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Feb. 4, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:27
1576 Philosophical Parenting - Part Five - Objections - Freedomain Radio

A wise listener and long-time parent takes issue with a few of my philosophical parenting principles

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Oh, hi everybody. It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. This is Parenting Part 5.
Sorry, Part 4 was mentioned as Part 5 last time.
And this is a feedback from a parent, I believe, of four children, whose children are mostly older.
And I really appreciated this very intelligent and helpful response.
So I'll just read the five comments that she has.
I'll read them sort of in sequence and give my thoughts on them for each one.
So she wrote, I just listened to the first of this series, the parenting, philosophical parenting, and I thought I'd post some comments, thoughts, questions I have as I listen to each one from the perspective of someone who's already done the parenting thing.
One, I really like the focus on modeling the behavior you want to see in your kids.
That's so important. If they observe you yelling or whatever, they will learn that behavior.
It sounds like it's working so far, but I do want to caution that it's really not that difficult for the first one.
It gets much harder if and when you add another variable to the experiment, siblings.
If and when siblings come along, it's no longer just two mature adults working with one child, but you have to figure out how to manage the interactions of siblings who will not always interact in the non-aggressive ways one would hope they would.
Of course, correct. And I am going to defer to this wise woman's thoughts on that and say that, yes, I will not claim that it's a magic bullet.
Sibling to sibling, of course, children lack impulse control and the ability to reason the consequences of their decisions.
And empathy gets off to a shaky start very often.
So, agreed, agreed, agreed.
And thank you for that point.
Two, I like the idea of thinking about situations from the perspective of whether or not you think you could reasonably assume you would get permission after the fact, because every parent will run into situations where they need to take control over a situation whether the child wants it or not.
Otherwise, parenting wouldn't really end up being such a big deal.
Very true. Three, she says, I may be wrong, but there seemed to be a contradiction of sorts in saying that the first year is vital to creating the environment and relationship needed.
And yet, when talking about decisions made, where you sometimes have to do things that are aggressive in nature, one of the rationalizations is that the child is so young she won't remember.
I'm a bit confused on that point.
And that is excellent, excellent stuff.
Let me clarify this as far as my understanding goes, which obviously is not to the expert level, but a fairly well-informed layperson, I would say, by now, particularly with the fine instructors I've had in the interviews that I've done recently.
Now, it certainly is true that children do not remember specific incidents from the first year or two of their life.
I think, I think, I think.
I have a memory of not...
My first memory is when I was certainly not able to stand.
I was only able to sit upright, and judging from where Isabella is, that probably was at about eight or nine months.
Because I was being teased and I couldn't get up and I couldn't get away and I very much remember being sort of, I remember squatting in this little pyramid of unwieldy flesh, which was me sitting in myself when I could not get myself up and ambulatory.
I think that's pretty unusual though.
I think most people don't remember back quite that far.
But for the most part, I would say that memories start kicking in around two and a half or three years old, particularly when there's been an exception to some particular routine like a trip or something like that.
And so, particular incidents children don't remember, but the general pattern of interaction is engraved into the child's mind, right?
So, for instance, if the child does not receive empathy, the child is much less likely to develop empathy.
That doesn't mean that the child can remember not receiving empathy, but it does mean that the brain follows after a particular pattern of non-empathetic interactions, to say the least.
So, the way that I would sort of say that it would make sense is that if the baby does not receive enough nutrition, it's not like the baby can remember not receiving nutrition, can't remember being hungry or only being fed junk food or whatever.
But the body shapes itself or is shaped based upon the lack of nutrition.
And in the same way, the child may not remember specific incidents of negative or positive interactions, but the brain forms itself according to the pattern of those interactions.
And, like all patterns, exceptions do not destroy the trend, right?
So, to give a silly example, occasionally, like once a month, we will give Isabella, like we were at the mall the other day, and I had a sugar hankering, which actually turned out to be a bad idea because it made me sleepy and grumpy.
