Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom: Raising Good Kids (Part 1)
Aired: 2026-03-09
Duration: 43:09


=== Raising Good Kids (08:38) ===

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[00:00:31]  Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
[00:00:35]  Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
[00:00:39]  And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
[00:00:44]  I'm very honored to be here and for you to have come out tonight.
[00:00:55]  So let me get right into the subject.
[00:00:57]  We have an hour together, and I do want you to have the time to ask me whatever you like.
[00:01:02]  The subject is raising good kids, raising good children.
[00:01:06]  Really, it's raising good adults.
[00:01:09]  That's what we're trying to raise.
[00:01:11]  And it's given a lot of thought to this, and here are the fruits of this thought based on parenting myself, plus, of course, years of talking about this to other parents and my radio show.
[00:01:30]  So here it goes.
[00:01:33]  And if this interests you, I am recording it, by the way, so you'll know that.
[00:01:38]  It's important to me, anyway, that I have a record of anything I say because so often I'm misquoted on the internet.
[00:01:45]  And then I say, well, here is the recording.
[00:01:47]  It doesn't help, but it's still there.
[00:01:54]  The first thing that a parent has to do in trying to raise a good person is to find out how important it is to you to raise a good person.
[00:02:07]  This is so self-evident when I say it, but it's not at all self-evident to, I would say, a very great number of parents.
[00:02:14]  Specifically, I mean, how important is your child's goodness to you?
[00:02:21]  And if it's not the most important thing, it's going to be very hard to raise a good child.
[00:02:28]  It has to be the most important thing, not another important thing or not another thing.
[00:02:34]  And here is, by the way, a very good test that you can do when you get home.
[00:02:39]  And this, by the way, applies fascinatingly to whether your child is 5, 15, or 50.
[00:02:48]  It would be just as interesting to ask this of your child at whatever age he or she is.
[00:02:55]  And here is the way you have to ask it.
[00:02:58]  If you are the father or mother and you say, I'm curious, what do you think I most want you to be?
[00:03:07]  That's if they're very young or young, they're still living with you.
[00:03:10]  Well, I take that back.
[00:03:11]  If they're young, some are old and living with parents.
[00:03:15]  But if your child's 40, then you would say, What do you think I most wanted when I raised you?
[00:03:23]  But here is the question: What do you think I most want you to be?
[00:03:27]  And then you give them four choices: smart, successful, happy, good.
[00:03:36]  They can't cheat on it because you are asking them to give the answer that you want to hear.
[00:03:42]  You're not asking, What do you most want to be?
[00:03:45]  I don't want you to ask that.
[00:03:46]  That's fine if you do, but that's not my question.
[00:03:49]  The question that I want you to ask is, What do you think I, your mom, or I, your dad, most want you to be?
[00:03:56]  Smart, successful, happy, or good?
[00:04:01]  And so they will only answer the answer that they think you want to hear, which is exactly what you want.
[00:04:07]  What do they think you want to hear?
[00:04:11]  And that's the way you know, what have I conveyed?
[00:04:14]  And parents are often surprised because they think that their child will say good and their child will say something else.
[00:04:22]  By the way, smart, successful, and happy are terrific.
[00:04:25]  It's not like I asked, Do I want you to be evil or good?
[00:04:29]  That's not the question.
[00:04:30]  That's easy.
[00:04:32]  I don't know what your kids are going to say evil.
[00:04:36]  This is why you're giving four wonderful things.
[00:04:39]  I want your kids to all be smart, successful, happy, and good.
[00:04:42]  Certainly, you know about my, or those of you who've heard me on the radio or read my book know how committed I am to the importance of happiness.
[00:04:51]  But goodness is number one.
[00:04:53]  Or at least, goodness is number one if that's what you want to be, number one.
[00:04:57]  But understand, you can't expect something if it's going to be secondary or tertiary in what you communicate you most want.
[00:05:07]  And by the way, you should ask yourself this question: and answer honestly to yourself: what do I most want my kid to be?
[00:05:18]  Do I most, for example, do I, if I had the choice, my child could be exceptionally good or valedictorian?
[00:05:26]  Okay, just to give, to give.
[00:05:28]  Now, can they both be valedictory and exceptionally good?
[00:05:31]  Of course it's possible.
[00:05:33]  But if that were presented to you as the question, then you have to answer it.
[00:05:41]  I'm very almost radical on this issue about the secondary importance of everything else to goodness.
[00:05:48]  And so I have even asked, and I know some of you will find the question annoying at best and perhaps even wrong at worst, but just a way of asking about priorities in a different way.
[00:06:05]  Would you rather your teenage child smoked too much or watched TV too much?
[00:06:14]  And I rather my child smoked too much.
[00:06:18]  Tobacco, not anything else.
[00:06:20]  I want to make that clear.
[00:06:21]  Now, this is very painful for me to say to you because I know some of you will look askance at me immediately, but I'll tell you why I raise this question.
