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 gotta let them do the rest.

George Dewey was a kid who got in trouble a lot.

His father was always bailing him out.

Finally, as a last-ditch effort, he secured his son and entrance into the U.S. Naval Academy.

George, I've done all that I can for you, his father told him as I dropped you off.

The rest you must do for yourself. We talked a while back about how you have to let your kids fail.

You have to let them struggle.

As we've said before, Lachter et Emergo from the struggle they emerge.

We actually have a cool challenge coin.

I'll link to it in the notes where you can just go to store.dailydad.com.

The point is we can lead a horse to water, but we can't make them drink.

And so it goes for our kids.

We can provide opportunities.

We can open doors, but the rest they'll have to do themselves. We can't make them take to a

career. We can't make them study. We can't make them apply themselves. In fact, the whole point is

that they do this themselves, or it's not much good. Perhaps George Dewey's father should have learned

this lesson earlier. Perhaps you've been smoothing over too many troubles, turning too much of a blind

eye yourself, but eventually invariably at some point, your kids are going to have to take over

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