Dan, one of the most popular fathers on the Internet, talks to Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio about peaceful parenting, raising children without aggression, and how many dads tragically break their own kids.
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| Hi, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux, and I have Dan, the single dad laughing of D-A-N-N-O-A-H dot com fame. | |
| He is one of the more popular dads on the internet, and as everybody knows who's followed my show for a while, parenting is, I believe, where the peace, future, reason, and prosperity of the world be at. | |
| So thanks so much, Dan. | |
| It's really great to chat with you. | |
| My pleasure. Now... | |
| I went through a couple of your more powerful posts, and obviously you have a great sense of humor and this and that, but I think some of your more popular stuff is the stuff that I think kind of hits deep and hits hard when it comes to the quality of parenting and the quality of people's relationships as a whole. | |
| And the one that was posted originally on my message board was the one called, Congratulations, You Just Broke Your Child. | |
| Well, I won't describe it for you. | |
| Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit what that was about and what that brought up for you. | |
| Sure, you bet. You Just Broke Your Child was a post I wrote. | |
| I had just gone to the grocery store and I witnessed a father physically abuse his child. | |
| He dug his thumbs into his collarbones. | |
| He did everything he could to make sure his child felt somewhat worthless for the moment. | |
| And he really broke his child to diffuse the situation of his child asking for ice cream is what it was. | |
| And as a father myself to a boy who was just a little bit younger than that, it really made me think because I see that from time to time. | |
| I see that from place to place. | |
| And I don't understand it. | |
| I don't understand how people are okay breaking their children and making their children feel worthless because it just goes against everything parenting that I know is right and natural. | |
| Yeah, and you can always speculate as to the motives, but I mean, to my degree, to my way of thinking, the motives, in a sense, may matter to a psychologist, but I don't think they matter to the child, of course, who is being moaned down by this kind of physical and emotional aggression to the point where it's going to be very hard for that child to regain self-esteem. | |
| So from the outside, you might say, well, I don't know, maybe the dad lost his job and he doesn't have money to pay for ice cream, but I don't think those are Oh yeah, absolutely. | |
| I mean, a lot of people commented, you don't know what's going on in this dad's life. | |
| You don't know what happened that day, that week, you know, or what's going on at all. | |
| But the truth is, there's a line that parents should never cross. | |
| And it doesn't matter what kind of past a parent has. | |
| It doesn't matter what kind of natural tendencies a parent has. | |
| Every parent has the power to either control themselves or to learn how to control themselves. | |
| I'm not a naturally very soft-spoken person. | |
| I have a natural temper. | |
| I have a natural... I want to lash out and always have my way and always have control. | |
| But, you know, there's a better way and I really believe that every parent has the power to make sure that they're always following that better way. | |
| I agree. Another post, and I really wanted to express, you know, sincere and deep condolences. | |
| I read your very, very powerful post, memoirs of being bullied. | |
| And first of all, I just wanted to say, I understand I faced some bullying in my life. | |
| Try being the... Thank you. | |
| And having that accent that doesn't exactly come from the working class of England, and it was a tour of seething-faced colonials for me for a while when I first came here, I don't think it for me went on quite as long as terrifyingly as yours. | |
| So I really, really, first of all, wanted to express just incredibly deep condolences for what you went through. | |
| I mean, that is just horrendous and soul-scrubbing. | |
| And I really, really also wanted to express my incredible admiration at, A, the way you pulled out of it, and B, the resolution that you've made to not reinflict any of that, and it sounds like quite the opposite. | |
| What do you think it is that made you able to empathize with yourself, to empathize with your son now, which really was the opposite of your peer relationships for many, many years in school? | |
| If I'm understanding your question correctly, you're wondering how it is that I've shifted to a more peaceful approach. | |
| Sorry, I'm a little confused. More peaceful would indicate that the bullies were at all peaceful, but I would say you've gone 180 from a lot of the peer examples that you had, and I was just wondering if you had any idea what brought that about. | |
| If we can bottle that and sell it, then we can move the speed forward pretty quickly. | |
| You know, I've seen a lot of heartbreak in my life. | |
| I've always been a very sensitive and a very emotional person. | |
| I've usually worn my emotions on my sleeve. | |