[00:06:31]  I raise it because I believe that one of the values that we have put above goodness has been health.
[00:06:38]  Health uber alis.
[00:06:39]  I remember the rapist who used a condom because he had learned well that you don't want to have a sexually transmitted disease.
[00:06:48]  He didn't learn well that you don't rape.
[00:06:51]  There was a certain character deficiency, but he certainly got a good health lesson somewhere in life.
[00:06:58]  So, and believe me, I want your kids healthy, and I'm not advocating that your kids smoke.
[00:07:03]  That's not my point at all.
[00:07:05]  I'm saying that we have to be very clear about priorities in our lives.
[00:07:08]  They say I don't want them to do both.
[00:07:10]  Whatever you answer, you answer it.
[00:07:12]  All I'm saying is that it is you have to ask the questions of yourself.
[00:07:17]  Here's another one to ask yourself.
[00:07:20]  Most parents, middle class and above, want their kids to get into the best college possible.
[00:07:25]  So here's a question, another question you should ask yourself.
[00:07:29]  How angry would you be at your child if your child got into Yale or Stanford but had cheated on two tests?
[00:07:42]  Just two tests.
[00:07:44]  How angry would you be?
[00:07:46]  Would you give up Yale and make it absolutely clear to your child, Yale doesn't mean a thing to me compared to the fact that you cheated on a test?
[00:07:56]  I don't think that most kids would think that their parents would blow a gasket if they learned that they cheated on a test.
[00:08:03]  How many kids think that their parents would be particularly annoyed if they learned that they had downloaded songs that they didn't pay for?
[00:08:09]  Obviously, there are cases where you're allowed to do that.
[00:08:11]  It's legal and it's ethical and fine.
[00:08:13]  But a lot of times not.
[00:08:15]  The technical editor or technology editor, David Pogue of the New York Times, wrote a piece recently that he talks a lot to adult groups, obviously, about technology.
[00:08:28]  And sometimes he raises ethical questions like, would you download music you didn't pay for?
[00:08:33]  And he would ask them, would you download a movie you didn't pay for?
[00:08:37]  And so on.

=== Ethical Questions and Celery (02:55) ===

[00:08:39]  And people, he said, adults have mixed feelings.
[00:08:41]  They'll ask questions.
[00:08:42]  They'll vote yes on the music, but no on movies or whatever.
[00:08:46]  And then he went to a high school group or a college group, a college group, and of a 500, and he said, How many of you would download a movie that you didn't pay for, a movie, and you didn't pay for it, and how many of you would do it?
[00:09:05]  Or how many of you would think it was wrong?
[00:09:07]  Two out of 500 raised their hands.
[00:09:09]  He was stunned.
[00:09:11]  Stunned.
[00:09:13]  It doesn't even register as an ethical question that they are downloading a film they didn't pay for, that it's an issue.
[00:09:22]  So we don't concentrate on making good people, and then we wonder where is our society going.
[00:09:30]  This question is more important than any social position you'll ever have in your life, any political position.
[00:09:38]  If we don't raise good people, we're doomed.
[00:09:40]  I mean, it is so self-evident, I feel silly.
[00:09:42]  It's like the first time I was ever on TV.
[00:09:44]  I was 27 years old, and I've just been made the director of a Jewish retreat center where among its programs was a leadership program.
[00:09:53]  And they asked me on this NBC TV thing here in LA, so, Mr. Prager, why do you have this leadership program?
[00:10:05]  And I said, Because a society without leaders is a leaderless society.
[00:10:15]  Not an impressive answer to the guy, but we all start off humbly in life.
[00:10:21]  And although I've done my number, enough corkers as a radio talk show host to match that, I'll give you one other that I matched.
[00:10:29]  I had a guy on, he called me up on my talk show.
[00:10:32]  It's a national show, so I obviously get calls from different places.
[00:10:35]  He was in Arizona, and he was a trucker.
[00:10:38]  So I like to talk to the folks who call him, not just about the issues they're calling.
[00:10:43]  So I said, ah, you're a trucker.
[00:10:44]  What are you hauling?
[00:10:45]  He said, Dennis, two tons of celery.
[00:10:50]  So I said, really?
[00:10:51]  Wow.
[00:10:52]  What does that smell like?
[00:10:56]  And the poor guy liked me, and he didn't want to hurt my feelings.
[00:11:01]  It was clear from his tone, but he had to tell the truth.
[00:11:05]  And he said, well, like celery.
[00:11:12]  My station played that call for about six months, over and over and over.
[00:11:18]  What did I think two tons of celery would smell like?
[00:11:20]  You know, horseradish?
[00:11:22]  I mean, you know.
[00:11:26]  But, yes, a society that doesn't produce good people is doomed.
[00:11:32]  And that's, we don't think of it.

