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Dec. 14, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:27:37

1232 Sunday Call In Show Dec 13 2008

Some great questions on kids and parenting...

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	I have a question. Why, sure.
	Are you there? Uh-huh. So, I'm wondering, what is the most important thing that you learned about children when you were working in the daycare center?
	Like, what's the new information that you learned about them that you kind of want to implement in your own, you know, teaching strategies?
	Well, I would say that the most important practical thing I learned about children working in a daycare is that they are immensely leaky.
	Leachy? Leachy.
	I mean, stuff comes out of everything.
	That's all I'm saying. So, you know, rain gear is definitely recommended.
	Well, for those who don't know this history, and I think it's an excellent question, for a number of years when I was a teenager, I worked in a daycare, and I had a room of, oh man, it was like 40 kids aged 5 to 12.
	It was my job to keep them Engaged and so on.
	And a lot of these kids came from a pretty rough section of town.
	I mean, single families and hygiene problems.
	I mean, these were kids with problems.
	And I worked there during the weekdays for a couple of hours after school.
	In fact, I got to leave school early to go to this job because everybody kind of knew that I was on my own since about 15 or 16.
	And then I would spend the summers working there full-time, eight or nine hours a day.
	So it was a great couple of years.
	I mean, I really, really liked the kids.
	I think they liked me.
	They gave me lots of sweet cards and so on.
	I would say that the most important thing that I learned about children during those years, and I also did, sorry, just to top that up, I worked for a while as a teacher's aide to a high school class of gifted kids.
	This was after I was in university, and that was also very interesting.
	But the most important thing that I learned was that children are incredibly hungry for intimacy and connection.
	They are so...
	Hungry for intimacy and connection.
	So they were a tough bunch of kids.
	You certainly couldn't control them with any kind of authority, right?
	Because, I mean, they were not that way inclined.
	And so the best way that I discovered to keep them engaged and to keep them from doing things that were unproductive, let's say, is to really engage them.
	And so I found that sort of Being calm and sitting down and engaging them in conversation was really important.
	And of course, I used every trick in the book, right?
	I mean, I had hand puppets I'd put on puppet shows with just enough, hopefully, humor that, you know, enough energy that the young kids would be interested in, enough humor that the older kids would be interested.
	I also would tell them...
	So I would tell them the story of the Hobbit, or I remember for about a week keeping them on the edge of their seats about the Silmarillion, and so on.
	So I found that really engaging, connecting with the children was the best way to, I could say keep order, but it sort of didn't become important that way.
	And to ask them questions and to give them that kind of attention.
	It doesn't necessarily have to be one-on-one, but as long as they know that you're really interested in them and you're open to listening, I just found that...
	I mean, it doesn't solve all problems, right?
	There's no magic wand, right?
	And I probably was not...
	You know, any kind of really important influence in their lives.
	But I did find that that's the thing that I noticed the most, that they just really wanted to be listened to and to be talked to in a, you know, in a mature and respectful kind of way.
	Because they kind of heard it around, right?
	I mean, these kids, you know, heard it after school, and they sit in the back of classes at school, and heard it around at school, then they heard it after daycare, right?
	So I think that they just felt...
	Kind of like livestock. And I really worked hard to try and connect with them.
	And I think that did some real good.
	So based on that then, and that there's so many children being herded around, don't they all sort of want your attention at the same time?
	I mean, how did you manage that and then at the same time manage if like one of the kids was hitting another one or trying to Deal with that without, like, rejecting or withdrawing your affection for them.
	Does that make sense? Right.
	I mean, that's all great questions.
	And again, I don't want to pretend that there's any magic wand, but what I found helpful was to...
	And this was all, you know, in hindsight, this had some stuff to do with the foundations of RTR. What I found helpful in the daycare was if I was interacting with a group of kids or talking with a group of kids or sitting down to play with them and so on...
	And when kids are engaged, they're not problematic, right?
	They're not disobedient or whatever.
	They're not starting fights or throwing stuff or whatever when they're engaged.
	So what I would say is, you know, I wouldn't just sort of jump up and leap over to do something else.
	I would say, I have to get up and do this.
	Will you guys be okay until I get back?
	And, you know, just keep them informed, right?
	Children are very sensitive to sudden changes, and it's easy for them to feel Disoriented, you know, like when he sat down to play with me and now he's gone, right?
	And so keeping them informed in real time about what I was doing and why, I think gave them a sense of trust and so on.
	Predictability, I guess. Sorry.
	Okay. Yeah, I see how that works.
	I just have one more kind of on the same topic.
	So for you and Christina, I'm really curious how, or if you have any helpful tips to how to For lack of a better word, discipline your child without withdrawing or rejecting, you know, when those situations come up, when he or she is four or five, or I guess terrible twos is what they call it, but...
	Well, again, there's not a lot of magic, but this is what I would suggest, and Christina will jump in if and when I go awry, you know, when I start talking about duct tape and catapults and stuff, right?
	But what I would suggest is this, right?
	That the connection that you have with a child...
	Discipline is something that needs to be constantly maintained.
	And again, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
	It's some theory, but I'm sure I won't be perfect in any way if this is apparent as well.
	But a discipline is not when you want to pay attention to your child.
	I mean, clearly. That we all know.
	So if you have a constant connection or engagement with your child, then you need much less Intrusive course correction, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And this is none of my innovation, right?
	I mean, I remember seeing...
	I think one of Dr.
	Phil's sons wrote a book, which he was talking about in the Dr.
	Phil show, where he was saying, you know, you don't walk into your teenager's room and ask about drugs, right?
	What happens is you have a constant connection and exchange of relational stuff with your children, right?
	And then the conversation about drugs is simply part of that continuum of connection, if that makes any sense.
	And so what happens is, at least what I've seen with parents, and again, I'm sure I'll do this myself, but what happens is we do stuff and we're not connected to our children.
	And that's going to happen in time because, you know, everyone's got stuff to do.
	So we'll do stuff, and then what happens is if our child does something that is, you know, dangerous or bad, let's say, then what we do is we then interact with our child in this form of discipline, right?
	And what that does, of course, is it encourages the child, if the child is feeling not attended to or lonely or disconnected, then the child knows that they'll get attention, right, through misbehavior.
	Yeah, right, yeah.
	Whereas if the child does not, or obviously children are going to feel it, there's no black or white stuff here, and again no magic wand, but if the child feels that there's a connection, like if you're cooking and you're chatting with your child, however silly it is at the age of four or five, if you're cooking and chatting with your child who's sitting somewhere available, then if you have to correct the child on something, it's part of your consistently open communication, if that makes sense.
	It's not like, I don't talk to my kid until he does something wrong, and I know that that's not what you're saying, and I also know that's just an extreme way of putting it.
	And I think this works very similar in marriages as well, right?
	In that you have a trust and open relationship, and then when you provide correction or feedback or criticism of the other party, that's just simply a part, you know, it's a leaf on the stream, so to speak, right?
	Whereas I think what parents get into is this habit of, Distraction and then irritation with misbehavior.
	And that is a cycle that I've certainly seen.
	Right. And that's not actually so much what I'm worried about because I think that, well for myself at least, the reason I'm asking is because I think that I won't want to discipline my child because I'll be worried just so badly about making it feel bad or like telling him or her that she did something wrong In a bad way, sort of, if that makes sense.
	It's like a worry for overdoing it.
	Right, right. And I think...
	I think the problem is, I think that's one of the perils that parents fall into, that they don't want to discipline their kids because they don't want their kids to have a bad experience of them.
	And then what ends up happening is that kids have no limits, no boundaries, no guidance, and end up walking all over the parents.
	Kids need structure.
	Kids need discipline. I mean, you are the authority figure.
	You know what's going to be when your child is in danger and when your child needs...
	Limitations when your child needs a consequence for a behavior like hitting another child is not acceptable that requires some kind of a consequence and again a consequence is different than a punishment and the the consequence needs to fit the act so you can't when you're disciplining children say well wait till your father gets home and he's gonna dole out the punishment you know you certainly can Christina Right?
