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 Holliday, 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 probably better than you think. We're all raising hellions, as we said recently. There's that

part of us that dreads the trip to the grocery store that preemptively apologizes when we go over

to someone's house because we know that our kids are going to be crazy. Because look, we've all

been in public. We've all been on airplanes with complete disasters. And we don't want to be one of

those families. But here's the thing. The fact that you're even thinking about this means you're probably

not. When Steve Ronella, who has a great book for families called Outside Kids in an Inside World,

was on the Daily Stoic podcast a while back. He joked that people who say that their kids are

crazy are usually the ones whose kids are pretty okay.

He's right. The parents who are raising real nightmares are raising real nightmares because they're

not paying attention at all. And the fact that you are paying attention that you do notice that

you care is a reminder that your kids are doing pretty good. So stop being so hard on yourself

and stop being so hard on your kids because they're just being

kids and they're good inside, as Dr. Becky reminds us in her amazing but good inside.

We're trying to raise well-adjusted adults, not well-behaved children.

There's going to be some bumps and screams and vases broken along the way, but embrace it.

And in turn, your kids will learn to embrace themselves too.