But, so every now and then I forget what sugar does.
So I had a sugar hankering and I bought a raisin oatmeal cookie and I gave Isabella...
We can't eat anything without her wanting to try it and I can't really criticize her for that because I understand she wants to imitate and to experience what we're experiencing.
So I gave her a couple of morsels of the cookie and she seemed to like it and then she had I think two or three morsels and then didn't want any more.
And like all of us, if you only ate cookies, right, that would be a very bad thing.
Or if you only ate junk food, that would be a very bad thing.
But, you know, it's not like one, I don't know, one cookie a month is going to give you diabetes, right?
I mean, the general patterns allow for exceptions, and they may not actually be a bad thing at all.
And so, when sleep training Isabella, she obviously went through difficulty and stress, and I would say probably even something close to trauma, if not actually trauma.
I mean, it was very, very upsetting for her, and she would cry for half an hour or 40 minutes on occasion, and that's really unpleasant.
But that was an exception in the general satisfaction of her wants, pleasures, and needs that she occurred.
And so, her psyche could handle the exception to the general pattern, and it did not cause her.
It did not cause her brain to rewire itself due to the repetition of that kind of stress.
And it's the same thing with a bite or two of cookie once a month does not cause her to become overweight or develop insulin resistance or anything like that.
So I hope that clarifies at least my perspective on that.
So just because a child can't remember specific instances does not mean that the general pattern of interactions is not hardwiring the brain in many, many significant ways.
Number four, the woman writes, I'm not sure I can agree with the statement that kids will more likely want to please a parent that focuses on the positive.
Of course, that's preferable and much more pleasant for everyone, but the child will want to please the parent either way.
It's important for their survival.
Yes, I think that's an excellent point.
Thank you for bringing it up.
And my clarification on that, which I think is needed, is that there is a great difference between the pursuit of a positive and the avoidance of a negative.
The pursuit of a positive versus the avoidance of a negative.
It's the difference between asking a woman out that you're attracted to and paying your taxes.
So one is the pursuit of a positive and the other is avoidance of a negative, i.e.
jail time. And really that is the fundamental difference between voluntarism And statism.
If you're a woman and some scumbag jumps you in an alley and you mace him off, you will come home feeling inordinate relief and perhaps even the joy of having escaped an attack, but it's not a joy that you really want.
And so it's true that a child will want to please the parents, but I think that...
Stimulating excitement and positivity and enthusiasm in the parent is very different from avoiding punishment from the parent, avoiding attack or criticisms, excessive criticisms and hostility and abuse, perhaps, from the parent.
I think those two things are very different, but you're right.
Either way, the child has to find some way to, quote, please the parents, whether that's the stimulation of a positive or the avoidance of a negative, I think is very significant.
It's very, very significant.
But it is an important clarification, and I think that you're quite right.
Thank you. And this, I think, was very interesting.
These were all interesting points.
So, five. I also think it's important to point out, too much enthusiasm and praise of everything a child does can cause unintended harm, because it can place too much emphasis on doing something because of the desire to gain the parent's approval.
I've read somewhere, she writes...
That taken too far, this can cause the child to not trust himself or to do things for the genuine happiness outside of parental approval that can result from the behavior.
Not only because they have learned to rely on the crutch of parents' overenthusiastic approval.
Not saying that's happening here, just pointing out that there's a balance to everything.
Well, I think that's quite right, but I think that I did address that in the original podcast because I pointed out that enthusiasm was the most foundational, quote, weapon in the parents' arsenal of behavior modification.
And, of course, if you wildly praise everything the child does, then you're not differentiating between desired and non-desired behaviors.
You would just be, I mean, praising everything, right?
So, for instance, if Isabella...
does something, like learn some new skill or correctly identify something with a word that she's pointing at or, you know, sings a song back quite well, then that's something to praise and to be enthusiastic about.
Because why?
Because RTR.
Because I am genuinely enthusiastic.
I am not faking my enthusiasm.
