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't prevent them from making mistakes.

Nobody wants to see their kid make a mistake.

That's why we spend so much time teaching them, why we try to be a good example,

why we try to catch and stop them when we see them going down the wrong path.

Since the beginning of time, fathers have been doing this.

And since the beginning of time, they have had, at best, only minimal success. In the

novels to Dartha, the title character tries desperately to convince his son of the importance

of the simple way of life, having learned the wisdom of it through painful experience. Like you,

like all fathers, he watches his son ignore his warnings, despairing as his son goes the wrong direction.

As he sees the boy falling into bad habits, Siddhartha confides his frustration to his friend,

who replies, do you really believe you have committed your follies so that your son may be spared them?

It would be wonderful if our kids didn't have to learn by trial and

error. If they could simply accept our advice and start where we left off, but we should be wise

enough as human beings to know by now that this is simply not how life works. Much of what we learn

has to be learned on our own. Some mistakes have to be made to be fully understood.

Don't your own experiences teach you that anyway? How many of your parents' warnings did you really

listen to? You can't prevent your kids from making mistakes, nor honestly should you really want to.

You have to let them learn. You have to give them space to learn. All you can do is hope that

you've instilled the character, the awareness, the willingness to ask for help or feedback

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