Calvin & Hobbes
Saturday, October 31, 2026The Daily Stoic
“The human being is born with an inclination toward virtue.”
The notion of original sin has weighed down humankind for centuries. In reality, we’re made to help each other and be good to each other. We wouldn’t have survived as a species otherwise.
There is hardly an idea in Stoic philosophy that wouldn’t be immediately agreeable to a child or that doesn’t jibe with common sense. The ideas within it go to the core of who we are and what we know to be true. The only things they conflict with are the various inventions of society—which usually serve some selfish interest more than they benefit the common good.
You were born good. “All of us have been made by nature,” Rufus said, “so that we can live free from error and nobly—not that one can and another can’t, but all.” You were born with an attraction to virtue and self-mastery. If you’ve gotten far from that, it’s not out of some inborn corruption but from a nurturing of the wrong things and the wrong ideas. As Seneca has pointed out, philosophy is a tool to strip it all away—to get back to our true nature.
The Daily Dad
A helicopter parent hovers. They refuse to let their kid out of their sight. They follow them on the playground so they never fall down. They don’t let them ride their bike to a friend’s house so they never get lost. They make all their kids’ decisions for them. They check in constantly with their teachers to make sure everything is going according to plan. Their plan.
A snowplow parent doesn’t hover; they drive out in front of their kid, clearing the road of every conceivable impediment and obstacle between adolescence and . . . retirement? Their kid’s, not their own.
Coach doesn’t think their kid is good enough to be the star player? They’ll start their own team. College applications? They’ve got it handled—even if it means bending the rules or breaking the law. At great pain and expense, their kid will never have to struggle, stumble, or be rejected.
Needless to say, neither of these approaches is likely to produce what every good parent wants: self-sufficient, happy, and well-adjusted children. Even though many helicopter and snowplow parents come from a good place—they love their kids so much that they want nothing but the best for them—they are actively doing harm.
Your job is to be there for your kid, not to be their everything. Your job is to teach your kid, not to prevent them from ever failing. Yes, you have to keep them safe, but not at the cost of keeping them sheltered. Not at the expense of life itself.