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.

They shrug it off. So can you?

Your kid falls, and if you're not paying attention, they brush

themselves off and they keep going. But if they see that look in your face, they burst into tears.

A lot of parenting is like this. Your kids naturally have the appropriate attitude, but we're

the ones that project our silly baggage and significance onto things,

whether it's standardized testing or body image. We've talked before about Rich Cohen's amazing book

on parenting through the lens of youth hockey, the book's called peewees. There's a great scene in it

where he tries to console his son after he didn't make the team

in what was an extremely unfair process.

Rich expected his son would be angry or at least aware of the injustice of what happened.

He was bugged but not devastated, Cohen writes, or even all that upset, which upset me.

Why did I care more than he did? This is a great question. Why do you care more than they do? Why are you spending so much time telling them

they've been hurt when they haven't? Why do you need them to take everything as seriously as you do?

When they get older, some of these things will become their problem.

But for now, let them have their childhood.

That's part of it.

But also, because they are youngly, understand and feel things differently,

don't assume that the adult way is better or necessarily more correct.

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