=== Fight Your Nature for Good (15:38) ===

[00:11:34]  We think of, we take great pride in our kids' athletics and in their looks and in their popularity.
[00:11:42]  And Are they popular in school and so on?
[00:11:47]  But are you good?
[00:11:49]  It almost sounds goody-goody.
[00:11:52]  By the way, there's a huge difference between good and goody-goody.
[00:11:55]  I can't stand goody-goody, and I love good.
[00:11:58]  Good is strong, goody-goody is weak.
[00:12:00]  And so it's an important thing to make clear the importance of being a good, decent human being to other people.
[00:12:09]  And so I gave you a handful of examples in the ethical realm.
[00:12:14]  But character development is constant.
[00:12:17]  You know, is there a kid bullied in your class?
[00:12:22]  Do you stand up for the bullied kid?
[00:12:24]  I was a camp counselor for years.
[00:12:26]  I learned almost all I needed to know about humanity being a camp counselor.
[00:12:29]  Every bunk of boys that I was ever counselor of had a bully, had a bullied, and had sheep.
[00:12:37]  I mean, that really, and that is to a certain extent the world, except the handful who fight and aren't sheep and fight the bully.
[00:12:46]  So my first thing to tell you is you have to figure out for yourself, is it really the most important thing that my kids be good people?
[00:12:57]  Would I rather have a good kid who did some, I don't know, some laborer, a blue-collar worker, or a not-such good kid who was a great lawyer or a great doctor.
[00:13:12]  I mean, these are questions that one has to ask.
[00:13:16]  So if goodness is number one to you, you have to convey it.
[00:13:19]  And one way to find out is to ask this question of your kid.
[00:13:24]  All right, how do we do this?
[00:13:26]  I'm going to give you a few tips here.
[00:13:28]  They're philosophical and pragmatic.
[00:13:30]  First, a philosophical one.
[00:13:33]  We have to understand we're not born all that good.
[00:13:38]  Now, telling you this is a pleasure because you know this.
[00:13:43]  How do I know you know this?
[00:13:44]  Because you send your kids to a Catholic school.
[00:13:47]  But when kids go to secular schools, they don't learn this.
[00:13:51]  They learn basically that we're terrific.
[00:13:54]  I'm okay, you're okay.
[00:13:56]  The government stinks or something like that, right?
[00:13:59]  I'm okay, you're okay.
[00:14:01]  It's somebody else's fault that I've acted out like this.
[00:14:03]  It's always somebody else's fault.
[00:14:06]  And so I'm telling you this, but we have to put it into practice.
[00:14:12]  We are not born good.
[00:14:14]  And I don't even say this from a theological standpoint.
[00:14:16]  I'm not talking about original sin.
[00:14:18]  I'm not talking about anything biblical.
[00:14:19]  I'm talking about common sense.
[00:14:21]  We are not born basically good.
[00:14:23]  We are born innocent, if you will, but we are not born good.
[00:14:30]  Well, people say, come on, babies.
[00:14:31]  Come on, Dennis.
[00:14:32]  Babies are, look at them.
[00:14:33]  They're adorable, beautiful, and innocent.
[00:14:35]  Yes, they are adorable, beautiful, and innocent, but they're not good.
[00:14:38]  I want mommy, I want nipple, I want to be held, I want to be comforted, I want to be played with.
[00:14:42]  And if you do not do all of these things immediately, I will ruin your life.
[00:14:47]  Why is that a good person?
[00:14:51]  If babies were good, this is what they would say.
[00:14:54]  You know, I have been throwing up for the last week.
[00:14:57]  I've been crying at 3 a.m. every night.
[00:14:59]  My parents haven't been intimate with one another since I'm born.
[00:15:05]  I'll shut up tonight.
[00:15:09]  That's a good kid.
[00:15:10]  That's a good kid.
[00:15:13]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
[00:15:19]  Want to be the CEO of your own rental portfolio?
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[00:15:35]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:15:40]  Now, am I blaming infants for not thinking that way?
[00:15:43]  I'm not an idiot.
[00:15:44]  Of course, I don't blame them.
[00:15:45]  I was like that.
[00:15:46]  You were like that.
[00:15:48]  But that's the way we are.
[00:15:50]  We're not born good.
[00:15:51]  We are born narcissistic.
[00:15:53]  Me, myself, and I, that's our trinity, if you will.
[00:15:58]  Thinking about oneself.
[00:16:00]  So it is critical from the earliest stage, virtually the earliest stage, to teach a child to control his or her nature, to fight himself.
[00:16:14]  That's, by the way, I've written a lot about this, the difference between a religious education and a secular education.
[00:16:21]  I went to Jewish religious schools till I was 18, and one of the major things I was taught is that the biggest problem in Dennis Prager's life is Dennis Prager.
[00:16:31]  But you're not taught that in secular education.
[00:16:33]  The biggest problem in life is government, pollution, corruption, whatever it is, but it's always outside of you.