	And it needs to be immediate and it needs to be appropriate to the act.
	And you can be firm and you can be loving with your child when you dole out a consequence or, you know, a punishment.
	I don't like the word punishment.
	It has such negative connotations.
	I don't like the punishment either.
	Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, actually.
	I can see the difference between that because, you know, of course I don't want to be a pushover at the same time.
	I mean, I guess it's just a Basic implementing your ethics like you would maybe with your spouse or something.
	I mean, in similar ways with your child.
	There's no reason for it to be any drastically different whatsoever, right?
	No, I think the one thing that we have to remember is that we're human and we make mistakes as well.
	And no parent is perfect and you're going to make mistakes and Steph and I are going to make mistakes.
	But what we want to teach our child is that when we do make a mistake that we are accountable.
	That's a lesson that we want to teach our child that he or she needs to be accountable as well.
	Responsibility. So we're not going to be perfect.
	We're going to make mistakes. And then when we recognize a mistake, we atone for it.
	We make up for it.
	And there's one other thing, if you don't mind.
	I'll just add this very briefly because there's...
	To me, there's kind of three phases.
	And again, I mean, I'm fully sensitive of the fact that I'm still yet to become a parent.
	So this is just stuff I've observed in working with kids and so on.
	But there's kind of three phases to child development, right?
	So the first is, and this is ridiculously simplistic, but let's just go and see if it fits.
	The first is the infancy stage, right?
	Where they can't do anything for themselves.
	You have to do everything for them.
	And there's no point lecturing a toddler about, you know, peeing in your eyeball, right?
	It just doesn't do any good, right?
	Because that's what they do, right?
	So that phase, clearly there's no such thing as discipline or anything like that, right?
	I mean, that's just you take care of the babies and you provide them their needs and you cuddle them and all that kind of stuff.
	And then there's another phase, which is where children have physical mobility but no kind of reasoning capacity of any substance.
	So this, of course, is where you childproof your home, and there's no point lecturing an 18-month-old not to go down the stairs, right?
	They won't understand that.
	So you have to create a safe environment for the children and so on, right?
	And you can start to reason with them a little bit in that area, but it's not going to be sufficient, right?
	Now, most parents are perfectly fine with this stuff, and where they have a problem is when the children do begin to develop the capacity to...
	Recognize the consequences of their actions.
	They start pushing limits. This is where parents often get kind of cranky.
	And what they generally will rely on is they will create a series of negative repercussions for actions, which doesn't teach the child anything substantial other than the avoidance of punishment.
	Right? It's not teaching the child what the child needs to learn, fundamentally.
	And again, this is a... It's a shifting process.
	So again, it's not black and white.
	But you don't want the child to just not go near the stairs because he's going to get punished.
	Right? Because all that does is teach him that punishment results from certain actions.
	Right? What you want the child to, over time, to understand...
	It's that stairs are dangerous, right?
	You sit there with a child and you say, with a ball, right?
	Imagine this is you or a baby and you throw it and it bounces.
	How would that feel? You get the child to begin to reason about the risks in the environment, right?
	And again, you don't trust it. It's not like you then say, okay, we don't need any protection on the stairs, right?
	But teaching the children to recognize and respect the dangers and, of course, the desires that occur within their environment is That is so much, I believe, is so much more valuable and fulfilling for a child than simply to say, well, if I go near the stairs, I get punished.
	Oh yeah, I totally agree.
	That's not helpful at all.
	And the problem is, and this is where I do sympathize with parents this way, right?
	The problem is, that takes a lot more upfront time, right?
	I just sit there and explain and appeal to the child's sense of, you know, children don't want to experience pain either, right?
	They just can't make that connection ahead of time.
	Just to sit down and go through all of this is a lot more time-consuming, and it's a lot more upfront investment than sort of just lifting the child away from the stairs, so to speak, right?
	Or saying, don't go near the stairs, or whatever, right?
	So, I mean, parents are busy, parents are harried, parents are stressed, parents are tired.
	And taking that time to step the child through reasoning and understanding his environment and consequences is much, obviously, it's more upfront time, but boy, as I found with working with kids, it saves a lot of time at the back end.
	Yeah, but hopefully the parents are willing to do that.
	You know, some of the basic things that are so lacking is lack of time for children In the first place, which is just where my entire questions on raising kids and what are the best things to do and whatnot, that's what I would have hoped my parents would have done for me and what other parents do for other kids.
	So I totally agree with you.
	I think that that time will be totally beneficial.
	Well, and it is, sorry to interrupt, but it is this challenge, right, which is that parents say, well, I don't have the time to go through this Level of education with my children.
	But, of course, the obvious argument in response is, well, you know, how much time are you going to spend otherwise?
	You know, inflicting punishment, snapping, not enjoying your children, like all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah, right. And their priorities are really horrible.
	Right. I mean, it's what happens with people who say, well, I couldn't afford to go to therapy.
	It's like, do you know how expensive a divorce is?
	Right. Right, right.
	Yeah, right, exactly.
	So it's just, you know, it's hard for me to have sympathy for the parents like that.
	Same reasons as it's been discussed on the boards and everything like that in your previous podcast.
	But anyways, that's very helpful.
	So I think that answers my question.
	Well, thanks. And thank you for bringing it up.
	I know you wanted to talk about this for a while.
	So you've been very patient, which is great.
	Thank you to the both of you.
	I'm sorry? I just said thank you to the both of you.
	Oh, you're very welcome. I mean, I have another question, but I'm going to kind of let people try to cut in if they have an AMNL. I'll come back to you guys later if no one has any other questions.
	Okay, great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
	Those are great, great questions.
	And I'm very much looking forward to my child playing back this podcast to me when he gets older saying, why didn't you do any of this stuff, Dad?
	Yeah, right. Which could happen.
	Hopefully not. But I just wanted to mention that.
	Great, thanks. Thanks very much.
	Bye. I'm just looking forward, just before we get to the next question, I'm just looking for...
	And I checked with the father about this post.
	I thought a guy just wrote a completely fantastic post about his interaction with his son.
	And this is older, of course, than what we're talking about here.
	But it was very, very helpful.
	So if you could just hang on to that.
	Hang on to your thoughts. Of course, I'm just waiting for that to show up.
	Ah, yes. Okay. And this is a bit of a long post, but I just absolutely think it was a wonderful, wonderful thing.
	This is a fellow named Tim, who's agreed to let me read this.
	And he said, thank you all for your generous post.
	He posted this on December 11th.
	I think FDR should be essential listening for parents.
	I've made a lot of huge mistakes as a parent, starting off with having kids at the age of 22.
	FDR has helped me figure out a lot of the things I was doing wrong as a father and my kids have made incredible breakthroughs as a result.
	They have become very openly curious about everything and are figuring out all sorts of things about getting along with each other.
	Here is a small example of an interaction that illustrates how I think FDR has helped improve my family.
	At the beginning of the school year, I asked my 12-year-old son if he would like to get involved in an extracurricular activity and offered some examples.
	He decided he wanted to commit to one activity and he agreed to try it for at least a full semester in return for me adjusting my schedule and supporting him in any way that I could.
	The boys and girls group he joined asked the kids to engage in fundraising activities and reward hard workers with leadership opportunities and other rewards.
	Inevitably, the day came when video game playing interfered with my son's commitment.
	The old Tim, that's the father, would have explained the importance of commitment and took him kicking and screaming to his group, been horribly embarrassed and then felt his resentful stare for the next few days while I was comforted by my sense of moral superiority.
	Instead of taking this approach with my son, I told him, of course his dedication would be honored.
	Sorry, of course his decision would be honored and his participation was voluntary.
	He writes in brackets, this felt extremely frightening to my traditional parenting sensibilities.
	We then had a conversation about the benefits of commitment where I explained to him my experience of following through on commitments versus not following through on them and asked him what he thought the positive and negative repercussions of his decisions would be.
	He furrowed his brow and thought about it and very quickly listed off the positives and negatives and said, Dad, even though I don't feel like it, I'm going to go tonight.
