawings in some

picture book. In part, that's because the genre didn't really exist, but also

because that wasn't what Roman education focused on. Kids were taught fables and were read

moral biographies for the purpose of raising well-adjusted adults. Entertainment was fine,

and ASOP is very entertaining to kids, but the ancients wanted to impart real wisdom too.

The time we get with our kids at bedtime, the time on the drive to school, even the television

we choose to let them watch, this is the most valuable time we have with our kids.

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