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.

Why are you rushing this?

Bedtime can be stressful when you're convinced it has to happen by a certain time.

The evening walk becomes less fun when you keep telling them to hurry up.

Dinner becomes less satisfying when there's less time to taste the food.

In fact, from a kid's perspective, it's easy to think that speeding things along is the most important thing in the world to us.

Come on, eat your dinner. Come on, finish this math problem. Come on, let's go. Come on, close your eyes.

Come on, wash your ears so we can get out of the bath. Come on. We've already talked about this.

Why are we discussing it again? As if there's somewhere we actually have to be, something better we have to do, as if

there's some deadline, as if any of this really matters. Parenting is stressful for sure,

but how much of this stress is self-inflicted? We set arbitrary deadlines, arbitrary expectations,

we insist on moving things along, getting them done, doing them efficiently, and when our kids ask why we get mad, because we don't have an answer to that very simple question. It's ridiculous. It's also painful. We are making our kids lives unpleasant as well as our own. We are creating conflict which we don't enjoy and they resent. We are depriving ourselves of moments,

garbage time moments that we should be present for, that could be wonderful, that are just as

important as any of the big moments we think we are planning for. We should ask ourselves as we

rush through things. What are we rushing towards Netflix, responding to email,

to the next activity? It's not so critical when you put it this way. It's even more humbling

when you drill down further because what comes after the next activity and the next one and the next

one. Eventually our kids grow up. Then they have kids of our own. And after that, death, by rushing through things,

we are rushing away from life, from now. It's beyond stupid. So slow down. Be here while you still can.

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