	This may seem like a very small thing, but a night that didn't end in a strained resentment and exasperation and instead ended with a father's eyes welling with tears of pride and a son feeling empowered to make decisions about his own life was priceless.
	Thanks FDR. And I wanted to mention this is really, very much relevant to what you're saying here.
	I know it's older kids, right?
	But that's helping the kids step through the decision-making process rather than saying, well, you made a commitment and you're going to stick by it and I'm going to punish you if you don't, right?
	Which just, again, teaches the kid nothing other than obedience to power followed by resentment, right?
	So... I hope that that has some relevance.
	And I mean, this is a staggeringly beautiful post, right?
	This makes all of the crap with hostility towards what we do and the philosophy.
	I mean, it makes it all worthwhile.
	That moment, right, where he makes a different decision, reinforces voluntarism, reinforces curiosity, RTR, openness.
	Trusting that if his son reasons through stuff, because aggression with children is a lack of trust, fundamentally, in yourself and in the child, in your parenting skills and the child's decision-making capacities, which tend to be related, right?
	The more aggressive your parenting, the less your child will develop these skills, and therefore, the more you will have to be aggressive, and therefore, right, we get this vicious circle.
	And the fact that he does something that feels completely terrifying to his prior parenting style, that he faces that fear, and he makes that change.
	I mean, it's so unbelievably moving and beautiful that this man should just be enormously proud of taking that change at a time when his son is going to really benefit from it, right?
	Not much point doing this when your kids are 30, right?
	Or 20. But this is a very, very important thing.
	And he's just created, if he sticks with it, and I'm sure that he will, he's just created a whole different experience of his teenage years with his sons.
	And he's just completely taken the cycle out of the equation and And that's just a magnificent and beautiful thing, and it makes it all worthwhile.
	I just wanted to mention that as an example of something that occurs later on.
	Alright, well, thank you, and next question, or I guess we'll go back to the previous insightful and brilliant lady, if we don't have anyone else who's got a yearning burning.
	Well, I guess, my lady, if you still have your mic up, we could go back to your Your next question.
	Sure. I think other people did have questions, but I think they're really enjoying your questions, so I think that's my guess.
	Not a problem. Okay, so when a family member contacts you and you know that it's going to end in disappointment for him and probably frustration for yourself.
	I'm so sorry. I just missed what you were just saying there.
	If you could just go back a sentence.
	A family member contacts you.
	I just got a bit gobbled there.
	If you could just repeat that, please. So, when a family member contacts you, and because we can kind of predict what these people that we've lived with for so long can do, and so you know it's going to end in disappointment for like him, let's say, in this case it's my dad, and frustration for myself, is the best mode of action just inaction?
	And if that's the case, if the best mode is inaction, what kind of things do you What kind of things do you say to an email that's like maybe moralizing or telling you that you're bad for something or another or the way that I, in this case, I said something that I believed about my mom and then I was told that I was just completely wrong in my interpretation of that and everything.
	So, because I chose to write, he wrote me something and because I chose to write him back, That's already setting him up for disappointment, in a way, and dissatisfaction, because I know that what I write to him is not going to be taken well.
	So am I setting him up to be in that position, basically?
	And, you know, maybe for my own purposes or something like that, my theory is that maybe it's kind of a last hurrah to try to get him to understand something better.
	Something on my behalf and understand how I feel about my mom.
	So I'm trying to decipher between just what is the best decision to do really for myself, just not talk to him at all, not write him back, and how I could phrase that in an email just saying, you know, I don't find your question to be valid or I don't find your email to be something that I want to respond to.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, it certainly does make sense, but I can certainly understand...
	Why you feel confused.
	Yeah, exactly. It's a little confusing.
	No, no, I totally understand, right?
	This is what happens in the absence, and again, I'm going to put this in a strong way, and I apologize for that, but just to be clear, in the absence of real self-knowledge about why you're doing what you're doing, we end up Kind of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
	Should I do this? Should I do that?
	How should I phrase this sentence?
	Rather than going deep and trying to figure out what it is exactly that we're doing and why, if that makes any sense.
	It does. Yeah, but not helpful sense, right?
	So hopefully I'll try to add some helpful sense to that, right?
	And I don't know much about what's going on with your family, but let me just ask some questions and see if I can get some sort of perspective.
	So you have a challenging relationship with your father and you're still engaged in communication with him, is that right?
	I'm having a challenging relationship with both of my parents and I actually tried to actually cut off communication and I wanted to for a few months or at least until the new year but then recently my dad was in the hospital and I didn't go visit him and so he sent me this email saying That he was very saddened that I didn't visit him.
	And then, because of that, I chose to write him back.
	Okay. And obviously, that's neither here nor there in terms...
	There's no right or wrong answers, but what was your...
	Why did you write back?
	And again, this is not to say whether it's right or wrong.
	There's no way to know. And that doesn't really matter.
	There's no way to judge that. But I think that clarity with regards to your own motivations is the essential thing here, right?
	So why did you write back?
	Because in his email to me, he said something to the sort of, well, I was sad that especially you didn't ask your mom for details of where I was so that you would even want to come visit.
	Like you didn't ask anything else about my hospitalization.
	You just said okay when you called her back.
	I felt that something that my mom did in that situation was extremely manipulative, and I didn't want to give her that satisfaction of asking for the details, and so that kind of turned me off of visiting him at all.
	So then when that was put on me, I got really frustrated and angry, and so I wanted to write back my feelings about my mom and try to show how I really didn't think that that was a fair analysis of the situation.
	I'm sorry, did you have an expectation that your mother would communicate a fair analysis of the situation?
	No, she wouldn't communicate it.
	It's in ways that she sort of, you know, plays the game.
	Just so I can explain it really fast.
	She called and left a message and said for me to call her back.
	She didn't call and leave the details that my dad was in the hospital.
	So that I could just choose what I wanted to do with the information.
	You know, if I had the details, I could have just made a choice to go visit him.
	But since she didn't leave anything, it sort of forces me to call her back.
	And if I did not ask details, then I would be looked at as the bad guy for not caring about my dad and his situation.
	But if I did ask details, it would have forced me to communicate with her.
	So I felt that it was kind of a lose-lose situation.
	Once I decided to call her back and realize sort of what my interpretation of what was going on was.
	Right. So just so I understand this correctly, you experienced it as kind of like a setup or a trap where you either end up having to communicate with someone you don't want to communicate with or there will be a negative judgment about you based on not communicating.
	Is that right? Yeah, totally. Absolutely.
	I totally understand.
	Let me just ask you another question at the moment.
	Are you currently talking to a therapist?
	Yeah, I'm talking to my therapist.
	Okay, okay. That's important, right?
	Because, I mean, even trial separations from family, never do them without talking to a therapist, obviously, right?
	Okay, so...
	When you felt that you were in an impossible situation, obviously this creates frustration, anger, a desire to rush in, doesn't it?
	I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, right?
	No, no, no, that's right.
	I mean, I wanted to...
	Yeah, there's a lot of frustration and anger, and then once I knew that...
	Then once I got this email back, it wasn't something that I wanted to just, you know, let slide, sort of, because I felt so strongly...
	But what my mom did was manipulation, which has been a hard thing for me to see in the first place.
	So, you know, I feel like I'm finally able to pin these things down.
	And then I felt so strongly about it that I didn't want to let that slide when I got my dad's email.
	Okay, sorry to interrupt you, but tell me what it means when you say you didn't want to let it slide.
	What does that mean? That's a term I'm not sure exactly what it means in this context.
	Sure. I feel like...
	I feel like my mom's manipulation is completely overlooked by every other member of my family and that that's unfair and that she does it so often that sometimes I don't even bring it up.
	But now that I am trying to be more authentic with my feelings and everything, that's not something that I didn't want to...
	If I was going to write my dad back, I didn't want to leave that out.
	That I felt that that was something that my mom did in that situation.
	That's what I mean. I didn't want to let it slide.
	I didn't want to not voice that I was bothered by that.
	Does that make sense?
	I certainly understand where you're coming from, and I certainly do understand the feelings.