[00:16:42]  You're wonderful.
[00:16:44]  Something's wrong outside of you.
[00:16:46]  No, no, you're not wonderful.
[00:16:48]  That's the point.
[00:16:49]  We're not wonderful.
[00:16:50]  We don't begin wonderful.
[00:16:52]  Some begin more than others.
[00:16:53]  This is one of the 10 questions I'll ask God.
[00:16:56]  We don't start at the same place in the track race, ethically or in almost any other way.
[00:17:02]  That's true.
[00:17:03]  Some kids, I acknowledge, there are kids who seem to have a kindness in them from birth.
[00:17:08]  But the other 98% don't.
[00:17:11]  And so these are people that we have to teach.
[00:17:13]  You have to fight yourself.
[00:17:17]  And here I want to address something that nobody seems to address, certainly not since the age of stupidity began with the baby boomers, my generation.
[00:17:28]  And that is that girls are no longer taught to fight their natures.
[00:17:34]  Boys are still taught to fight their natures.
[00:17:37]  Every boy, virtually, I mean not every, but virtually every boy is taught from the earliest age.
[00:17:44]  You have to fight your proclivity toward violence and aggression, physical violence, and you have to fight your sexual predatory nature.
[00:17:53]  Boys are taught that from the get-go.
[00:17:56]  Boys, you have to fight your nature.
[00:17:58]  And I ask parents all the time, what do you tell your daughters to fight in their nature?
[00:18:03]  And parents look at me as if I had asked, you know, the capital of Mongolia.
[00:18:09]  It's just not anything they think about.
[00:18:13]  And you don't even think about not thinking about it.
[00:18:16]  That's how unthought it is.
[00:18:18]  It's not even consciously not thought about.
[00:18:22]  But girls have to fight their natures just as much as boys do.
[00:18:25]  But girls are not taught that.
[00:18:28]  Since their problems are less obvious than boys acting out sexually and aggressively, therefore, girls are not taught nearly as much to fight their natures.
[00:18:40]  And this is a terrible thing to lay on our daughters.
[00:18:45]  Because if you don't fight your nature, not only will you not be terribly good in life, you won't be terribly happy in life.
[00:18:52]  Because the trick to happiness is fighting your nature.
[00:18:56]  It's part of the reason I am convinced that there are so many more depressed women today than there were generations ago.
[00:19:02]  And far more depressed women than depressed men.
[00:19:05]  Now, there are many reasons for that.
[00:19:07]  We were talking about that with the friars during dinner.
[00:19:11]  I am convinced that if I were given a female brain for an hour, I would shoot myself.
[00:19:18]  There's no doubt in my mind.
[00:19:19]  There's no doubt in my mind.
[00:19:23]  And if a woman got a man's brain for an hour, she would just, wow.
[00:19:29]  God, it's that simple.
[00:19:35]  So I acknowledge that there may be a lot of reasons why women are more depressed than men.
[00:19:42]  But the fact is that they are.
[00:19:45]  And one of the reasons is women are not taught to fight their natures.
[00:19:49]  And so if you give into your nature, which for a woman has its own, for men, it's obvious the problems in terms of aggression and in terms of sexuality.
[00:20:00]  But with women, it manifests itself in other ways.
[00:20:03]  Giving into nature, giving into the passions and emotions, but especially the emotions.
[00:20:08]  And if you let your emotions govern you, you will be a wreck, an absolute wreck in life.
[00:20:14]  So you have to tell your daughter, excuse me, we don't tolerate bad moods in this house.
[00:20:19]  Have a great day.
[00:20:23]  By the way, that should be told to your sons too, obviously.
[00:20:27]  This is a home that does not tolerate bad moods.
[00:20:30]  If you are sad, we want to hear it, but we don't want you to act it.
[00:20:36]  Just as, you know, but wow, but I'm naturally sad.
[00:20:39]  I mean, yeah, so what?
[00:20:40]  You have natural body odor.
[00:20:41]  You still take a shower.
[00:20:43]  By the way, that is the way I teach what bad moods are.
[00:20:46]  People should regard bad moods exactly the way they regard bad breath.
[00:20:51]  It's offensive to others.
[00:20:53]  We brush our teeth as often as we do, and we shower as often as we do, primarily for others' sakes.
[00:20:59]  Because we don't want to inflict those odors on others.
[00:21:02]  Well, we should not inflict our moods on others, too.
[00:21:04]  Everybody gets unhappy.
[00:21:05]  Everybody.
[00:21:06]  Even the happy get unhappy.
[00:21:08]  The difference between the happy and the unhappy is not that the happy have easier lives or never get unhappy.
[00:21:14]  It's that they don't allow it to govern them.
[00:21:17]  The unhappy think that the happy all had easier lives.
[00:21:22]  Ask any happy person about their pain in their life.
[00:21:26]  Everybody has pain in their life.
[00:21:27]  I always say if the pain were water, the world would drown.
