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Sept. 14, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:47
1991 Philosophical Parenting - August 2011

The latest news from the front lines of reason, peace, and philosophical parenting!

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Well, it's been a while, my friends, but it is time for another round of philosophical parenting.
I don't know, boy, it's been probably about a year since I've done one.
Lots to talk about, so let's get underway.
So, my daughter now is a little over two and a half, and, well, I mean, she's just a completely perfect miracle of humanity, and I want to sort of express that Upfront.
She is an enormous amount of fun.
She is very sensitive.
I mean, I think very intelligent.
I'm sure most parents feel that way.
And she is putting together thoughts that are startling.
She's told me about her first dream and all of these kinds of good things.
But as far as the parenting aspect goes, The theories that I had about childhood affinity to UPB, to universally preferable behavior, to, I'd say, my approach to ethics, although that's not quite my formulation of an approach to ethics, of a universal approach to ethics, is actually quite accurate.
This is what has actually been occurring.
So, in my formulation of UPB and childhood, The same mechanics that cause us to universalize and really what is my daughter doing but universalizing repeatedly all the time.
That's the major function of her brain.
So she learns the word chair and she has to learn it doesn't just mean this chair but A chair that may be different, may be bigger, smaller.
And this aspect of concept formation has been just, and I can't tell you, I guess I'm just a complete philosophy parent geek, but it has been absolutely gripping to watch.
Absolutely gripping to watch.
And to see that has been just miraculous.
Just miraculous. And so she's universalizing all the time.
And She's universalizing words and concepts and relationships.
She knows that a mommy is not just an older woman with a child, but this sort of stuff.
She gets all of this. It's also fascinating to see how misidentifications stick.
So we were at a friend's place and she wanted to go and see the basement and so our friend's daughters took her down to the basement and we pretended that it was a spaceship.
And so now, like months later, she still refers to the basement as the spaceship.
And correcting her seems to be a little tricky.
And that sort of reminded me...
I have something that occurred for me, which was that...
I think it's an Oscar Wilde poem called The Ballad of Reading Jail.
But jail was spelt G-A-O-L, which was different from the way that I had learned it.
And I was unable to process that as jail.
So in my mind, it's still The Ballad of Reading Goal.
I think I mentioned that before.
And this misidentification that sticks is really, really important.
It's like our first impression of a concept sticks with us.
So long and so deeply.
Which sort of explains...
At least it does something to explain the prevalence of religion and other forms of cultural falsehoods that stick so long.
Now, as far as UPB goes, I'll sort of give you an example.
She... Was going through a bit of a phase of yelling no at myself and my wife and so on when we were on the phone and she didn't want to do that.
And this sort of spilled over to other children.
So if she wanted to play with another kid in the playground, that was great.
If for some reason she didn't, then she'd say no.
Or sometimes no boy look at Isabella or something like that.
And that was something I had to have a chat with her about.
And so what I said, and this is not gussied up for the audience, this is pretty much what I said.
I said, okay, so Isabella, if you see a child and you don't feel like talking to that child or playing with that child, that's fine.
You don't have to talk to that child, of course.
You don't have to play with that child, but I don't want you to yell.
I know you're not yelling at the child, but the child may not know that, and so it might be upsetting.
She says, I want to yell at the child.
I get that, because that's what you do, but it's not very nice to yell at people, because it can make them feel sad or scared.
And so she said, but I want to yell.
It's like, okay, well, how would you feel if people yelled at you?
She looked at me and she sort of knew where I was going with this, right?
And I said, look, I mean, Mama never yells at you.
Or Dada never yells at you.
And there was long pause.
And then she said, okay, Dada yell at me.
Dada can yell at me. I was like, oh man, that's pretty good.
And I really had to suppress a smile because I thought that was just a wonderful UPB moment.
Where she really did get that if I didn't yell at her, I had the legitimate right.
That didn't mean I was right about it, but it meant I had the legitimate right to insist that she not yell at people.
And that was great, that in order to retain, like she knew that she could only retain her quote right to yell at people if I gave up my insistence on not yelling at her.
I had to break my universality in order for her to break her universality.
And so she was striking a bargain with me.
And the reason for that was that she probably felt, because she had the impulse to yell at people, and she probably felt that I had the impulse to yell at people.
So this was like an under-the-table handshake, which was, Dad, I will let you revel in your unholy deep-seated desire.
To just yell at people, if you will let me do the same, we will break universality together, and that will be a good bargain.
A good, dark, deep little bargain.
And I thought that was just wonderful.
I thought that was a wonderful example of UPB in action.
And she really, you know, this wasn't just a one-time thing.
Like over the next day or two, she would just occasionally say, oh, daddy, daddy yell at Isabella.