I genuinely am enthusiastic.
However, when she reaches for the cord to a lamp, that is not approved behavior, that That is obviously dangerous behavior for a variety of reasons.
And so I'm not going to wildly praise that.
So the important thing is that the praise is differentiated and it is genuine.
For instance, the first time she clapped along correctly to a song, I was very, very enthusiastic.
Why? Because I genuinely felt very enthusiastic and happy.
When she does something that is not allowed, then I'm not enthusiastic.
So, I think you want to be genuine in your enthusiasm.
You're right. You don't want to pump it and you don't want to be wildly enthusiastic about everything that the child does.
And to me, there's a big difference, right?
So the other day, when she woke up, she wanted to play in her crib for a while.
And she has a video, I think, about this.
And she likes to put a little stuffed bear in her crib.
And then she takes it and dumps it out and says, uh-oh.
And she can do that for apparently approximately 2.3 eons.
And so I tried to teach her to catch the bear.
And sometimes she would catch it.
And sometimes, of course, she wouldn't catch it when I tossed the bear back to her.
And when she caught the bear, of course, I was enthusiastic.
Why? Because I genuinely felt thrilled and excited that she had caught the bear.
Now, when she didn't catch the bear, I would say, oh, so close.
Not quite. And I didn't have the same level of enthusiasm.
And I wasn't manipulating her.
I was genuinely experiencing that she tried, which is a good thing, but she didn't succeed.
So I wasn't quite as enthusiastic as if she had, because for obvious reasons.
So I think that the nuance is very important.
I think you want to be enthusiastic at the efforts, but you don't want to have the same enthusiasm for success and for failure.
Why? Because she won't differentiate the two states, right?
So if I'm equally enthusiastic, and maybe this is what this woman is getting at, If I'm equally enthusiastic about Isabella's successes and her failures, then she actually won't differentiate between the two.
She won't really understand that there is an emotional difference between success and failure.
But there is still emotional approval for the attempt.
Like, I wouldn't say good try if she just sat there and the bear bounced off her head, right?
That's terrible, right? I wouldn't say, good try.
But if she genuinely strives to catch it and fails, then I will say, good try.
But I won't say, yippee, well done, fantastic.
Well, you know, because that's not what has actually occurred.
And I agree with you that she needs to know the difference.
And of course, I can't teach her the difference conceptually, but she needs to know that there is a difference between success and failure.
And why? Also because she's feeling that too.
I'm really validating her feelings.
be, if she's trying to catch the ball, she's not going to feel as enthusiastic about catching it if she has failed to catch it, right?
She's not going to feel as enthusiastic about the interaction if she's failed at it.
And so, I really want to make sure that I'm mirroring back her experience of success and failure.
So, I hope that makes some sense and I will talk about the rest in a second.
So, this last question or comment about whether if you overly praise a child, that child will become, in a sense, really addicted to that praise, I think is very, very important and speaks to the general question, really, which I think is at the core of this, of addiction.
And based upon the conversations I've had with the experts in the field recently, it would seem, and this, I think, certainly jives with FDR philosophy as a whole, or philosophy as a whole, hopefully it's not FDR philosophy, Which is, well, what is addiction?
Well, addiction is something that provides a temporary relief from symptoms while exacerbating the long-term underlying causes, right?
So, if you are in a state of anxiety and you have a drink and you feel better, then the problem is you're only adding or fueling your anxiety in the long run.
So, addiction is that which provides a short-term relief at the expense of a long-term exacerbation of the underlying problem.
It's a band-aid over an ever-widening wound.
That, I think, is why... Addiction is so hard to stop because every time you continue with it, you're making the underlying cause of the addiction worse, and so it becomes a significant problem.
That's why bad habits are so hard to undo.
Now, I believe that the fundamental issue around addiction is that Addiction is so paralyzing and so embedded precisely because it is a substitute for a cure.
It is a short-term substitute for a long-term cure, which makes the problem worse, which is why it tends to continue to escalate and so on.
