Abraham Lincoln could not seem to please his father. Even though his son was brilliant and clearly cut out for something other than subsistence farming, Thomas Lincoln resented his son’s talent. He hated that he was always reading (in fact, he was known to have destroyed some of his son’s priceless books). He rented him out as a laborer. He nearly wore him down. Even when Lincoln was older and supporting his father financially, the judgment never really stopped.
In the end, Thomas died more or less estranged from his son, then a well-known politician and successful lawyer.
Lincoln, with his own children, went the other direction. He bound them to him by the cords of affection, as we write in the February 9 entry of the Daily Dad book. He never used corporal punishment. He loved to play with them. He took them to work with him. He embraced their craziness. As we said recently, this drove his law partner a bit nuts, who believed that Lincoln was blind to his children’s faults. “Had they shit in Lincoln’s hat and rubbed it on his boots,” William Herndon wrote in exasperation, “he would have laughed and thought it smart.”
Maybe Lincoln took it a bit far but given his own childhood, it makes sense. It’s sweet. He loved his boys. He also knew that life—especially back then—was precarious and short. Only one of his sons would live to adulthood (and Lincoln himself would die tragically). Who would you rather be then? Imperious and impossible to please? Or fun and proud and loving?
You know the answer.
P.S. We think this idea—that you have to love your kids unconditionally—is so important that in The Daily Dad bookwe dedicated the entire month of February to this theme. Because, as we write, there is no substitute for love. In fact, it’s all your children really want from you anyway. To read more advice and stories like Lincoln’s on how to show more love as a parent, head over to the Daily Dad Store and grab a copy of the book today!
