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're not alone in this. Sometimes it can feel like you're all alone as a parent, like you're the

only parents struggling to balance work and life and family and like you're all alone as a parent. Like you're the only parents struggling to balance work and life and family.

And like you're always falling short in at least one of those categories.

Like you're the only one raising absolute hellions who can't help but misbehave and cause a ruckus wherever they go.

And always at the worst times too.

Like your family is the only one in the

neighborhood or at school full of dysfunction in chaos. And certainly those picture perfect

influencer families on social media don't help. But we know this is wrong. One of the oldest

pieces of evidence of humans in America is footprints of a parent, probably a mother walking

in what is now

White Sands National Park, carrying and then setting down, carrying and then setting down a young

child. Near Cairo and Egypt archaeologists have discovered a papyrus letter written from a son

to his father, complaining that his father didn't bring him along on a trip. If you don't send

for me, he writes, full of pubescent scorn, I shan't eat, I shan't drink. There's a story about

Lincoln carrying his young son through town and a neighbor telling him that he was spoiling him.

Don't you think his little feet hurt, Lincoln said? And there were the glances in judgment

at the White House from people who thought his kids made too much noise and made too much of a mess,

frustration from cabinet members when the boys burst in during meetings. Does any of this sound

familiar? Of course it does. Of course it does. And we tell these kinds of stories in the Daily Dead.

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