| And having been through it and having felt the very cage that bullied kids feel that they're in, once I broke free of that, it I've always hated it and I've always fighted it and I've always looked for that going on in other people's lives. | |
| Looking back, there's a lot of ways that I've been able to pinpoint, well, a lot of it might have been caused by A, B, or C. In truth, it was probably a culmination of factors. | |
| And really, all it is is the want for a bright future. | |
| I want my son to never experience the feeling of being in that cage. | |
| I want my son to never experience the feeling of not knowing what to do as his peers are being attacked or bullied or anything like that. | |
| I don't understand how people can go through something and then grow up or grow older and put more of the same out there. | |
| It doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally. | |
| I think a lot of people learn from bullying and they grow up to live good, happy, functional lives in which they put an end to it in their next generation. | |
| Yeah, I always believed that it has something to do with memory, that if you remember what it was like to be bullied, you almost functionally can't do it. | |
| Whereas if you have repressed that or you don't have access to it, then it's much more likely that you will project your victimized self onto someone else and attack that person. | |
| I mean, that's all just amateur stuff. I think that a lot of... | |
| Bullied kids do have some bullying tendencies driven into them. | |
| There's no doubt that over the course of my life, there's been a few times when I turned into the bully myself and it just came out and it was just natural. | |
| I lost control, whether it was with a sibling or a friend or a dog or whatever it was. | |
| It just came out and it always shocked me and surprised me when it did. | |
| And at the same time, every single time that it did, it It caused me great reflection to say, you know, there's some monster that's obviously been built inside of me. | |
| Now I need to figure out how to make sure that that never comes out and also that I get rid of it completely. | |
| Now... Maybe your relationship with your son, of course, sounds perfectly delightful. | |
| I really enjoy the physicality and the fun that you express with him. | |
| What was the most surprising thing for you about fatherhood once you got in the ring, so to speak? | |
| I think the most surprising thing about fatherhood was the unpredictability of all of it. | |
| I'm glad to give you my study. | |
| For a two-year-old, there really is no such thing as too many balloons. | |
| I like your couch there. | |
| I know. It looks really professional here. | |
| It's like, hey, semi-professional studio guy, and then a little bit, and we've got rocking horses and 13 balloons and chairs and everything. | |
| Yeah. If I could move my camera, you'd see spilled Lincoln logs and dog toys and all sorts of things. | |
| I don't think those are Lincoln logs. | |
| Anyway. I think that the unpredictability is the greatest surprise, but it's also the greatest blessing of parenthood. | |
| The rest of life, it's a little bit easier to control. | |
| It's easier to control where you're going, what you're doing, your job, your work, your love, your relationships. | |
| Everything like that is a lot more controllable, but with kids, Every day is a new adventure. | |
| You really don't know what your kid's going to bring home from school. | |
| You really don't know what they're going to pick up through music or television or other media. | |
| You don't know what they're just going to come up with themselves. | |
| And it really makes parenting exciting because every single day I get to look at it as a new adventure to learn something new about my son and something new about myself. | |
| Right, right. I was also amazed at how quickly personality emerges. | |
| You sort of think that babies are sort of indistinguishable, at least I thought that, and then the personality emerges over time after interacting with the environment. | |
| Of course, there are environmental factors, but my daughter's personality emerged constantly. | |
| I mean, almost from day one. | |
| I mean, in fact, I'm sure if we had better footage of her in the womb, she would be restless and constantly moving beforehand. | |
| But her personality is such a strong essence to who she is. | |
| I really wasn't expecting that. I thought that kind of emerged like language over time, but it's really solid from the very beginning. | |
| Yeah, it is. And it's fun to explore, for sure. | |
| Now, with your son, given that I dare say that his relationship with you is a little outside the norm for parenting, because you're a stay-at-home dad, right? | |
| Yeah. Right, right. | |
| So, me too. So, I mean, that's a little bit unusual to begin with. | |
| And, of course, you know, stay-at-home, engaged, interactive dad is a little different as well. | |
| Do you think it's had any effect on his peer relationships, his relationship with you? | |
| His peer relationships? | |
| Yeah, because he would be interacting with kids who may not be seeing their dads as much and who may not have the kind of interaction with their dads that he has with you. | |
| Do you think it's had any effect on how he interacts with his peers? | |
| I don't know. He's a pretty straightforward kid. | |
| He tends to get along well with the kids in his class. | |