So, it's hard for me to see...
So, sorry, the first thing is that addiction is that which solves an underlying and usually characterologic or fundamental stress or anxiety or depression or rage or whatever, right?
It's a self-medication. In other words, something has to be dysfunctional first in order for addiction to take root.
And addiction is the means of dealing with the symptoms in the short term, which makes the underlying problem worse.
Sorry, I'll stop repeating that.
Let's talk about my addiction to repeating things until I feel that they're clear in my head.
But it's hard to see how enthusiasm for a child's success is anything which contributes to a pathology and therefore which contributes to a short-term self-medication of dependence.
I think that's hard for me to see.
It doesn't mean it's not true.
It just means it's hard for me to sort of understand.
Because it's sort of like saying, well, if you really are in love with your spouse, then you will become needy and dependent.
Well, that is saying that love is a kind of pathology that creates anxiety, dependence, addiction, and so on.
And I don't really think that's the case.
I don't think that's the case.
Because love is not a problem.
And enthusiasm for your child, your child's successes, is not a problem.
And since it's not a problem, it does not need to be self-medicated.
It does not become addictive, if that makes any sense.
Sniffing glue is a problem, right?
Breathing oxygen is not a problem, and therefore it's not really addictive.
I guess you could say it's kind of addictive in that we need it to live, but it's not psychologically addictive.
So, I can't really see how a healthy and honest and open enthusiasm for my child's successes or for behaviors that I genuinely feel enthusiastic about is problematic.
In other words, how is she going to become dependent on something which is fundamentally healthy, honest, true, and positive?
I don't see how that can happen.
And I think it's an interesting fear.
I think it's an interesting fear.
And I think we're all kind of concerned about this, that an abundance of anything can create a dependence.
But I think it's important to differentiate between an abundance of positives and honest and so on and fair.
And as I said, I don't get enthusiastic when she fails to do something.
I don't think a superabundance of positives creates addiction.
Addiction arises. Anyway, we don't have to mention it again.
And so I just don't think that that fits into the same category.
It's sort of like saying that if you really like philosophy, then it's going to become addictive and pathological and you're going to become dependent on it and so on, right?
I just don't see that that's the case.
To take another example, I think we all understand that a moderate amount of exercise appropriate to your age is a healthy and positive thing.
It keeps off depression, it keeps your health, it regulates your blood sugar or it promotes that regularity, promotes weight loss and maintenance because muscle burns more calories in a resting state than non-muscle.
And so, I think we can all understand that a healthy exercise, moderate amounts of healthy exercise is good, and maybe even excessive exercise, so to speak, can be good, particularly when you're younger.
I think Alanis Morissette has taken up long distance running.
I think she just completed her first marathon, and she says that it has freed her from depression, and that's a good thing.
Now, that, I think we can all understand, is healthy and positive and, in a way, balanced, right?
It's not like she's not eating because she's exercising.
It's not like she's not taking care of her kids because she's exercising and so on.
But I think we can all understand that the guy who goes to the gym five hours a day and builds himself up into some, you know, monster muscle machine and, you know, isn't a professional or whatever, must be making up.
It must be making up for something, right?
There must be some underlying insecurity or body dysmorphism, which...
An invalid view of your body like anorexics have.
They perceive that they're fat when they're real thin.
That there is a self-image problem, that there is a self-esteem problem, that there is a need for too muchness on the other side of things, like in muscles or whatever.
That that's a problem.
In the same way, dressing in an attractive manner is good.
You know, dressing in, you know...
I think that we have to look beyond the surface of why people are doing things, and I'm not suggesting this woman isn't.
I'm just talking about my perspective.
And I think that we have to understand that addiction does not arise out of too much of a good thing.
Addiction arises out of self-medication to avoid the unpleasant feelings, and I think even more so, unpleasant decisions that arise out of self-confrontation in the realm of trauma.
Addicts fundamentally are avoiding decision-making.
