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.

What if someone else treated your kids this way?

If you hired a babysitter or a nanny and caught them staring at their

phone instead of watching your kid, you'd be livid. If you walked into a room and discovered a teacher

or a grandparent or anyone yelling at your kids, you'd be difficult to stop. If you heard someone make a

snide remark or tease them, you'd put an immediate end to it. And yet you do these things all the time.

You feel your frustration rising and rising as they don't listen and bam, you grab their arm

and tell them to stop it now. You're ignoring the soccer game or worse, their repeated attempts

to get your attention or worse still while they're playing in the pool for what? For an email,

for a text to scroll Twitter? You think

you're funny and you like to joke around, but if you saw someone else doing it to your kid,

what would you call it? You'd call it bullying. We never let anyone else get away with what we

rationalize or excuse of our own behavior. And that's not to say you're abusive or a bad parent, not at all.

It's just a reminder. Your job isn't just to protect your kids from other people. It's to protect

them from your own bad habits, your own temper, your own flaws too. It's to demand of yourself

what you'd expect from anyone to whom you'd trust your kids. That is to say you have to demand the best of yourself.

No excuses, no double standards. Watch yourself as you'd watch a nanny camp. Trust but verify,

just as you would, a new school or a daycare. Ask yourself, would I let anyone else get away with this?

Hey, thank you for listening to The Daily Dad Podcast.

Leave us a review in iTunes.

...