[00:21:31]  So that's not the issue.
[00:21:32]  The issue is do you control your moods and control your emotions?
[00:21:37]  So to a girl, as just as much to a boy, you have to fight your nature.
[00:21:42]  Don't give in.
[00:21:45]  That's true ethically, and it's true in terms of happiness.
[00:21:49]  So that's rule number one.
[00:21:51]  Number two, we have taught kids in our society that being good is a macro issue, not a micro issue.
[00:22:04]  Meaning, macro is social, public, large-scale, micro is personal, individual.
[00:22:12]  And so a lot of kids think that they are a good person if they have, oh, let us say, I don't know, ran 5K for cancer research or for AIDS research.
[00:22:27]  Now, that's a lovely thing to do.
[00:22:28]  Don't get me wrong.
[00:22:29]  Run 5K for a charity is a lovely thing to do.
[00:22:31]  It doesn't make you a good person.
[00:22:34]  It's a good thing to do, but goodness and character are how you act overwhelmingly on the micro level.
[00:22:44]  And what has happened, in other words, how do you treat your fellow kid at school?
[00:22:49]  Do you go over to the least attractive kids, especially the least attractive girls in the class, and try to bring them into the group?
[00:23:00]  I mean, just to give one example of something that people tend not to do.
[00:23:03]  Do you make fun of other kids?
[00:23:06]  Did you form a clique?
[00:23:07]  Are you a member of a clique?
[00:23:09]  Let alone cheating on tests and so on, which I mentioned in the ethical sphere.
[00:23:15]  And so what kids today think is they are good if they take the right position.
[00:23:22]  If they no longer use incandescent light bulbs, they are sure they're a good person.
[00:23:28]  But you're not a good person if you don't use incandescent light bulbs.
[00:23:32]  You're a good person based on how you treat other human beings.
[00:23:36]  You're not a good person if you love up your dog.
[00:23:38]  Everybody loves up their dog except for a few pathologic sadists.
[00:23:42]  Who doesn't love up their dog?
[00:23:44]  We're born to love dogs, and dogs know it.
[00:23:50]  Every time they see a human, you know what they think?
[00:23:52]  Another sucker.
[00:23:55]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
[00:24:01]  Want to be the CEO of your own rental portfolio?
[00:24:04]  Throw out your spreadsheets, DIY leases, and manual rent payments, and simplify your rental management to save time and money.
[00:24:10]  Get started for free at Turbotenet.com.
[00:24:17]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:24:22]  And so, it doesn't matter.
[00:24:26]  By the way, this is an important thing about the animals issue.
[00:24:29]  I want to make a point here.
[00:24:30]  People have it half right.
[00:24:32]  People always say that if you mistreat animals, you'll mistreat people.
[00:24:35]  That is true.
[00:24:37]  There generally is a trend.
[00:24:39]  If you are cruel to animals, you will be cruel to people.
[00:24:41]  But the converse has no truth at all.
[00:24:44]  There is linkage between mistreatment of animals and mistreatment of people.
[00:24:48]  There is no linkage between kindness to animals and kindness to people.
[00:24:53]  None.
[00:24:54]  It's zero.
[00:24:57]  And those great teachers of ethics, the Nazis, were the greatest examples.
[00:25:02]  You have no idea how pro-animal the Nazi regime was.
[00:25:08]  They were against vivisection.
[00:25:11]  Nazis banned experiments on animals.
[00:25:15]  They allowed experiments on people, but they did not allow experiments on animals.
[00:25:22]  And it's the same with anybody else.
[00:25:24]  If I know a kid is kind to a dog, I have no idea what they'll be to people.
[00:25:29]  I'm happy they're kind to the dog, obviously, because if they were unkind to the dog, then that would translate into how they treat people.
[00:25:36]  But kindness to animals does not translate into kindness to people.
[00:25:39]  Maybe kindness to people will translate into kindness to animals, but that's a separate subject.
[00:25:44]  So again, we have to be clear about goodness, and goodness is a character issue, and development of character is not the same as development of great social positions, whether it's incandescent light bulbs or running to raise funds for some sort of medical research.
[00:26:05]  Number three, treatment of siblings.
[00:26:08]  We tolerate mistreatment of siblings because it is so natural.
[00:26:13]  Natural isn't the same as good.
[00:26:17]  Do not allow your child to tease or mistreat another one of your children.
[00:26:22]  End of issue.
[00:26:24]  It should not be allowed.
[00:26:27]  I don't know why at the family door, cruelty that would never be allowed outside the door is allowed inside the door.
[00:26:35]  Well, that's what kids do.
[00:26:36]  No, you're right, that's what kids do, and kids shouldn't do it.
[00:26:41]  You don't pick on your little sister.
[00:26:43]  You don't.
[00:26:43]  I'm sorry.
[00:26:44]  It's not tolerated in this house.