And, you know, I would say, I never will.
I never will. It's not going to happen.
And to her credit, she stopped yelling at the children.
In fact, she would be quite proud of that.
So once I didn't give way on my universality, she accepted it.
And then she would see children.
She may say hi to them or she may not.
This is not all kids, just, you know, some kids maybe she didn't know or whatever.
And she would say, I'm not yelling at the children.
I'm like, yay! Good job.
And another time, this was at the barbecue, I was talking on the phone and Isabella was yelling, no, no, no, when I was talking on the phone and it was quite tough to hear what the other person was saying and so on.
And so... I sort of struggled through the phone call.
Actually, I know. I asked her during the phone call to not do that.
And then afterwards, I sort of went down to her high level and I said, Izzy, darling, look at me, look at me.
We need to talk about this.
Because... When I'm talking on the phone, I find it hard to hear if you're yelling in my ear.
And then I think I began rapping.
And I explained it to her, like if she was trying to watch a television show and I would be singing, she would find it distracting and so on.
So she did sort of finally understand it.
And then... The phone rang again, and she looked at me while I was on the phone.
And it was interesting because she was saying to me while I was on the phone again, she was saying, I'm not saying no, Dada, I'm not yelling, Dada.
And so it was practice.
It was like she was practicing not doing it.
And I mean, it's an incredible relief as a parent, of course, right?
I mean, let alone...
A thinker, but it was an incredible relief as a parent that this is the way that it shook out.
That she was happy to be...
Following these rules.
And that was great.
Because there's always this feeling that, you know, it's like in The Sopranos, you know, once the parents are in bed, Tony and Carmela are in bed, and they're saying, gosh, you know, if our kids ever figure out how little power we have, we're screwed, so to speak. And that's what you sort of feel as a parent, you know, because if reason doesn't work, or if empathy doesn't work, or You know, that sort of stuff, then you're in a whole heap of trouble as a parent.
So, that is a huge relief.
And this has been going on for quite some time.
Certainly, we were able to start Morally Reasoning with Isabella, I would say, close to about a year ago.
And it's been going really, really well.
Now, let's switch gears a little bit because I wanted to talk about timeouts because on the board, previously, I had been more positive about timeouts.
And there was some criticism of timeouts, which I at the time felt was sort of extreme, you know, so if spanking is hitting, then timeouts is imprisonment and so on.
And I still have some issues with that.
We don't have to sort of get into those right now.
I want to sort of keep this more empirical than theoretical.
But I will say this, that I have not found timeouts to be necessary.
I think that maybe once every month or two, I've put Isabella in her crib for two minutes.
I guess that's a timeout.
It's not quite the same as the way the timeouts are shown on shows like Super Nanny and so on.
But I've not found timeouts to be necessary.
I've not found discipline in the way that people talk about it in terms of parent-child.
I've not found discipline to be necessary.
That's not something I was exactly expecting.
I had my hopes, but I wasn't exactly expecting it.
But it really has not been necessary.
What I have found is that if I have a need to impose a rule, then I can't impose it after the fact.
That's really important. Or I can't impose it in the moment.
So Isabella, like all kids, I assume, went through a phase of throwing things.
And she still occasionally does that.
And the only thing she's allowed to throw is ping pong balls.
Because otherwise, if we say it's too heavy or too big, these aren't things that she can process in the way that we can.
And so, you sit down in a moment of calm, or I sit down, Christina sits down in a moment of calm, and we say, okay, so here's what's going on.
So you're throwing stuff, and we like that you're learning how to throw, and it's great.
But some of the stuff you're throwing is too big and it can knock things over or it can hit mommy or daddy and that's not good.
And I sort of make that appeal from emotion as well as sort of the evidence and say, you know, I really want to enjoy playing ball with you, but if you're throwing things that are too big and heavy, I get scared and I don't have fun and I really want to make sure that I'm having fun playing ball with you.
So... Here's what we suggest.
You can throw any ping pong ball that you like, and you can throw it as hard as you want, but everything else you can drop, but you can't throw.
And we sort of just talk about it from there.
And if she says, well, I want to throw big things, it's like, well, you can throw big things outside, but you can't throw them inside, because it's scary for mommy and daddy, and you can break things.
I want to break things.
She's always testing the universality.
It's like, well, we appreciate that.
It's fun to break things sometimes, but we don't want you to break things in the house, because then we have to buy...
New things, and that means less money for toys and outings and all that, and we want to make sure that we have money to play, to go out, to do stuff, to go to the play center, to go do these fun things.
And so she kind of gets that.
Now, of course, in a moment of excitement, she'll forget, and I find that it's just a light tone of genuine disapproval.
