{"id":85430,"date":"2026-08-13T07:57:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T11:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=85430"},"modified":"2026-08-13T08:10:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:10:25","slug":"the-value-of-letting-go-of-the-little-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/the-value-of-letting-go-of-the-little-things\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value Of Letting Go Of The Little Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <em>Aleteia<\/em>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-paragraph Paragraph_dropCap__3aO41\" data-click-location=\"intext\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">There\u2019s an old joke that goes something like this:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"flex flex-col items-center text-center print:hidden mb-4 p-0 !min-h-0\">\n<div id=\"infeed_1_desktop\" class=\"adslot\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;\">What you thought that becoming a dad would be &#8211; playing catch, reading bedtime stories, tea parties, watching the children grow up.\u00a0 What it actually is\u2013 turning lights off in empty rooms. For me, this is no joke. Most of my parenting consists in flipping light switches. For some reason, the kids are adamantly opposed to this simple physical operation of moving a switch from \u201con\u201d to \u201coff.\u201d I\u2019ve tried everything. I\u2019ve reasoned with them, threatened, guilt-tripped. I\u2019ve asked if their arms, hands, and fingers work and if I need to take them to a doctor. I\u2019ve explained that \u201cDaddy has to pay for the lights you leave on,\u201d and I\u2019ve sarcastically had them watch while I showed them how to flip a switch (sarcasm, I can say from experience, is a terrible parenting technique). I\u2019ve thought about cutting the electricity. For whatever reason, year after year, I just couldn\u2019t let it go. I would actually get angry. Really and truly mad. <em>Why won\u2019t they listen to me<\/em>, I wondered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Aleteia: There\u2019s an old joke that goes something like this: What you thought that becoming a dad would be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-85430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85430"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85436,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85430\/revisions\/85436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}