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 would you rather be? Abraham Lincoln could not seem to please his father. Even though his son was brilliant and clearly

cut out for something other than subsistence farming, still, Thomas Lincoln resented his son's

talent. He hated that he was always reading. In fact, he was known to have destroyed some of his

son's priceless books. He rented him out as a laborer. He nearly wore him down. Even when Lincoln was older and supporting

his father financially, the judgment never really stopped. In the end, Thomas died more or less

estranged from his son, then a well-known politician and successful lawyer. Lincoln, with his own

children, went the other direction. He bound them to him by the chords of affection,

as we write in the February 9th entry of the Daily Dad book, which I hope he'll check out.

He never used corporal punishment. He loved to play with them. He took them to work with him.

He embraced their craziness. As we said recently, it drove his law partner nuts who believed

that Lincoln was blind to his

children's faults. Had they shit in Lincoln's hat and rubbed it on his boots, William Herndon

wrote an exasperation he would have laughed and thought it's smart. Maybe Lincoln took it a bit

far, but given his own childhood, it makes sense. It's sweet. He loved his boys. He also knew that life, especially back then,

was precarious and short. Only one of his sons would live to adulthood, and Lincoln himself

would die tragically. Who would you rather be then, imperious and impossible to please,

or fun and proud and loving? You know the answer. And if you haven't checked out the Daily Dad Book, I think you would really like it. It's been a bestseller since it came out. I'm really proud of it. When people come up to me and ask me to sign one of their books, that's the one I'm most happy to see. It means something to me. It feels like I'm making a positive contribution to the

world. And if you do want to sign a copy, you don't want to have to come up to me. You can grab it

at the Daily Dad's store. I'll link to that in today's show notes. And I referenced the February

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