Is all that's needed, at least so far.
Say, Isabella, is that a ping pong ball?
No. Are we allowed to throw things that aren't ping pong balls?
No. And so, I'm Yari Dada.
That's okay, Boo Boo. It's okay.
It was an accident. Just try to remember.
And that's really been the extent of it.
It's reminders. I haven't found the need to get stern.
I haven't found the need to, obviously, to raise my voice or anything like that.
And there hasn't fundamentally been a difference in how I'm dealing with Isabella in this way as how I would deal with somebody from a foreign country who was learning the local customs, so to speak.
I mean, we have to teach her to be gentle with bugs and so on because she obviously is so used to being small and not powerful that As she's getting bigger and stronger, it's important to remind her that she's huge relative to the bugs.
We have rabbits in the backyard and other animals.
If she wants to approach them, then she has to go very slowly because they're scared of her because she's so big.
It's a switch in perspective because she's used to being so small.
That then getting her used to being bigger is a real challenge.
So, that's been, as far as discipline goes, that's been a huge relief.
And the timeouts, yeah, I mean, I can see...
I mean, the best thing I can say about timeouts, and, yeah, I understand this is all just amateur opinion hour, but the best thing I can say about timeouts is that if your children are out of control, out of self-control to begin with, Then I could see that timeouts, and of course, if you have a multiple child scenario, then I can see how timeouts might be the best thing you could do in that sort of situation.
So it's almost like you don't put a cast on a healthy person, but if somebody sprained a wrist, you put a cast on them for a little while.
And so if the child is already in a state of chaos as a result of prior parenting or problems, and of course, you know, when Supernanny goes to a household, it's because there have been lots of problems with prior parenting.
And so, in a sense, the child is in a different state.
And I've not found discipline or aggression or any of that sort of stuff to be...
In any way necessary.
I've not found timeouts to be necessary.
I've not found punishments to be necessary.
I mean, if she is doing something dangerous, then I will take whatever, like she's got these long sticks that she likes to play with, and occasionally she'll start swinging them too wildly, and I'll give her a reminder, and then if she forgets again, I'll take them away.
That's not a punishment to me.
I mean, she's usually a bit complainy about it, but that's not a punishment.
And, I mean, that's just making sure that she doesn't injure herself or damage something, including me.
So, that's been a huge relief, and that's been, I think, a good validation of the ideas of peaceful parenting, the ideas of philosophical parenting, the ideas of treating a child as a full person.
She has... Achieved or grown into, for me, she has full personhood.
She has full personhood.
And that doesn't mean that she has full moral responsibility.
There are some things she has moral responsibility for, and she's testing limits, as all children should do.
I mean, it's not like as thinkers or philosophers, we don't test limits from time to time.
Of course we do. And so that has been really great.
Now, another thing that I think is important is...
It's a tough way to put it.
It's a tough way to think of how to put it exactly.
But I sort of put forward the tentative theory that the more your kids like you, the less you need to discipline them.
And the more exposure your kids have to positive interactions with you, then the less you need to discipline them.
That's sort of something I'm just...
Kind of working on, if that makes any sense.
And I don't have a good theory exactly as to why that is the case, but it's something like, you know, when you're in the first flush, maybe not the most appropriate example, but you know when you're in the first flush of a romance, you all tend to get along very well.
You and your lover get along very well.
There's very few conflicts and all this kind of good stuff.
And that's because you really, really like each other.
Now, there's differences that surface over time and you need to work things out and so on.
But if you really like someone, then you just have fewer conflicts with them.
And I think that's something that is worth pondering.
That... Aggression or discipline is a substitute for love.
It sort of rushes in to fill the void left by love, if that makes any sense.
So as far as Izzy goes, I'll just tell you a little bit about my experience.
As a parent and as a friend.
I think she's a great friend.
It's relentless enthusiasm is the name of the game.
Relentless enthusiasm.
She does love television.
She does love movies.
She likes a B-movie. She likes Toy Story, of course.
And the Jell-O house in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
And she's recently just gotten into cars.
She likes Mater and she will get anything that she can find to make two front teeth for her.
She doesn't enjoy it when I talk in my bad hillbilly accent, which I shall not grace you with today.
But she's very enthusiastic about that kind of stuff.
She likes painting. She was introduced to that at Porkfest, and she likes painting.
And she is interested in letters.
I mean, she can sing the alphabet, and she knows her letters.
She's not shown much interest in reading yet.
I mean, she knows certain words when she sees them, and she can sort of spell off the sounds of the letters, but I don't think, I don't believe that she's made that conceptual leap to assembling words through letters.