	I mean, I'm wide open to understanding this in another context, but the thought that comes to me is, If you're taking a separation, a trial separation from difficult family members, the fact that they then escalate that difficulty for you would not seem to me to be a very good place to reestablish contact from.
	That's a great point.
	That's my fundamental...
	And look, maybe I'm missing everything, right?
	And I'm completely off in cloudland of fog-bound era, for sure.
	But it just seems like, well, they're really difficult to deal with.
	But now that they're more difficult, I'm going to re-engage.
	That just doesn't seem to me to make...
	It makes emotional sense, right?
	Because they're fishing, right?
	But it doesn't make much big-picture sense.
	And again, step me through it if I'm way off base.
	No, no, I... That's kind of exactly...
	I think that might have been what I was looking to hear, because my original question was, you know, action or inaction based on a change of circumstances, but that's, I think, exactly what happened.
	I don't think that I was keeping sort of an objective...
	Right. And rather than self-explore or self-RTR or talk to your therapist about the feelings of frustration, you acted to relieve your anxiety, right?
	By sending this and taking a stand and correcting people and all that stuff, right?
	Yeah, which is not helpful.
	Well, you're training them, right?
	If they bug you enough, you'll be in contact with them, right?
	Yeah, you know what, that's, yeah, that's right.
	And I don't think, I mean, I don't think that's what you want, obviously, right?
	I'm sorry? I don't think that's what you're really looking for, right?
	To train people to be more provocative and more passive aggressive or whatever it is, I mean, whatever labels apply to whatever bugged you about this, right?
	Yeah, no, I'm trying to do the opposite of that in a way.
	The key issue, I mean, again, this is all just theory, right?
	And again, your therapist's opinion means everything and mine means nothing, right?
	But the key thing that I would say is the reason, if you take a trial separation from your family, obviously the important thing is to see how you feel, right?
	And to talk to a therapist and Journal and talk to people and talk to your husband, talk to your friends, you know, and work through your feelings, all of that kind of stuff, right?
	Now, if during this process, right, you go through and you say, wow, you know, a lot of it was me.
	I've learned much better ways of dealing with them.
	I've learned much better skills.
	I'm much more aware of my own issues.
	I've got self-knowledge to a large degree or whatever, right?
	And you miss them, right?
	That's kind of an important part, right?
	Right. So, tell me, if you don't mind, tell me, if you would like to share, when was it that you took the break?
	I moved out in I guess July.
	And then recently it was about the end of November that I said that I didn't want to, you know, I fully didn't want to receive any emails or things like that.
	And the only thing that I wanted to be contacted on at all was if someone happened to be like in critical condition in a hospital.
	Are you there?
	Yeah, go ahead. And so I said, if someone happens to be in a critical condition, you can send me an email with the details of what the situation is, but other than that, please no communication or anything, which, I don't know, maybe that was even too much.
	I'd have to think back on that again, but basically, I would say it was kind of mid to end November, and obviously, well, it didn't last long.
	But I feel like because of the hospital situation, It struck a lot of feelings and kind of made me try to reconsider the circumstances, even though I didn't want to.
	My original feelings was that I didn't want to engage.
	Oh, look, and I mean, incredible sympathies for that, right?
	I mean, top to bottom, back to front, right?
	I mean, for your family, for yourself, I mean, to say I need to take a break to sort out some issues and then to have an illness in the family is unbelievably grueling, right?
	Yeah. Well, I definitely felt it changed.
	Oh, it's horrible. You know, it is a really, really, really, really, really, really difficult thing to work through, which is, of course, why people need therapeutic help, right?
	So, I mean, first of all, huge sympathies for all of that, right?
	Because that just puts you in a really...
	Difficult, painful situation.
	And, you know, of course, somebody's second in hospital, which is not pleasant, far from pleasant for everyone involved, but of course, particularly for the person with the health issues, right?
	So it's a really, really difficult situation.
	There's no answers that anyone can give you about what to do in those situations, right?
	But in general, right, assuming that the health crisis has passed, which I think, if I've understood you correctly, that it has...
	The reason that, you know, when people take a break from families or people take a break from, and this is true with trial separations and marriages, or when people just say, you know, whatever is happening here is not working.
	I need to take a break to sort out things, and it doesn't mean I'm not going to go back, but, you know, I'm locked in a pattern here and it's not working.
	People, you know, it's like they will feel relief, right, when they separate, right, or take that break.
	And then... The first impulse will be to not revisit the feelings or the thoughts that provoke the separation.
	And so, you know, my strong advice, which is of course nonsense, but take it if it fits.
	It's not. Go ahead, please.
	Okay. I mean, talk to your therapist, do your journaling and so on, but if...
	You don't miss them.
	And I know it's never that simple.
	It's never, oh yes I do, or no, no I don't.
	There's always certain things that we miss about people.
	But taken all in all, with the understanding that you cannot change other people, which everybody accepts, do you miss them?
	Now if you do, and you're working on stuff and you're coming around, then fantastic.
	Trial separations don't I don't mean divorce, right?
	That's why there are trial separations.
	They will often mean divorce, but they don't always mean divorce.
	But the key thing is to work on the self-responsibility, work on your feelings, and to learn to not react through a desire for anxiety management, right?
	Oh, they're saying bad things about me.
	I have to correct them, right?
	Yeah, right.
	That's not a good reason to be in contact with someone.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Like if someone came up to you at a party and said, hey, let's be friends.
	I'll say stuff about you that's not true and then you can spend time correcting it.
	That would not be a very enticing offer, right?
	No, no.
	So, I think, you know, the really key thing is to, you know, focus on your feelings.
	Focus on, you know, what you've done.
	We've all, like, what you've done in the relationship that may be less than optimal, which is the case for all of us.
	You know, work with your therapist.
	Continue to journal.
	Figure out your dreams if you can.
	and talk to people about it.
	But it's not going to work if you respond to people out of frustration and anger and re-engage with your family with that as a motive.
	That's definitely not going to work, right?
	And I mean, 'cause everyone's, I know that there's all this stuff with the, oh, he likes to break up families, blah, blah.
	I mean, nothing would be better, Nothing would be more wonderful for me than your family gets help or does something to read books, whatever, right?
	To deal with it. And you and then everybody gets back together and hammers it out.
	I mean, that to me would be wonderful.
	I mean, that would be great. What could be better, right?
	Who wouldn't want that? But that goal, which is a good goal, which you don't have any control over fundamentally, right?
	You only have control over yourself, not a relationship.
	That goal is not going to be helped.
	In fact, it's going to only be hindered if you re-engage with people because you fell for a trap and feel angry.
	Right, right, right.
	So, in that situation, do you have any suggestions for Oh, I'm sorry. Are you looking for actually practical solutions?
	I'm sorry, you may not have read the fine print on the website.
	Nothing but theory.
	Nothing you can actually use.
	No, I think I understand what you mean.
	But if you wanted to add something, please go ahead.
	Just things even as simple as walking away from the email for like an hour.
	I mean, I know that that could help theoretically.
	So even any other theoretical ideas for handling anxiety before acting on it.
	Yeah, for sure, which is to not act on it, right?
	Because the reason that anxiety arises is because it wants to, I mean, in many ways, it wants to hasten our actions, right?
	Yeah. I mean, the reason that people escalate is they want...
	The reason that people bug us, I mean, for one, I'm talking about it completely unsophisticatedly, but forgive me, is because they want us to react and they want us to...
	To do that, right?
	So, I mean, the first thing to do is to not do that, right?
	And that is to say, to yourself, I feel really anxious, right?
	And this happens so often in you, in me, in everyone.
	You can hear this in listening to conversations, right?
	People will achieve some sort of connection or an insight about themselves or even a philosophical topic or something like that.
	And then the next sentence out of their mouth, 99% of the time is, so what do I do, right?
	Now that I've got this, I need a list of things to do.
	And that is not productive, in my opinion, right?
	Which is that it can take you a week to figure out what to do.
	It may take a couple of sessions with your therapist.
	It might take, you know, five-hour phone calls with your chiropractor.
	I don't know, right? But to not do something and to figure out what is going on down at the bottom here, right?
