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.

You can always give them this.

There are many things you will eventually realize you can't give your kids. You'll find

almost certainly that you didn't pass them perfect genetics. You'll discover, unfortunately,

that you can't give them everything they want. Perhaps your marriage will fall apart and you won't

be able to give them the perfect family life you intended. Perhaps you won't be able to pay for

college or private school. You'll definitely find that

you can't give them an easy life, that you can't totally protect them from pain or frustration or from

cruel and selfish people, as we've talked about before. This will be hard, even heartbreaking.

Because you want to give them the world, you want nothing more than to make them perfectly happy.

But inevitably, you'll fall short. That's the bad news. But the good news is that there is one thing

you can always give them, something that is always possible, always within your reach. You can

always give them attention, understanding, and love. No matter what happens, no matter how rich or poor you are,

no matter what mistakes you make or they make, no matter how powerful or powerless you are,

you can always do those things. In fact, you must always do them. Because in the end, those are more

important than all the other things. Love and understanding especially are the only

things that truly matter, that truly last, even beyond our death, as their impact shapes the adult

that your child will become. And if you think about it, the only thing they'll truly and rightfully

resent you for all else being equal is if you know these things are true and you still fail

to provide them.

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