[00:26:47]  Well, I was only kidding.
[00:26:48]  Fine.
[00:26:49]  You wouldn't do that to a stranger.
[00:26:51]  You will only do that to your sister.
[00:26:54]  By the way, people should think that for everything in families.
[00:26:57]  How many spouses have seen their spouse treats every stranger better than they treat them?
[00:27:03]  It's very sad.
[00:27:05]  It's very sad.
[00:27:05]  We almost reserve the home for meanness.
[00:27:09]  And that's a very, very tragic part of human life.
[00:27:12]  It shouldn't be.

=== Teaching Gratitude and Protecting Innocence (15:11) ===

[00:27:13]  These are the people you should be treating particularly kindly.
[00:27:18]  So treatment of siblings should be monitored and instructed.
[00:27:22]  Number four, you have to teach children gratitude.
[00:27:25]  Gratitude is the single greatest human trait.
[00:27:28]  And the reason it's the greatest is because it's the mother of all traits.
[00:27:34]  I'm smiling because we got, you know, mother of all battles.
[00:27:38]  You know, I'm paraphrasing that great thinker, Saddam Hussein.
[00:27:43]  And this is the mother of all good qualities is gratitude.
[00:27:48]  Gratitude is the mother of goodness, and it is the mother of happiness.
[00:27:53]  You can't be good if you're not grateful, and you can't be happy if you are not grateful.
[00:27:58]  Teaching your children gratitude ensures that they will be happy people and ensures that they will be good people.
[00:28:05]  That's the key of the key of the keys.
[00:28:09]  The more they express gratitude, that is why thank you is so incredibly important.
[00:28:15]  I don't care, and for some of your kids, you will have to say it, I am convinced, 10,000 times.
[00:28:21]  Did you say thank you?
[00:28:24]  And by the way, it has to be heard if they go, thank you.
[00:28:28]  That doesn't count.
[00:28:31]  The recipient has to hear the thank you.
[00:28:34]  It is not enough for them to mumble it.
[00:28:36]  I'm sorry, Uncle Jerry didn't hear your thank you.
[00:28:43]  And that brings me to a side point here.
[00:28:47]  It should be probably included in the list.
[00:28:51]  To raise a good child, do not strive to be loved by your child.
[00:28:58]  Give up on that aim.
[00:29:00]  Forget it.
[00:29:02]  Or as I've often put it, your kid is going to hate you anyway.
[00:29:05]  You might as well do the right thing.
[00:29:11]  This is an unbelievably important thing.
[00:29:13]  Parents want to be loved.
[00:29:15]  Kids don't know that.
[00:29:17]  I didn't know that.
[00:29:19]  But kids don't.
[00:29:20]  Because they're so narcissistic, they always think in their direction.
[00:29:25]  You can't seek to be popular with your child.
[00:29:30]  That is one of the reasons it's so good to have a good marriage.
[00:29:34]  Because you should, ideally, one should get one's love from one's partner or one's friends.
[00:29:42]  But in other words, horizontal, not vertical, is where love should come in life.
[00:29:49]  You're raising your children as a service to society, not as a means to be loved.
[00:29:54]  It's very hard, by the way.
[00:29:56]  I say these things having learned in many cases the painful way.
[00:30:00]  I'm no better than you.
[00:30:01]  I've just consolidated my errors into a speech.
[00:30:10]  This is a very important idea that you have to live with every day.
[00:30:16]  Do not seek to be loved by your children, or you will not raise good children because you will compromise constantly.
[00:30:24]  By the way, that is true for every leadership position.
[00:30:27]  A president who seeks to be loved will be a terrible president.
[00:30:32]  A teacher who seeks to be loved will be a bad teacher.
[00:30:36]  A clergyman who seeks to be loved by his congregation will not be a good clergyman.
[00:30:42]  You better tell your congregation some things they don't want to hear, or you're not doing your job.
[00:30:49]  And I certainly feel that in my radio show.
[00:30:54]  I want to be respected, and I am very touched by the love that I am shown frequently as it happens.
[00:31:00]  And I'm blown away by it because I never aimed for it.
[00:31:05]  But if I aimed to be loved by my listeners, I would not be telling what I truly believe because I'd be so afraid of offending anybody listening.
[00:31:15]  You can't be afraid to offend your child.
[00:31:18]  That's your job.
[00:31:20]  I don't mean to offend them in a gratuitous way, but of course you have to be a nuisance.
[00:31:26]  You are a nuisance in their lives.
[00:31:28]  You have to be.
[00:31:31]  One day they will thank you for it.
[00:31:34]  50, 60 years from now, you'll be dead and they'll thank you.
[00:31:42]  My father was right.
[00:31:43]  May he rest in peace.
[00:31:46]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
[00:31:53]  Want to be the CEO of your own rental portfolio?
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[00:32:08]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:32:12]  I'm sorry, though.
[00:32:13]  That's why raising good children is so difficult.