	And of course, what is going down at the very bottom, in my humble opinion, is that your reputation, you perceive, to be dependent upon what your family thinks, right?
	Your self-esteem.
	It's been a problem, yeah.
	And I sympathize, and this is with all the empathy and compassion that I have.
	I totally sympathize with that.
	I mean, this has been a month for me dealing with reputation issues, to say the least, right?
	So, again, there's nothing compared to what's going on with your family or with anyone's family.
	But what's going on down there is that you have placed the power of your self-definition in their hands, right?
	I definitely do when I engage.
	No, you engage because you've already done that.
	Because if people say bad things about you, and again, I could be wrong about the details because I want to make sure we get to the principles, but if people say bad things about you, it's not pleasant.
	I mean, I don't think anyone's indifferent.
	I'm certainly not indifferent to it, right?
	I mean, it's nasty, right?
	It's horrible and scary. But if people say bad things about you, fundamentally, They do not have the power to turn you against yourself.
	That is your doing, right?
	Yes. Your perception of your own value and virtue and good conscience and right behavior and whatever, right?
	It does not...
	It is not subject to the opinions of others fundamentally.
	Now... I don't believe in this Randian superhero.
	Nothing ever touches you.
	You know, you can stride through the world with calumny and never notice, never blink.
	And I don't think that's...
	I think that was just dramatic effect.
	I don't believe that that's... I think that's only possible for somebody who's not very together mentally.
	But... So, you know, we feel that, right?
	We feel that. You know, we were shopping for baby stuff yesterday when the article came out.
	And it's... It was tough having fun, right?
	Because the article's out, you know, cult, and oh, he's a bad guy, and oh, he's manipulative and creepy, and all this stuff.
	So it's not like it has no effect, but fundamentally, you do have to stake your turf within yourself, right?
	I mean, you get knocked down, you get back up again, right?
	So people will say bad things about you, or people will try and provoke you with these snide and snarky attacks, or these traps, or whatever, and it's going to feel bad.
	It would be inhuman to think it wouldn't.
	So it's going to feel bad.
	And the first thing that we're going to want to do is to react to that, to correct people, to engage.
	But we're only doing that because we feel that we have to reclaim our reputation.
	But fundamentally, the only reputation that matters is the one with yourself.
	Right? I totally agree with that, yeah.
	It's The question is sort of now for me, well, how do you get...
	Do you keep reminding yourself, or is there a point that you get to?
	You're saying that there's no point that you'll get to that you will just completely not care.
	I mean, basically, you're pointing out that there's no, like, Rourkean wall that is gonna just block out all negative opinions.
	And particularly not with family, right?
	Yeah, right. If we could get that way with family, wouldn't it just be easier to hang with them a couple of times a year?
	The family in particular, we're so imprinted.
	They've had such power over us.
	And hopefully they've used it for good, right?
	But if they haven't, they have such power over us.
	They're imprinted, right? They are hardwired.
	Their voices, their frowns, their gestures, their presence, their smell, everything is imprinted.
	We cannot have psychological walls with families.
	And this is true of marriages as well.
	You cannot have psychological walls within a marriage.
	You are putting your heart in someone else's hands.
	And this is why couples, when it goes bad, it goes so terribly bad, because there are no defenses.
	Everybody is completely inside each other's skin.
	And so, particularly with family, in my opinion...
	There is no way to emotionally separate from 20 or 30 or 40 years of first impressions.
	It's like saying, I learned English when I was two, and I have been studying English for 20 years, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to England and not understand what people say.
	It's not possible, right?
	Right, that's impossible, right.
	And it's the same thing with family.
	We cannot be indifferent to family.
	Family has the greatest power for healing and truth and beauty and all this, and it also, like, all power, right?
	It has a dark side, and it has the greatest power for destruction and trauma and so on, right?
	It's nuclear. It's nuclear family, right?
	I don't think that's exactly why they call it that, but they might as well, right?
	Nuclear power can light a city, nuclear power can obliterate a city, right?
	Yeah, I know what you're saying. So, no, I don't think that there's any possibility of getting to a state of indifference.
	I think that would be... I don't think a frontal lobotomy and four months of electroconvulsive therapy would be able to do it.
	You can be a zombie and they'll play you your mother's voice and you'll respond one way or another, right?
	Yeah, no, I totally agree with that.
	Okay, so the best mode of action is to kind of just try to keep an objective view of yourself and keep...
	It is about reminding yourself of stuff, right?
	I mean, you know, when these trashy articles come out about Free Domain Radio...
	I have to sit down and work through my feelings.
	I talk about them with my wife.
	I'll write these articles where I look at these things in detail to pull them apart and see what's really going on in these articles and so on.
	So it's work to unravel what you feel when you have these reactions to things.
	So it's not just like don't respond, but it's really know what is going on for you.
	And why you want to respond, right?
	Because if you don't know that, then it's driving blindfolded, right?
	Maybe you'll make it, but odds are you'll go off the ditch, right?
	Into the ditch. So it's really understanding where you're coming from.
	You know, why do I want to respond?
	Well, I want to respond because I want to set the record straight.
	Why is it important for me to set the record straight, right?
	If I set the record straight now, will this prevent a recurrence, right?
	Or will it encourage a recurrence, right?
	I think that kind of stuff is really important, right?
	So to really process why you want to respond, what goals you hope to achieve, and also, I mean, obviously, this is not the first time you've responded to this kind of stuff in your history with your family, right?
	No, it's not. How's it gone before?
	Before, I... I mean, was it satisfying before?
	Did it get to what you want?
	Did it resolve the issues?
	Did it prevent recurrence?
	No. No. Of course not.
	So that pattern recognition, right?
	Saying, okay, well, last time I beat my head against this wall, I got a monster headache.
	So the last 20 times, the last 50 times, the last 100 times, right?
	That's right.
	And I know that I answer back even this last time because I care about something that Whether or not I analyze necessarily...
	I mean, it's something about them, you know, whether or not I know what the exact reason is, so...
	Right, and the last thing I'll mention about this, and just in case other people have questions, is, you know, I haven't plugged the old FDR idea of negative economics for a while, maybe it's not an FDR idea, but at least that's the term that I use, which is that you should not involve yourself with people to address a negative.
	Right? If someone has a positive...
	Right? Like, I'm sure that my wife doesn't want me around because I feel lonely when I'm not with her.
	I feel empty and, you know, I get mad at myself and I, I don't know, I hit myself in the head with a Nerf bat or something.
	Right? My wife wants me around because when I'm not around, she thinks that I might be cooking, which is very similar to setting fire to the house.
	She wants me around because I take genuine pleasure in her company.
	In fact, there's nobody more fun to spend time with than my wife.
	So it's the pursuit of a positive pleasure that makes me want to spend time with my wife.
	And the same is true with most of the listeners and these fantastic, amazing conversations like this one and other ones that I've had over the years.
	It is a genuine pursuit of pleasure that...
	Is the foundation of my relationships, not the avoidance of self-attack or negativity or anxiety or loneliness or depression or whatever, right?
	And I think that's really important.
	Are you contacting someone or engaging to try to eliminate a negative or is it out of pursuit of a positive, a desire?
	Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought that up.
	I think that kind of It adds to a really good perspective on things.
	Look at that.
	After only 45 minutes, I come up with something useful.
	Actually, that's pretty good for me.
	It was all very useful.
	That definitely makes sense to me.
	It's hard to, after so many years of not doing that, try to implement that, but that's why we work, I guess.
	And the reason this is all in my brain, and I'm glad that you're bringing all this stuff up, is that, I mean, I've been contacted by a lot of people to be interviewed, right?
	Huge, monster outlets with millions of listeners and so on, right?
	And I just...
	I just can't see that it's going to work.
	So I've been really being sort of, when I talk to these people out of a sense of obligation, I've got to forward the conversation, I've got to expose people to philosophy, I've got to, right?
	As opposed to, you know, how's it been working out talking to the media, right?
	Well, it's not...
	It's not good, right? So trying to sort of do that pattern recognition.
