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 I hope this helps. You can give them

what you wish you'd gotten. Few of us felt completely understood as kids.

At a young age, our parents didn't quite understand what we were saying, what we wanted,

how much we missed them when they were gone, how scared we were when we were alone.

When we got older, they didn't seem to remember how hard it was to be a teenager,

how overwhelming the world was, how different we felt from others,

how behind we sometimes felt, as we talked about recently.

And now as adults we struggle too.

Maybe our spouse doesn't fully get us.

Maybe our parents are incapable of seeing or listening to us when we try to communicate

about the wounds we carry from the past.

And this is painful, it's lonely, it's rough.

Epictita said that there were the things that were up to us and there were the things that are not.

The reality is that being understood, even after our best efforts, is never going to be fully up to us.

It depended on other people, namely our busy,

overwhelmed, and imperfect parents. Besides, that ship is sailed. Now that we're older and better at communicating, we can't go back in time and can get them to understand us in a moment that is

no longer there. But if being understood is not in our control, there is something quite wonderful that is

in our control. Understanding. We can give what we didn't or haven't got, as we've written about.

More importantly, we can do this for our own children right here and right now. We can try to

really see them, really listen to them. Our own pain

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