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.

They need you to do this for them.

There's a story about Queen Elizabeth II, which I tell in Discipline's Destiny.

It's after a long day of travel with her late husband, Prince Philip,

and the queen found him worked up and in an argument with someone organizing an event.

The queen, knowing that her husband was tired and wanting to spare him an incident he might regret,

caught his attention and pointed out the display in front of him. Look at the pottery,

she said calmly and slowly. Shaken out of his fit, Philip stopped and looked, brought himself

back to a place of royal dignity. Later, a politician who had overheard the exchange would walk over to the

scene where it had occurred. He was only half surprised to find out that there had never been any

pottery at all. What wouldn't have worked in that situation with Prince Philip was the queen

coming over and telling him to get control of himself. It wouldn't have helped for her to come in and

pile on or take over the situation

either. He was stuck in a loop, and she helped pull him out. While it's not our job to parent our

spouses, this was a wonderful example of fantastic parent energy. When our kids are upset, we can help

them with a simple redirect, an interruption, a distraction. We can give them an off-ramp. We can provide

calming energy as opposed to amping things up to adding more tension or stress to a situation

by reprimanding them or telling them to shape up. We can give them a chance to grab back

hold of themselves to come back to their lovely, calm and kind selves. And you know what?

...