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.

Which type will you be?

The story of George Washington and the cherry tree is not a true one.

It's also, as we've written about here before, not a story whose moral is about lying.

It's actually about the complex relationship between a parent and a child,

one where the child trusts the parent enough to tell the truth, even when they have done wrong,

and a parent who respects their child enough not to punish this kind of honesty. There's another story, this one true,

about another American president. A young Jimmy Carter was in Plains, Georgia, and his parents

were having a house party. Unable to sleep because of the noise, a young Jimmy Carter went out to sleep in his treehouse.

A few hours later, he heard his father yelling for him, but Jimmy Moody and naive ignored his

father out of spite. The next morning, his father, worried sick, demanded to know where he'd been.

Out of my treehouse, daddy, he said. Didn't you hear me call? His father said. And now Carter was confronted with the same

choice as Washington. He knew he messed up, but if he lied and he said he was asleep, he wouldn't get in

trouble. Still believing that lying was his sin, he confessed. Go out to the garage and wait for me,

his father said. The reward for Carter's honesty was the most painful whipping of his life.

Is that the kind of experience that builds trust between parents and children that sends the

message that honesty is rewarded, that it's a good thing? No, no, it doesn't. In the cherry tree

story, Washington's father is so blown away by his son's honesty that he tells him he'd rather

lose a hundred trees

than hear a lie and he lets him go and that's what carter's father should have done instead he let anger

...