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.

You find a way to help them learn. It's something that every parent worries about.

We're afraid they're not learning enough or concerned they're falling behind.

Is it the school? Is it us?

Is there something wrong with them?

In the late 1800s, future General George Patton's father got the sense that his son was having trouble learning.

He not only wasn't beating, he seemed to hate the subject, and he labored over each

word mixing up letters and not understanding the sentences. In those days, most fathers probably

use brute force on kids who struggled or worse. They wrote them off as just not the school type.

Instead, as Roger and I writes in the absolutely incredible book, The Pat and Mind, Papa kept

young George out of school and instead launched him on a program of oral learning.

Family members read to him until he was 11 years old, and he was required to memorize long

passages from the classics, ancient history, and romantic poetry. In this form, he drank deeply

from the great classics and the great tales of

adventure. Patton knew King Arthur and Shakespeare and The Odyssey and Sherlock Holmes, and he knew

them backwards and forwards. With time and in his own way, as most kids with dyslexia eventually do,

Patton did learn to read and not just learn, but learn to love reading. And this was possible

because his family was accommodating. They were patient. They didn't give up on their son, nor did

they make life easy for him. They just found the best way for him to learn, and they built a curriculum

and a practice around that. They gave him space. They gave him confidence. And most of all, they gave him his

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