| I haven't heard of that really affecting much of anything. | |
| I spend a lot of my time, even at four years old, trying to focus on... | |
| Just how to treat other people and how to get along with people and how to be a good friend to people. | |
| And I hope that that's all he takes to school. | |
| You know, I hope that he can leave dad at home when he leaves home. | |
| And that's always been a little bit of my goal is to not have him have such a strong tie that he becomes codependent per se, but that he always has a healthy social life outside of dad. | |
| Yeah, enjoy that, but don't be an addict. | |
| A friend of mine gave me a metaphor many years ago that parents are sort of like, you want to be like the drawstring of the bow. | |
| You're pulling your kids back to launch them into the world. | |
| And of course, it's very hard to let go. | |
| I didn't have to worry about it for a while because my daughter's only two, but you don't want to let go. | |
| But the idea is, of course, to launch them into the world as successful human beings and always have that tie. | |
| But yeah, that sounds like a good approach. | |
| What was the hardest thing for you in terms of parenting and overcoming some of the darker angels of your own nature? | |
| I think the hardest thing was when I was married was always taking care of my relationships the most healthy way when my son and my daughter were present. | |
| It was always my goal to never have fights or contention or anything like that in front of Our kids. | |
| And that was definitely the biggest struggle was how to always keep your lips zipped, how to always say healthy things and uplifting things and really how to always be that good example. | |
| Obviously, now that I'm not married anymore, that's not so much an issue. | |
| When it comes to parenting, Noah... | |
| It's generally pretty simple to watch what I say and watch what I do. | |
| Mostly because he's such an easy-going kid. | |
| He doesn't cause a whole lot of problems for me. | |
| I think it's just a matter of always being on your toes and always making sure that you're saying the right things. | |
| Always saying something that will build him instead of destroy him. | |
| So long as you're doing that, he's always going to be a strong kid. | |
| He's always going to be able to bounce back from just about anything that's thrown his way. | |
| A question that I get asked a lot, and I've done a whole series on philosophical parenting or peaceful parenting, which is the idea that where the power relationship is greater, you actually need less authority, like you need less force. | |
| I mean, because parents have so much control over their children. | |
| I mean, it's not like husband and wife, the wife can leave at any time, but parents and children, particularly when they're young. | |
| There's such a power disparity. | |
| And when there is a greater power disparity, you actually need a much lighter touch. | |
| And people sort of forget that. Like this dad that you were talking about in Costco, who's like snarling at his son and digging his hands into the kid's collarbone. | |
| But you don't need that because you already have so much power and authority as a parent. | |
| You just need a... Light brush. | |
| And whenever I talk about that sort of stuff, and I've never raised my voice at my daughter, of course, I've never hit her, never threatened her. | |
| And people always ask, okay, well, but what about discipline? | |
| There are things that, you know, she can't do or things that she shouldn't do or things that are dangerous. | |
| And I find, well, of course, that's true. | |
| I mean, we've had trouble getting her to stop throwing things. | |
| She's only allowed to throw ping pong balls. | |
| And ping pong balls, she extends to mean anything within reach at times. | |
| And she can, when she gets angry, we're sort of teaching her how to say, I'm angry rather than You know, to sort of act it out. | |
| But it's just a matter of patience and persistence. | |
| You know, she wants to do the right thing. | |
| She wants to be loved and accepted. | |
| And she's got that short-term thing, which we all fall prey to, which is immediate gratification over longer-term benefits. | |
| So that's been sort of my approach. | |
| It's just I've never found the need to do that. | |
| And she's internalized a lot of stuff already. | |
| So when she throws something, she immediately goes, Oh, dear. | |
| She sort of hangs her head down. | |
| Oh, no. I am sorry, Dad. | |
| Well, that's kind of what you want, right? | |
| Is for them to be a little bit discouraged in their own actions rather than... | |
| I want her to internalize, you know, reasonable rules because then I don't have to chase after her doing that, you know, na-na-na-na thing. | |
| But where does discipline fit into your approach? | |
| It's sort of not the right word, I think. | |
| I think there's encouragement. I think there are limits and so on. | |
| but discipline, you know, you'd never sort of say, well, you know, with my wife, it's really important that I focus on discipline and making sure that, you know, she does the right things. | |
| And I don't see why that would be any different with kids, but where does that sort of setting limits thing fit into your philosophy or approach to parenting? | |
| I agree with you. | |
| I I don't like the word discipline there as much. | |
