"There is one way to judge, in the end, whether you’ve done this thing right. It’s not based on how rich your kids get. It’s not whether they make it into Yale, or whether they turn out handsome or beautiful, smart or famous."

Find out what the ultimate test is, and how to pass it, on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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Ryan further discusses the letters that author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter, and what they say about him and his character as a parent, on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"It’s easy to forget this. It’s easy to give into dissension and conflict and zero-sumness. Especially now. Especially when things are so dark. Isn’t that the natural state of things? Survival of the fittest. We’re in a war—our genes need to survive. So screw those other parents, screw their kids. There are only so many spots at Harvard, you know. So many spots in the preschool that will increase their chances to get there."

Ryan explains why we need to ignore that impulse to raise our kids above other people's on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"It’s exhausting to be a kid. Because they’re clever and creative and you’re not. Because they’re pure and idealistic and you’ve been hardened by the world you’ve seen. Because they’re still uniquely themselves, yet to be beaten down or corrupted. 

'Grown ups never understand anything by themselves,' the always childlike Saint-Exupéry would write, 'and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.'"

Ryan explains why it's so important to get on your kid's level on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"What kinds of books do dads like? Well, according to the displays at Barnes & Noble and Costco, it’s almost exclusively books about war and history. Have you ever wondered why that is? Why did your dad—who maybe didn’t read that much—still manage to get through one or two 500-page biographies each year?"

Find out why—and what you can learn from this fatherly practice—on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

Get your copy of Ryan's new book, Lives of the Stoics (https://geni.us/LUN7). To get the special bonuses for ordering the book, visit dailystoic.com/lives.

***

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"Sometimes, when parents fall down on the job, it falls to someone else to do the job. The primary and most important influence on Queen Victoria, for instance, was not her mother but her beloved governess Baroness Lehzen, who later became her adviser and friend.

It was from Louise Lehzen that Victoria got the backbone that made her one of England’s great queens—one who ruled for some 63 years, more than 40 of them by herself."

Ryan describes what Baroness Lehzen did that imbued Victoria with so much strength, and how you can emulate her example, in today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"In August 1933, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his young daughter Frances who was away at camp. It's a beautiful, personal letter from a man who was flawed—failed by his own parents—but tried, especially at the end of his short life, to step up and do the right thing."

Learn more about what Fitzgerald tried to teach his daughter, and what you can learn form his example, in today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"There are a few versions of history you can tell your kids. You can tell them the propaganda version—the fables, the self-serving myths, the lies that dictators or the jingoists like to traffic in. You can tell them the dark truth version, the almost-nihilist 'People’s History' version that is resurgent today—that everything is bad, was done with evil intention, that all of history is a cover for malevolence and that progress is impossible. 

Or you can tell them the third version: The one that does not deny history or hope. The one that looks to see the good in people without pretending the bad didn’t happen."

Ryan describes how to teach your kids an accurate understanding of our country's history on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"Parenting just demands so much more of you, just more than you ever even thought yourself capable of giving. You do it because you want to, because you love them, of course, but also because you have no choice. This just is what it is."

Ryan describes the obligation that all parents now share on today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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"There is a reason that this metaphor keeps popping up. Cormac McCarthy talked about 'carrying the fire' in his haunting novel The Road, which he wrote for his son. Now Alanis Morissette puts her own spin on it in her beautiful song, 'Ablaze,' which she wrote for her two children."

Ryan explores this metaphor further in today's Daily Dad Podcast.

***

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