They're not avoiding feelings because obviously they can manage their feelings of stress and anxiety because addiction is fundamentally self-management of stress and anxiety and therefore you feel a lot of stress and anxiety.
Think of a gambling addict. He feels a huge amount of stress and anxiety, so it's not like he has a problem with stress and anxiety.
What the addict has a problem with, in my opinion, Is if he accepts the feelings and accepts the trauma that lie at the root of the drive to self-medicate, then he's going to have to make decisions about the people in his life and about more fundamentally than the people in his life since we really can't make decisions about that.
We make decisions about the level of honesty that we have in confronting those who have harmed us and the level of self-honesty we have about how we feel about these people.
And as a result, I think that it's important to differentiate between these two things.
So I hope that helps.
I hope that makes some kind of sense.
And if I've gone astray, as always, please do let me know.
I'm always eager and keen to improve the podcast and, of course, more importantly, the podcast, my parenting.
So thank you so much to this lady who took the time to write in these, I think, most excellent observations.
This, to me, is a respectful and civilized discourse.
I mean, this is very different from people who just post and say, you just make basic logical errors everywhere.
I mean, that's just rude and silly, right?
Especially without any proof.
But the difference is that this is a civilized and respectful and logical debate.
I hope that people take a look at this kind of interaction and recognize how much more positive it is and how much more enjoyable it is to exchange these ideas for the sake of mutual improvement of accuracy and truth than other kind of silly, aggressive, immature displays for one-upmanship.
Another thing that I would mention in the context of whether or not children become dependent upon parental approval or other positive things that parents are providing.
Again, I think that that's a possible misinterpretation with regards to what dependence means, at least in my context, which is...
Which is that with full parental support, it has been my experience that Isabella wants to achieve independence.
So, with full parental support, she wants to achieve independence.
So, one example is that we could not Stop her from wanting to turn over, wanting to crawl, wanting to walk.
She absolutely wanted to do that.
And in the same context, she went from breast milk to bottle to pasty foods to foods as a whole.
And she really, really, really wants to feed herself.
So we're going through the challenges right now that she sometimes won't even eat unless she can feed herself.
And the same thing is occurring, of course, with things like Elevator buttons, right?
That she wants to push the elevator buttons and she wants to do things that are self-sustaining or self-propelled, I guess you could say.
And I think that the idea that if you support your children fully, they will become dependent upon your support is not...
I think it puts the Aristotelian mean where the Aristotelian mean is not appropriate, right?
So the Aristotelian mean, too little exercise is unhealthy, too much exercise is unhealthy, exercise in the middle is good.
I don't think that support and encouragement for your children is subject to the same Aristotelian mean, right?
The Aristotelian mean is not supposed to apply to virtues, like courage or honesty.
Actually, no, sorry, courage is one, because it considers an excess of courage to be foolhardiness and deficiency to be cowardice.
But it doesn't apply to good and bad things, right?
So, the Aristotelian mean for axe-murdering is not a moderate amount of axe-murdering.
It is, again, I'm not suggesting this woman is saying that, but...
I don't think the Aristotelian mean, which we all have kind of embedded within us.
I mean, this comes out of Hegelian dialectical materialism as well, like that there's thesis, there's antithesis, and then there's synthesis, right?
So, the thesis is we should always support our children, and the antithesis is we should never support our children, and at times in the middle, it's like, well, we should judiciously support our children.
Another word that's tough to say when you're drunk or your face is cold, judiciously.
Still, I'm having better luck than I did with...
What was that word? I simply could not say in the Sunday show the other day.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter. So, it has been my experience that, as a parent, full support is like the base for the rocket that wants to take off, right?
The rocket, like the space shuttle can't take off if it's housed in a swamp, right?
Because it's just going to sort of bubble and sink.
And it can't take off if it's housed in air because it's just going to fall and crash.
But if it has a stable base, then it can take off.
And in my experience, the full support of Isabella is something that she actually wants to discard after a while, right?
So we sort of give her, quote, full support by feeding her everything.