| I like the word consequence. | |
| I like to let consequences play their role in my child's life. | |
| I like to let him feel the weight of things that he does that are wrong. | |
| When it comes to control, I think that the number one thing that parents have a hard time with is knowing what they can control and what they can't control. | |
| I think far too many parents spend far too much time trying to control the uncontrollable, you know? | |
| I want my child to do this. | |
| I want him to eat this. I want him to not have breakouts and not have... | |
| The truth is, parents should be controlling their young children actually quite a bit in my opinion, but they should be doing it in creative ways through choices and things like that. | |
| You always give your child two choices, but those choices are always within your control. | |
| And that's important to me because I think that the more a parent controls their child while they're young, the more they're able to let go of that control as their child grows older. | |
| And as their child grows older and older and older, their child really needs to have less and less control because their child has to learn how to be a part of this world. | |
| They have to learn to be a part of this society without their parents telling them everything to do. | |
| As a young child... | |
| Parents really can control almost everything and never ever do it outside of a voice of love and never do it outside of a voice of respect for their children. | |
| And their children will grow up saying the same things, doing the same things, and treating other people the same way. | |
| When it comes to discipline, I don't believe in spanking. | |
| I don't believe in yelling. | |
| And I believe that there's a better way to do everything, really. | |
| You can always teach your child a lesson but your child never has to feel damaged or impugned or anything like that to get that lesson. | |
| Yeah, and I've also found it quite amazing that my daughter can understand the reasoning behind things quite well. | |
| I mean, because, of course, kids, when they're learning language, it's easy to forget that what they understand is far in excess of what they can actually speak. | |
| Like if you and I would learn Spanish or something, we would understand a lot more than we'd be able to speak. | |
| When I'm sort of explaining why she can't do this or why she can't do that, the temptation is just to sort of, because you're busy or whatever, you put a line and say, don't cross this line. | |
| What does that teach her to do? | |
| It teaches her to just not cross a line, which is basically just to obey somebody who has authority. | |
| I don't want to teach her that. | |
| So what I have to remember to do is to sit down and if I've got to use Lego or I've got to use diagrams or anything like that to sort of explain to her why it's important that she not do this, then she's able to internalize the reasoning rather than the obedience, which it's more time-consuming in the short run, but I really have found that it saves a lot of time in the long run. | |
| Oh, absolutely. | |
| You know, if they don't have their whys answered, they're just going to keep coming back with the same question and the same why over and over again. | |
| I've always, that was another shock to me as a parent was just how much kids could comprehend and, you know, just how complex of situations kids could comprehend if you just take the time to communicate with them on a level that they can understand. just how complex of situations kids could comprehend if you Even as young as, I remember when Noah was as young as two, he could understand a little bit more complex situations. | |
| And he really wasn't satisfied with a because I said so or because it's wrong or right. | |
| He wants to understand why I ask him to do certain things and why I tell him he can't do certain things. | |
| And you're right. | |
| You take just a few seconds or a few minutes to really help them get it and then they get it and they stop questioning it. | |
| And looking back, is there anything that you wish you had done differently? | |
| And I say this as a guy who's spanning from 2 to 4 or 5 where your son is looking forward. | |
| Is there any bumps in the road from 2 to 4 or 5 that I should be particularly keen on looking out for? | |
| Just be excited because every single stage is awesome. | |
| It's a little bit sad as a parent when your child really starts getting more independent, which the second Noah turned four, he had to have his booster seat instead of his car seat. | |
| He wanted to do most everything himself. | |
| He wanted to walk everywhere instead of being carried and just things like that. | |
| You know, it's a little bit sad as a parent, but it's also really exciting. | |
| There hasn't been a stage yet where I didn't think, man, this kid is awesome. | |
| Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate your time and your perspective, and I highly recommend your blog, which is D-A-N... D-A-N-O-A-H.com. | |
| That's D-A-N-O-A-H. And I really congratulate you on your success as a blogger. | |
| It's very entertaining and enjoyable to read, and I think that you're throwing a heavy and bright light up into the sky for other people to navigate themselves by, and I really, really appreciate what you're doing. | |
| I appreciate it, Stefan. Thank you. |