	Do I want to talk to particular media outlets or any media outlets?
	Or do I feel obligated to like I should for the success of the conversation and philosophy and spreading it out?
	And if I did it out of obligation, that would be to remove a negative, which is...
	A feeling of, it's bad for me not to do it, as opposed to, I want to talk to media outlets or whatever.
	And I've really been sort of trying to work through that over this last week or so.
	Absolutely. Absolutely.
	Great. It really has been helpful, so thank you so much for taking the time.
	Oh, any time. And, of course, keep us posted, and I, again, strongly suggest that Talk about it with as many people and with yourself, first and foremost, and it will work out.
	And I'm real sorry, of course, about the hospital visits, that it's just very, very difficult all around.
	Oh, thank you. He's all right, so it could have been worse, you know.
	Right, right. But, okay, great.
	Thank you so much. All right.
	Well, thank you. I appreciate that excellent, excellent content.
	So, I think she's out of questions, so we'll have to go to the second-rate callers with questions.
	If you'd like to bring up anything, please feel free.
	So, Nash typed a question into the chat room.
	He said, this happened to me a few weeks ago.
	One child ended up throwing a toy car at another, and it hit him in the face, almost hurting him badly.
	But it was hard to tell who started the pushing first.
	All I could think of to do was to get each of their versions of the story, but past that I didn't know what to do.
	I didn't just want to do the standard teacher thing of making them apologize to each other.
	Well, that's a very common kind of situation.
	You sort of walk into a room and you see kids doing something or you catch something out of the corner of your eye and you don't know how it started and you always want to be fair.
	Well, it's like when Christina comes into the study and she's like, "Was he just scratching his nose or?" And I don't know how old these kids are that you're talking about now.
	Are they three? Are they ten?
	Are they eight? About six.
	Right? So they've got some language skills.
	And of course, when you're six, I think most children by the age of six know that they shouldn't be throwing things at each other.
	Definitely that the child that threw something would need to have a consequence as a result of the throwing.
	Definitely listening to their versions of what occurred would be important.
	But the action of throwing something at another child's face needs to have some kind of a consequence occur.
	And I'd be curious to know what you did to you after getting their versions of the story before I go any further.
	And I know that you'd have to type it into...
	The chat window, so it'll take a few minutes, but Steph, do you have any thoughts?
	That's so cute of you to ask.
	Well, now, Christina's big on consequences, and I remember that talk before we got married.
	I have volume 12 of dastardly husbandly consequences, which I'm still memorizing.
	Of course, every time I do anything, it seems that more categories get added, but...
	Of course, yeah. I mean, consequences is absolutely essential.
	And it really depends on your relationship to the children and whatever, right?
	But certainly if they're nieces or nephews or obviously your own kids, then you need to, and I would say even at six, this is possible.
	It's going to take some patience and it's going to take some concentration.
	But you sit down and you help them to understand what led to the assault, right?
	You sit down and you say, look, I could sit down here and blame you guys, right?
	And get mad, right? But that's not going to solve it, right?
	What we need to do is figure out what happened, right?
	Because I guarantee you that the roots of a truck being thrown go back 10 minutes, an hour, a day, a year.
	It might be a long time.
	This might be a Hatfield and McCoy situation that has been simmering for weeks or more.
	In other words, you don't want to play whack-a-mole with the consequences and view the truck throwing as anything other than a symptom of a long-standing inability to deal with conflict.
	So you sit down, you say, okay, well, let's rewind the tape.
	So the truck comes off the other kid's face, goes back into your hand.
	What were you feeling? You step them back a little further.
	Or you can say, when did you first feel the anger?
	What happened? Kids can start to make those associations, even at the age of six.
	At the age of six, I went to boarding school.
	So I have some memory of being able to process feelings and thoughts and consequences and so on, even at that age.
	Kids can remember their dreams from even younger than that and talk about them.
	Freud talks about a kid at the age of two and a half talking about a dream.
	So, helping the kids to understand what occurs within them through their language, through their interactions, that ends up with a truck being thrown, right? Looking at it as a symptom.
	We don't want to treat the symptom, we want to treat the cause.
	Now, negative consequences are definitely good at treating the symptoms and should be used, of course, right?
	That it's unacceptable behavior and so on, right?
	But to solve the problem with children and conflict is exactly the same as solving the problem with ourselves and conflict, which is to figure out what is going on under the hood, where it starts, how it escalates, what happens then, what happens then, what happens then, right?
	And kids can really process that stuff.
	And of course, they'll forget it 20 minutes later, right?
	Because they're six, right?
	But you keep doing that and they will get the hang of it, right?
	They don't want to be throwing trucks around.
	They don't, right? They don't want to be yelling at each other.
	They don't want to be pushing. They don't want to be punching.
	They don't want to be shoving. They want to have fun like everyone does.
	And violence and hurling and punching and kicking is not fun.
	Right? So I think that it's really important, too, if you have that relationship, just sit down and say, hey, you know, be one of those really annoying 60s hippie teachers like the guy from Freaks and Geeks.
	You know, hey, let's rap.
	But sit down and talk about it.
	Let's figure out what really happened here.
	And not from the standpoint of...
	You did this and then you're bad.
	Because that's not going to get you anywhere.
	The purpose is to get them to understand what steps within their own hearts and minds leads them to this violence.
	Does that make sense?
	Oh, absolutely. That's exactly where I was going to go next with this.
	Probably a lot more succinctly.
	What kind of truck was it?
	Just simply putting children in a timeout isn't helpful.
	If you choose the route of timeout with a child who has misbehaved, it's important before the child can rejoin the group or can rejoin the playing or whatever activity was going on, to really spend some time with that child and Get the child's perspective.
	Do you understand why you're here in timeout?
	Do you understand why what you did was wrong?
	How did it happen for you?
	Again, it goes back to what Steph was saying earlier about connecting with the child.
	Really get down to the child's level.
	Look the child in the eye. Have a conversation with the child.
	Not just punish the child because then the child learns, okay, I do something bad, I get sent to a corner for ten minutes or for five minutes.
	That's the price I pay. But really trying to get the child to understand why his actions led to that behavior and, you know, to help the child understand What his actions were all about.
	Why did he actually behave in that particular way to begin with?
	And again, that takes a lot of time.
	That takes a lot of patience. And I know, Nash, you said in the chat window that you didn't have a lot of authority that day.
	You were surrounded by a bunch of other...
	But he also said that he was surrounded with a dozen other kids who were sort of climbing around or clamoring around trying to get his attention and didn't understand why he had to go away and deal with the situation.
	But you explain to the other kids, right?
	You say, you know, someone just threw a truck.
	Guys, you just need to play with yourself for a few minutes.
	I need to talk to these guys.
	No one's in trouble. I just want to understand, right?
	Because the standard response from parents or authority figures when there's a child conflict is to say, who started it?
	You're blamed. And what does that encourage?
	All that encourages is for two kids to point at each other and say, he started it, to avoid punishment.
	It does nothing to deal with the source of the conflict.
	Children are very little responsible for their behavior.
	A very little bit responsible for their behavior.
	And treating them like miniature sociopathic adults who throw things at each other is entirely inappropriate.
	Children are very little responsible for their behavior, right?
	Why is it that a child is throwing a truck?
	Where has it been modeled from?
	He didn't just invent all of that on his own.
	I mean, of course, we all have aggressive impulses and so on, but Did he see—do his elder brothers do that?
	Do his parents yell and scream?
	Do they throw things? Like, where did he get that from?
	Right? So saying that he is a, you know, a blank slate, prima facie cause of his own behavior, and is 100%—I mean, it's just not accurate, right?
	I mean, if he was that responsible, he'd be your accountant, right?
	It wouldn't make any sense at all.
	So responsibility arises within us out of self-knowledge, right?
	People who don't So, yeah, sit down with the kids and, you know, trying to do that one-two step of who started it, now you're punished. I mean, you'll never get anywhere.
	You're just teaching your kids to lie and evade and so on, right?
	But, you know, saying, look, we don't want this to happen.
	You don't want this to happen. You don't want punishments.
