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 have to come up with challenges.

Of course, you want tough kids. You want boys who are active and

resilient. You want girls who are active and resilient. You want them to be healthy. You want them to be

able to overcome obstacles. You want them to know how to defend themselves. You want them to be

prepared for the ups and downs in life. As we talk about in the Daily Stoic Parent Challenge, one of the ways to do this

is by creating challenges for them. Theodore Roosevelt was famous for taking his kids on long

walks and leading them over boulders and through thick woods. He wanted to get them used to

exerting themselves into solving problems. Cato the Elder, the great-grandfather of the towering Stoic,

Cato the Younger, did the same thing with his son. Plutarch writes that Cato trained his son,

Marcus in athletics, and taught him how to throw the javelin, fight in armor, ride a horse, use his

fists in boxing, endure the extremes of heat and cold, and swim across the roughest and most swiftly flowing

stretches of the tiber. And if you haven't read Jocko's book The Way of the Warrior Kid, you should

as a family. It's good even for adults. You can't just want tough kids. You have to make tough

kids and you make them tough by challenging them and teaching them the rewards of those challenges.

You make them tough by toughing things out together.

Thank you for listening to the Daily Dad podcast.

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