And she very quickly tires of that and wants to feed herself and becomes very adamant about wanting to feed herself.
So it's been my experience that full support and encouragement and enthusiasm Produces a freedom from dependency on parents and in fact a very strong desire to achieve independence from parental help.
And I think that's something that is...
I'm not sure the degree to which this woman is arguing against that or, you know, please feel free to clarify and I do apologize if I've mischaracterized any of your intention.
But it has been my experience that full support breeds a very strong desire towards independence.
And this to me makes sense, right?
Because that is a kind of closure, right?
Closure is when you've had enough of something, right?
You move to a higher level of mathematical study when you have fully absorbed and understood and are fluent with the basic levels.
Or you, you know, go to fourth level French when you fully master, or at least largely master third level French and you know that it's time to move on.
So I think that that issue of closure is very important.
And if you don't get enough, then I think it's very tough to get closure, right?
If you don't get enough parental support, or if you feel that it's inconsistent, sometimes there and sometimes not, then you're like that rocket that's on shifting ground.
You're afraid to hit the launch button because you don't feel that you have full support.
We were just reviewing the photos that we took when we were in holiday in Mexico.
And we were just commenting last night just how amazing it is that we took our daughter to a completely new room, new environment, new, you know, temperature, new...
She'd never been to the sea before, and she was...
Perfectly comfortable, showed no discomfort, no anxiety, no fear, with a completely new and unfamiliar environment.
And, you know, our belief is that, at least my belief is that, that occurs because of the security of the bond with her parents, right?
So with that stable and unquestioning and fully supportive base, she is able to...
To sort of explore. And I think that's important, to feel confidence in new situations.
And so she is less dependent upon parental support the more that she gets because she naturally wants to peel away from it.
And she has internalized it, right?
The whole point is to internalize things, right?
So this is true of training any animal, right?
I hate to sort of put it as training, but there's a certain element of that.
Which is that you, you know, repetition breeds the internalization of the principle and then the child can act on that principle as internalized.
And if it is consistently applied the principle, then the child is no longer dependent upon the external nature of that principle because it's been fully and completely internalized.
In the same way that if you've been really competently trained to speak a certain language, you become independent of the teacher.
You become independent of the translator.
You don't need the translator anymore because you fully internalize that language.
But it takes You know, consistency and so on.
So, you know, that's sort of my recommendation.
You know, just be fully and blindly supportive.
Not blindly, but fully and enthusiastically supportive and honest.
And then you will find that your child will want to go off and do his or her own thing as time moves forward.
Yeah! What can you see, boo-boo?
It's a mystery. You know, the other thing, too, I wanted to mention this is not specific to this email, but I just wanted to mention it.
There have been very, very few times, I can think of two off the top of my head, where I felt genuinely impatient and frustrated as a parent.
And what happened the other day, and it really did remind me just how important principles are and how important that fork in the road is as a parent, or as anybody really, I suppose.
But it was the other day, I was trying to change her and she'd been difficult, difficult to change, which doesn't mean that she was trying to be difficult or anything, but she was difficult to change.
She was sort of twisting. I had to get her jeans on.
There was a time pressure. And I found myself just about to say, you know, Isabella, you know, stop it.
You know, I really felt myself like bubbled up.
I was just about to say it.
And then I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's not her responsibility to be good on the change tables.
It's your responsibility as a parent to find a way to make this a more positive experience for her.
So, of course, she's been completely enthusiastic recently about fake sneezing.
Or I don't know if she even knows that it's fake, right?
But we pretend...
And we pretend to sneeze and she's completely delighted by it.
And the way that I can get her to sort of have a fun time and change her mood if she's fussed or difficult in a difficult situation is to start going...
And she will immediately start smiling in anticipation of the fake sneeze.
And so instead of the snapping, which was bubbling up, I made the choice to do the ah, ah, ah.
And it was not easy in that moment to switch over to that.
But that's the kind of stuff that I just think is so important.
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