	You don't want trucks to the head.
	You know, so let's sort it out.
	Let's figure out what's going on. Where did this all come from?
	And take that time.
	That's the only way that I know of, that you can do anything other than play whack-a-mole with kids in conflict.
	And again, just to put the caveat in, this is all the ideal situation, which none of us hit all the time.
	It wasn't like I was doing nothing but hand puppets and fairy tales.
	We all get mad.
	And that's important, right?
	Because if I get mad and I snap to the kid, even back then, I had enough sense to say...
	I'm sorry, that was out of line.
	That's okay. To make mistakes and accept responsibility to apologize, that's all stuff that kids need.
	Because, of course, if kids don't see adults taking responsibility for errors and apologizing, then saying to the kids, you need to apologize to each other is just hypocritical.
	We model that children will only do what they...
	They learn what they live, not what they hear.
	So Nash asked about timeouts and consequences and what kind of consequences there could be.
	A timeout simply is...
	Yeah, a de-escalation where you remove the child from the situation into sort of what they might refer to as a naughty corner or a designated place away from the major activity.
	It could be that they have to sit on the bottom step if there is a staircase or against the wall.
	And the rule of thumb is two minutes for every year of their life.
	So if the child was six...
	Oh my god, mine might go on forever. So if the child is six, they have to sit out for about 12 minutes.
	One or two minutes. I can't remember. Two minutes.
	I think it's one. You think it's one?
	I thought it was two minutes.
	I'll have to check on that.
	No, for 10-year-olds, 20 minutes is not too long.
	So I will double-check on that and get back to you, but I'm pretty sure it's two minutes for every child.
	Steph is going to check right now.
	Anyway, where they just kind of sit out and again, if they refuse to sit out and they keep running back in, you as the disciplinarian need to make sure that you keep taking them back to the timeout.
	And timeout actually starts from the moment they sit there and don't leave.
	So it could be that you take them back five or six times.
	To the naughty corner or to the bottom of the step or whatever designated place until they complete their time out.
	It's an opportunity for them to think about what they were doing and then when you go back that's when you have the little discussion with them about well how did this happen?
	How did you feel? Do you understand what you did wrong?
	Am I right? No, I'm afraid.
	No, I'm wrong? Oh, wow.
	It's not important that you're wrong.
	It's only important that I'm right.
	This is from the Child Development Institute, which is actually just the red room here.
	Guidelines for using timeout with children and preteens.
	Okay, purpose of timeout.
	Timeout means timeout from positive reinforcement rewarding experiences is not a procedure used to decrease undesirable behaviors.
	The main purpose of this procedure is to ensure that the individual in a timeout is not able to receive any reinforcement for a particular period of time, right?
	It's not a punishment.
	It's just a removal from positive reinforcement.
	How to use timeout effectively.
	The timeout area should be easily accessible and in such a location the child can be easily monitored while in a timeout.
	For example, if most activity takes place on the first floor of the house, the timeout area should not be on the upper floor or, in my case, the roof.
	A chair in the corner of the dining room is an excellent spot.
	Placing a kitchen timer on the table is a good way to keep the child informed of how much time he has left to serve.
	Amount of time spent in timeout.
	Generally, it is considered more effective to have short periods of timeout, 5 to 10 minutes, rather than to have long periods such as half an hour to an hour.
	Children can fairly quickly begin to use their imagination to turn a boring activity into an interesting one.
	Children from 2 to 5 years old should receive a 2 to 5 minute timeout.
	A 6 year old child should probably receive about a 5 minute timeout while a 10 year old child should receive a 10 minute timeout.
	A general guideline can be 6 to 8 years of age, 5 minutes, 8 to 10 years of age, 10 minutes, 10 to 14 years of age, 10 to 20 minutes, 42-year-old husbands, indefinite until released.
	Right. Some double the timeout period for such offenses as hitting severe temper tantrums and destruction of property.
	Note, ADHD children may benefit from shorter times than those suggested above.
	Anyway, so you can look this stuff up, but I just wanted to bask and to crow in my triumph.
	I'm going to be off to do a victory lap.
	I'll be right back. Okay, Steph, it's such a good, good, good sport.
	So gracious. So timeout is certainly one way to get the child to de-escalate the situation and get the child an opportunity to really think about what he or she has done.
	Other appropriate consequences is that the child may be restricted from using that particular toy for a while.
	The child will also need to apologize to you and to the other child that he hurt.
	It has to mean something. But yeah, it has to mean something.
	It can't just be sort of cursory, right?
	It has to be... It has to be genuine, which is why you have that conversation.
	Do you really understand what the problem was here?
	All sorts of different things that can be done.
	The child may need to spend more time cleaning up because he threw the toys around.
	Now it's his responsibility to make sure the toys are put away.
	Lots of different things. You can be really creative with consequences.
	They don't have to be punitive.
	They don't have to be like, you know, I mean, when I say punitive, a spank on the bum, which is completely never, ever, ever appropriate.
	But appropriate in terms of fitting with the bad deed.
	I hope that answers your question.
	Anything more to add? Yeah, just remember that your authority as a parent and your authority as a human being does not come from your ability to provide rewards or disincentives, right?
	It does not. I mean, I always felt as a manager that I was the manager because I could be the most useful to my employees.
	I was the most useful resource because I knew how to code, I knew how to sell, I knew how to design, I knew how to write, I knew how to present.
	So I was the most useful resource to my employees to help make them more efficient.
	As a result, I was the boss.
	And the same thing, of course, is true as a parent.
	You are not going to gain any authority as a parent because you are bigger.
	You are not going to gain any authority as a parent because...
	You have the ability to provide incentives and negative consequences.
	If you rely on that, you will lose the respect of your children and you will lose control of your family, in my opinion.
	You gain authority out of love.
	You gain authority because you care for people.
	Effective authority is love.
	I mean, why do people call some fruity Canadian guy on the web to talk about intensely personal issues?
	Because I think they believe, and they're right, that I really care, that I'm not going to be imposing my own agenda, that I'm going to be curious, that I'm going to ask questions, that I'm going to try my very best to bring clarity, that I'm not mercenary because I'm not charging, right?
	It's because I care about people that I have, to the tiny degree that I have, I have some authority in these matters, right?
	And because they've heard me really caring about other people, and they've heard the tenderness and hopefully the solicitude and compassion and firmness and so on, all the stuff that I think goes into really caring for someone.
	Why do I listen to Christina?
	Because she really loves me.
	Head to toe, right?
	And so when she says, I think you should do X, I know she's not doing it out of a power trip.
	I know she's not doing it because she has an agenda.
	I know she's not doing it because she's anxious.
	She's doing it because she loves me.
	All of those motives are very true for me, but for Christina, it's very different, right?
	So your authority as a parent fundamentally comes out of your love for your children.
	And if you have that connection, and if your children genuinely and fully accept with evidence and understand that you're not bossing them around because you feel anxious, that you're not, you know, as Tim so courageously changed his path, right, from just bullying his kid, right, because he would feel bad because his kid made a commitment that that gives him power over his kid or whatever, that's not going to give you authority.
	What that's going to do is give you conformity, right?
	And... And it also doesn't allow for self-actualization on the part of your children.
	So I certainly do appreciate these technical questions and my glibness with them in the prior to direct experience, which, you know, of course, I'll keep everyone informed as I go forward, but I'm not with anything to do with anything that's true, but what conforms to what I've already said.
	I'm only going to teach my kid Arabic, of course.
	But the authority in any relationship, in any relationship, the authority comes from love and compassion and caring.
	And if you have that, almost nothing can go wrong.
	And if you don't have that, almost nothing can go right.
	So I just want to sort of mention that.
	We always want to get wrapped up in the technicalities, right?
	But the important thing is the connection and love that we bring into our relationships.
	Alright, anybody else?
	I can see that you're going to teach our child excellent language skills.
	That's neither Latin nor Arabic.
	It's me, my language.
	Alright, going once, going with the twice.
	Anybody else? Last chance for questions.
	Are you wrapping up right now?
	I'm sorry, go ahead. Well...
