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 have to leave this to them. If it's hard for most parents not to push their beliefs on their kids, imagine what it must

be like for a bishop.

Obviously, they believe very deeply in something so deeply that they've dedicated their

lives to it, and they're just supposed to let their kids figure it out for themselves?

Well, yeah.

As David McCullough points out in his fascinating book, The Wright Brothers,

Orville and Wilbur's father was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.

Yet unlike many religious people and so many parents then, and now he had a light touch about it.

Interestingly, for all the bishop's dedication to church work, McCullough writes,

religion was scarcely ever mentioned

in his letters to his children or in what they wrote to him. No framed religious images or biblical

quotations were part of the home decor with the exception of a color print of St. Dorothy

hanging to the left of the fireplace in the front parlor. But that was part of the room where

Orville customarily propped his mandolin against the

wall, and she was the patron saint of music. Clearly, Bishop Wright modeled his religious teachings

because his boys were decent and kind and honest. But just as he gave them room to explore their

education, allowing them to choose their projects over school from time to time. He did the same with their spiritual

journey. He gave them room. He did not indoctrinate. He did not shame or pressure. The important thing for

him was that they were good people and that they were happy, not that they agreed with him or did what he said.

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