[00:32:16]  Look at all the obstacles I'm just mentioning here.
[00:32:18]  So this is another one where we want them to love us.
[00:32:23]  It's particularly difficult for a single parent, of whom there are tens of millions in our society.
[00:32:28]  Because it's very hard to live in a home where you're not loved by its constituents.
[00:32:34]  It's very tough.
[00:32:36]  You want to be loved by your kid, especially a single parent, but as well as an intact home, it's also a danger.
[00:32:43]  But it's particularly one problematic in a home of a single parent.
[00:32:50]  Next, it is important for children to believe in something higher than themselves.
[00:32:56]  Obviously, for you and for me as religious people, God is the something higher, and religion is higher, not just God.
[00:33:03]  God is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient.
[00:33:08]  That's why I believe that religion is important.
[00:33:11]  There are a lot of people who believe in God, and it doesn't mean a thing.
[00:33:14]  God is a celestial butler to a lot of people.
[00:33:18]  God, I'd like following today, if you would.
[00:33:20]  Thank you very much.
[00:33:22]  And if you don't do it, I'll stop believing in you, and then you're going to really be hurt.
[00:33:28]  And so, no, God is important, but religion is also higher than us.
[00:33:33]  I was talking to the friars, in fact, earlier when they had delicious food, but among the foods that they had before dinner was pork, and I keep kosher, so I don't eat pork products.
[00:33:49]  And then I was saying to them, you know, it's ironic because here I am, just yesterday teaching the Bible, which I've been doing for many years.
[00:34:00]  I told my class that in every religion, there has to be something that you do just because God said so.
[00:34:09]  Now, not a bad thing, obviously, but something ritualistic or what have you, for no other reason than God said so.
[00:34:18]  It's a very important thing.
[00:34:20]  The secular mock us for doing something just because God said so, but it's an important part of one's religious life.
[00:34:29]  Now, it can go overboard, and you could end up just being irrational and anti-rational.
[00:34:36]  Everything needs to be in moderation.
[00:34:38]  But it is important to have that, and your child should do something just because the religion said so.
[00:34:45]  That's right.
[00:34:46]  You don't like it, I'm sorry.
[00:34:49]  Now, that's a very hard part of raising a child, because on the other hand, you don't want to be so overbearing that they end up hating the religion, or hating God for that matter.
[00:34:58]  So, this is a very tough call, and I fully acknowledge that as a parent.
[00:35:03]  It's a tough call.
[00:35:04]  Do you force your kid to go to church every week, for example?
[00:35:08]  So, I would argue, all things being equal, you give them periodic Sundays off.
[00:35:14]  Okay, all right, today's off.
[00:35:17]  I don't know what it'll be.
[00:35:18]  I don't know.
[00:35:19]  Maybe it's a bad answer.
[00:35:20]  You'll figure it out.
[00:35:21]  Every child is raised differently in any event in certain ways.
[00:35:25]  But the idea that I owe my religion and my God certain things is a good character builder.
[00:35:33]  I am not the only thing I owe something to.
[00:35:36]  I owe something to some.
[00:35:38]  America is higher than you.
[00:35:41]  Not just religion and not just God.
[00:35:43]  Something else is.
[00:35:43]  America is better than me.
[00:35:45]  America is higher than me.
[00:35:46]  I owe America something.
[00:35:48]  We have lost that idea.
[00:35:50]  of service to the country.
[00:35:51]  It is lost.
[00:35:53]  We don't even think about it.
[00:35:56]  People would complain if they were just asked to visit a cemetery on Memorial Day, but that was the norm for most American generations, that you go to a cemetery on Memorial Day.
[00:36:11]  What do we do anymore for our country when you think about it?
[00:36:16]  Next is innocence.
[00:36:18]  The importance of maintaining the innocence of your child.
[00:36:24]  This is a real difficult thing to do in the age of the media.
[00:36:30]  Very, very hard.
[00:36:31]  But innocence often goes hand in hand with character and goodness in a child.
[00:36:37]  There is a time to be a child.
[00:36:39]  There is a time to be an adult.
[00:36:42]  That's why, I mean, there are so many examples of this.
[00:36:45]  I mean, first, television is an innocence robber.
[00:36:48]  Ads are an innocence robber.
[00:36:50]  Billboards are an innocence robber.
[00:36:53]  And in this regard, I would also, just like I showed you that we don't have it quite right on the treatment of the animals.
[00:36:59]  Mistreatment does lead to bad, but good treatment doesn't lead to good.
[00:37:03]  So too here, interestingly, violence in films does not generally rob kids of innocence.
[00:37:10]  I remember being a very innocent child being raised in the 50s and 60s.
[00:37:14]  I was very innocent.
[00:37:16]  And I watched cartoons that had more violence than the news does.
[00:37:22]  I mean, the cats were always beating up the mice, whatever animal it was was flattened a hundred times.