	Are you going to wrap up? Or, I mean, did you have time for another one?
	We can do one more, but not a monster one, if that's alright?
	Yeah, that's, well, you tell me.
	I'm not sure how big it would be.
	The topic is kind of large.
	I was wondering about, like you and Christina's take on how parents take out sort of, I don't know, unfulfilled sexuality on their kids.
	And just some details about that because I have the theory and I'm interested in it in regards to how sort of my mom treated me.
	But if it's, you know, too big, I was just looking for a couple, some thoughts on that.
	You mean a concise way to talk about how parental sexuality affects children?
	Yeah, I mean, yes.
	How subtle...
	How subtle messages can go from parent to child.
	Yeah, I mean...
	If you're not directly molested or anything like that.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not specific...
	None of this is specific to sexuality, right?
	I don't think we have to limit it to that, but certainly it's a very powerful area of life, but...
	I mean, there are theories. They're more narrative than, I think, empirically provable.
	Nothing has more effect on a child than the unlived life of the parent.
	I think there's a lot that occurs around the very powerful topics of dominance, of ambition, of sexuality, of intimacy or its avoidance of self-attack, of comfort with the self or discomfort with the self.
	discomfort with physicality, you know, with the basic fact that we are biological beings with magic meat in their skulls.
	Yes, absolutely.
	There is a huge, huge effect on children.
	And I think sexuality, of course, is one of the ones that would have more effect than most because, you know, it's not appropriate to talk about it with young kids.
	So if, you know, the important thing is self-knowledge always relieves the burden on other people.
	Right.
	And this is true with children.
	The greater the degree of your self-knowledge, the less you will burden other people with your unconscious.
	Because it's all about withdrawing projections, right?
	And not manipulating other people to serve your own psychological needs, right?
	So to really bring freedom to other people, to bring freedom to people in your life, you absolutely have to have a great degree of self-knowledge.
	And unfortunately, it's not something we're generally taught, and it's something that we have to work very hard to achieve.
	But that is why we talk about this stuff here, right?
	Because we can't free the world, we can't free people from governments, we can't break people out of Guantanamo Bay, but we can at least achieve a degree of self-knowledge that lifts the burden of other people needing to carry our problems, right?
	So yeah, parents who have strong avoidances around sexuality or physicality and they're unconscious are definitely going to place to some degree those burdens on their kids.
	Those are my thoughts, but what were your thoughts on it?
	I'm sorry? What were your thoughts?
	You said you had a theory?
	Oh, just that it will be acted out somehow.
	Sort of inevitably.
	I guess just hearing your thoughts solidifies some of that theory.
	Really? We did this in a few minutes?
	Wow. Who am I? We haven't talked much about sex at Free Debate Radio, because I am a massive prude.
	But no, we haven't.
	I mean, there have been some conversations about it, and I've got a couple that I haven't published yet, because I need stuff for when the baby comes.
	But But, you know, I think it is a topic we're going to have to talk about at some point because it is a very core issue.
	And, you know, this is not to, you know, nobody has to talk about anything, but I think that it is an issue that is a challenge.
	I mean, I grew up British, so it's not completely outside of my experience to have some discomfort with physicality and the sexual side of life and so on.
	We can talk about it if and when it comes up as a topic, it will be something that I think is worth talking about.
	And I certainly, the reason that I mention this is that I've had a number of people approach me with topics around sexuality recently, and I just sort of think that it's in the wings, so to speak.
	I think so. But, you know, if it's worthwhile for us to discuss and we can come up with some useful stuff, that would be great if it happens or it doesn't.
	But I sort of just might, you know, if I had to guess, that would be a topic that will come up.
	But... No, I think you're right.
	If parents are discomforted with certain things and not conscious of it, it will affect the children for sure.
	Okay, great. Yeah, I'd like to be a part of that conversation if and when that happens.
	Absolutely. Absolutely.
	Okay, well, I think that was it for questions.
	I want to thank particularly the lady who led us through some truly wonderful topics and for the questions around child discipline, which are sort of a flair set up to my future self to reveal vast amounts of hypocrisy and an inability to apply theory.
	But hopefully that won't be the case.
	But again, I would like to thank everyone for...
	Obviously, donations have recovered from the rather dispiriting dry spell of last month.
	And thank you so much, obviously, to Mr.
	J, who has just been generous beyond compare.
	And... Also to people who've sent in donations, people who've subscribed, I really, really do appreciate that.
	It is just great, and it certainly does help ease some of the excitement of having Christina turn into the shiftless bum that I was when I was marrying her because of this baby thing, although I didn't have the excuse of that.
	But thank you, everybody, so much for your support.
	And even more importantly, is the kind words that people have I have contributed to the board and also in my inbox.
	I'm getting a lot more positive than negative responses to the sort of recent media excitement.
	And I really do appreciate that.
	It means a lot to me when people give me good wishes.
	I mean, I don't want anyone to mistake this as, you know, maybe it looks all calm and Self-assured on the surface, but there's a lot of peddling underneath to keep this buoyancy and energy going.
	And, you know, good wishes from people mean a lot to me.
	They do. And so, I don't want you...
	Oh, Steph doesn't need it.
	He's so confident. It's not the case, right?
	I mean, it is hard work to keep this conversation aloft, to the lofty place where it is, right?
	Which is, I think, the best...
	Philosophical group in history, in my opinion.
	So good wishes.
	I'm not begging for good wishes, but they mean things.
	It means something to me. It means a lot to me, in fact.
	I mean, as I've said many times, the trust and the confidence and the vulnerability and this absolutely beautiful vista of hearts opening up like this is beautiful to see, and the positive wishes and so on.
	And thank you to those who've sent in Some baby presents.
	We certainly do appreciate the onesies.
	I'm not sure about the nail gun.
	Oh wait, sorry, that was mine.
	And the baby most, of course, appreciates the video cards and computer upgrades.
	And so I just wanted to, in all seriousness, thank everyone for their good wishes.
	It's been a challenging time, for sure.
	But I think it's not accidental that out of the Guardian Article, for want of a better word, you know, my Minko system responded with the Matrix video, which is cruising up around 85,000 hits.
	I mean, that's, you know, nothing compared to a cat eating spaghetti, but relative to my general vids, it's 10 times the number of views.
	So, you know, in adversity, I generally tend to respond with improvements in quality and focus and intensity.
	You know, I've been listening to Socratic dialogues, which are always helpful, when you're under a lot of unjust criticism.
	And as Socrates says, you can't fundamentally harm a good person.
	And the good wishes that people have sent really have helped me remember that, right?
	So... So thank you, everybody, so much for all of that, and for your continued confidence and support of what we're doing here, right?
	I mean, a lot of people could say, oh man, lots of media people sniffing around, and I could understand if people bailed, and the fact that everybody's as enthusiastic and strong, and I mean, we're all not perfectly, but that's part of our strength. It just means a huge amount to me.
	And I really didn't doubt any other result, but it's wonderful and impressive to see.
	All right. Well, thank you, everybody, so much for everything.
	I do also want to thank everybody.
	I mean, it has been a difficult time since the Guardian article came out, and people support and the recognition of the hard work that Steph has been doing.
	It really means so much to us.
	We need it.
	We're grateful for it.
	Thank you. Yes.
	And with that, we will talk to you on the boards this week and on the show.
	Next week, the only reason that the show might be cancelled is that the baby may preempt the show.
	I don't think we could actually run it from the...
	From the birthing room.
	There would be a lot of screaming and fainting.
	And then Christina would have to take over the show.
	Because I would be far too fragile.
	Seriously? Seriously, yeah.
	That's right. And three more!
	You're doing great, honey.
	Sorry, honey, honey, can you keep it down?
	I can't hear the listeners.
	Special guest next week.
	Special guest next week.
	That's right. It could happen. It could happen.
	It could happen at any time.
	And so, yeah, all too exciting for words.
	Watch out, any more laughing, it might happen now.
	Oh, oh dear, honey, can we switch office chairs?
	Just kidding. On that highly elevated note, thanks everybody for your time and attention and your kindness and good wishes.

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