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.

Where did this come from? These rules you find yourself fighting with their kids about, the ones that if you were being honest, you don't even care about, at least not more than your relationship with your kids anyway. You know, like not eating in the living room or only at the table. Bedtime is 9 p.m. Don't go outside without a jacket or a hat. No swimming after you

eat. Shoes on the mat in the mudroom. Rinse your dishes before they go in the dishwasher.

Where did they even come from? Do you even know? Chances are you just kind of picked them up somewhere.

Your parents said it was important. You heard some

person on TV or Instagram say, it was important. You told your kids once and they defied you,

so now it's a battle of wills. Regardless, you probably haven't thought much about them, or if you did,

you probably wouldn't care so much about them, would you? A while back, we told you a story about Roseanne Cash and about how she found herself enforcing

some insane rule about what time her kids had to stop drinking juice.

She had no idea why or where this came from, but it took on a life of its own.

And this is obviously not a recipe for a happy, pleasant family life,

nor does it help your kids understand what's most important in this world, because some

rules do matter. Some boundaries are worth going to bat for. But when we make a big deal out of

stuff that doesn't matter, that we haven't thought about, that we hypocritically do ourselves,

that we're enforcing reflexively or out of tired tradition, we're undermining the lessons that are

essential to the development of our kids. Thou shall not kill is a lot more important than

thou shall not put thy feet up on the coffee table. And if we don't get that, how do we expect

our kids to? So take some time. Put your own rules up to the test. Question them. Disguard them if

they don't reflect what you really want to teach your kids, because you will be in the end, better parent for it.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Dad podcast.

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