[00:37:32]  The three stooges were poking each other's eyes out constantly, slapping each other and so on.
[00:37:38]  Did I lose innocence?
[00:37:40]  And by the way, I don't even mean that's cartoonish.
[00:37:42]  I even mean non-cartoonish violence.
[00:37:45]  To see high noon and to see a good man vanquish bad men, shooting the bad guys, you know how that protects a child's innocence.
[00:37:54]  That violence protects a child's innocence because children are afraid of bad guys.
[00:38:00]  So if they see a movie where the good guy gets rid of the bad guys, their innocence is protected, not deprived.
[00:38:06]  It's beyond simplistic.
[00:38:08]  It's backwards to think all violence robs kids of innocence.
[00:38:12]  Sex robs kids of innocence, but not violence.
[00:38:18]  That's the difference.
[00:38:19]  None of my cartoons were they having sex.
[00:38:27]  That's the innocence robber of a child.
[00:38:30]  And we know that biblically.
[00:38:32]  Why did they lose Adam and Eve when they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and bad?
[00:38:36]  Why did they lose?
[00:38:37]  They lost their innocence.
[00:38:38]  How do we know?
[00:38:39]  What is the first thing they knew that they were naked?
[00:38:44]  And so that's a classic, that's the classic feature of the fact that it is sex that deprives sexual knowledge.
[00:38:51]  And I don't only mean the act.
[00:38:53]  Sexual knowledge deprives kids of their innocence.
[00:38:58]  So that's something to protect them from, which may mean not even having a TV on except for a handful of channels, history channel, whatever it might be.
[00:39:08]  Look, frankly, if you threw your television out, it would help your marriage, help your life.
[00:39:14]  There's almost nothing redeeming.
[00:39:16]  I know History Channel has good shows.
[00:39:18]  You can get them on DVDs.
[00:39:19]  I'm all for watching movies.
[00:39:21]  Movies is fine.
[00:39:23]  Documentaries are fine.
[00:39:24]  And even some TV, I understand.
[00:39:27]  But it jades people.
[00:39:32]  I mean, the Italians did a fascinating study and found that couples with a television in their bedroom had less sex.
[00:39:40]  I mean, my God, do you realize how powerful TV must be?
[00:39:44]  I mean, what's more powerful than the urge to procreate?
[00:39:48]  TV beats it.
[00:39:50]  That's astonishing.
[00:39:52]  That's how powerful television is.
[00:39:55]  So the eye is drawn to that tube for whatever reason.
[00:40:00]  But in any event, it's now almost impossible to avoid this stuff.
[00:40:07]  Even if your kid is watching football, the ads for other shows are so sex-drenched.
[00:40:12]  It's unfortunate.
[00:40:13]  Now, I'm not saying that the ad in and of itself is good.
[00:40:17]  If the kid is generally innocent, then an ad for the Victorious Secret show that's going to come up on whatever channel isn't going to ruin their life.
[00:40:25]  I'm not fanatic on this.
[00:40:28]  But the bombardment, and I'll tell you what it does, is kids smile less today.
[00:40:33]  Kids enjoy life less today than they did in the 50s and in the 40s and the 30s and the 20s and the 10s and whatever.
[00:40:41]  Kids growing up in the Depression probably in some ways were happier than kids growing up in affluent homes today because they had their innocence and innocence protects you and it enables you to still like a sunset or think a flower is pretty or go wow if you see a giant redwood.
[00:40:59]  If a kid can't go wow except for a video game, the kid's jaded.
[00:41:03]  The kid won't enjoy life.
[00:41:06]  The wow factor in a child's life is the determinant of how jaded they are.
[00:41:12]  Can they still say wow to so many things?
[00:41:16]  Wow, I'm going on an airplane.
[00:41:19]  I mean, if they can say that, I mean, I say the opposite going on an airplane right now.
[00:41:24]  Oh, God, do I not want to go?
[00:41:27]  But that's because flying is no great joy if you do it as often as someone like I do.
[00:41:33]  But a kid should have still a thrill to go on an airplane and go somewhere else and see the country from a window.
[00:41:41]  In any event, protecting their innocence is key.
[00:41:44]  I was against kids going to Titanic.
[00:41:47]  Now you say, well, why?
[00:41:48]  You said violence is okay.
[00:41:50]  Well, first of all, that was true.
[00:41:52]  I had nightmares after seeing Titanic.
[00:41:55]  You watch a thousand innocent people drown, nobody to protect them.
[00:41:59]  That's disorienting for a child.
[00:42:01]  Listen, I found it disorienting as an adult.
[00:42:04]  It's a horrific, horrific, utterly realistic film about a spectacular, awful tragedy of perfectly decent people drowning en masse.
[00:42:16]  It's a very painful thing, and it should be painful.
[00:42:20]  So innocence is critical.

=== Why Titanic Haunts Children (00:44) ===

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