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.

This is the tricky balance. School doesn't matter. It just doesn't. Have your grades from

elementary school ever come up once in your life? Even a Harvard GPA is unnecessary on a resume.

That permanent record your teachers were keeping on you about turned out not to be so

permanent. And nobody cares that you got suspended several times in eighth grade.

The whole thing is an exercise in made-up rewards and punishments, an artificial fantasy

world that has no bearing on the real world. And yet, school does matter so much. Your test

determined what classes you would be placed in, which determined which college

you'd get into, which turns out to have a massive impact on your future earning power.

The habits you learned in school, the ability to figure out the rules and master them to get teachers

to like you and perform well on assignments, that is life. So this is the really tricky balance of parenting. You have to somehow

explain to your kids that school doesn't matter and that at the same time it really does. Paul Tuff in his

books, How Children Succeed in the Years that Matter Most, has a number of fascinating discussions

about this. He talks about the famous marshmallow test, which supposedly

predicts children's ability to delay gratification. Perhaps he says it's a better indicator of their

ability to take ridiculous games seriously, or even just to trust that the proctor is telling the

truth about a second marshmallow. The same with the SAT. It takes a special

kind of kid to understand that a test that is completely meaningless ought to be treated

with complete seriousness. It takes a special kind of parent to walk this fine line too.

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