Of course, we're teaching her the phonetic alphabet, and that I think will help to some degree, but I don't think she's made that leap where she's put those electric plugs together of letters making words, and she's not showing a huge amount of interest in that.
At the moment, which of course is fine.
I do think that over time, of course, that will be very important.
I was a huge reader when I was a kid and loved it, loved it, loved it.
And, I mean, shield to it, I think hopefully a little bit less of a refuge and more of a sort of pleasure.
So that's all going on.
I mean, I love the way that she experiences the world.
I love the enthusiasm that she has in groups.
I love the fact that she won't show off, even when I occasionally succumb to that side of things and say, Izzy, show this!
I try not to, because I know that she's not a performance, but she does enjoy it.
She really likes making people laugh.
And I think that's a beautiful thing to see.
And she's really exploring what is funny.
That's pretty yummy, is one of her phrases.
And she's really exploring comedy.
And that's a very interesting thing.
You know, there's a lot of philosophy in parenting.
Like, we talked about the philosophy of parenting.
But there's a lot of philosophy in parenting.
In that you get to re-experience or re-learn, in a way, stuff which is funny or not funny.
Or conceptual or not conceptual to begin with.
So Isabella is trying to figure out what is funny.
And she started experimenting with making jokes.
And, you know, it's tough because you want to sort of, yeah, I appreciate your enthusiasm about jokes, but at the same time, I don't want to pretend something's funny when it's not.
And, of course, the next question is going to be, well, why isn't that funny?
Or why isn't this funny? And that's a great question.
And I don't really have lots of great answers.
I mean, I've talked about comedy once before on the show, about comedy as a sort of logic training tool.
But I don't have a good answer as to why something is funny and why something isn't funny.
But it's a really great question that she, of course, is asking and trying to map out the world.
And not having an answer for stuff is important.
You can't really say, sorry, I'm a little tired this morning, but you can't really say, well, it just strikes me as funny or it just doesn't strike me as funny.
You can say, I don't know why that's funny and that's not funny.
And maybe I'm wrong and people have different types and styles of humor.
But sort of when she asks that question, why is this funny or that's pretty funny, she's half identifying and half asking the question, what is funny?
And that is a very interesting question.
This is the big question of social ethics, so to speak, is when is empathy good and when is empathy bad or sympathy, right, as we've talked about before on the show?
So, I was taking her.
I was trying to find a train store.
She'd become quite interested in trains, so we got her a little toy train, but I wanted to see a train store so that she could see toy trains, see if that's it.
I mean, I liked toy trains when I was a kid, and I actually had a bed underneath a toy train set for a while when I was a kid, sort of 11 or 12, because I had a pretty small room, and I had sort of a A 6x12 of trains, and my bed was underneath it.
So I quite liked toy trains, electric trains, when I was a kid.
Now, she's too young for electric trains, but I thought she might want to try toy trains.
And so I was looking for a store and couldn't find it.
It apparently had moved. But she was standing in front of some kid, and he stepped on her foot.
And how do you react to something like that?
Well, that's a very interesting question.
I don't think it was particularly an act of aggression, or if it was, it was very supplemented.
But yeah, how do you react to that?
It's a fine question, and trying to figure that out is very helpful, very interesting, and of course is instructive to adults, I think, to try and figure these kinds of situations out.
So I think that's all very helpful and very interesting.
Now, as far as socializing goes...
She's pretty social, I would say.
She definitely prefers older kids and doesn't...
And this is, you know, two-and-a-half-year-olds, they just sort of stare at each other.
But she can sort of fit into the organizational structure of older kids' games, and so she understands hide-and-seek.
She understands tag, although hide-and-seek is still a little spotty.
So she jumps up into my arms and says, Daddy, put me behind the tree and then come and find me.
I think she just enjoys the chasing more than the searching, so to speak.
So to speak, that is something that I have to scrub for my vocabulary.
I'm working on it, brothers and sisters.
I'm working on it. So yeah, socializing I think is fine.
She definitely has some friends that she really, really enjoys spending time with.
So that to me is all fine, and of course she has great playmates in Christina and I. Somebody asked, and I'll sort of repeat it here, just in case you didn't dig in through the monster load of the Sunday shows.
Somebody asked about fantasy play.
Where does fantasy play fit into philosophy?
Well, I think fantasy play fits into philosophy quite a lot.
I think imagination is...
Funny? It makes a cloudy day sunny.
Makes a bee think of honey, just like I think of you.
And it's great.
I mean, she really... It erupted kind of some time back, and it's just been...
It's full-tail boogie. I mean, the fantasy play is, you know, she'll grab things out of the air, and suddenly they're real, and so on.
But the interesting thing is that it's not...
It's fantasy, but it's not delusional at all.
And so you can just grab something out of the air and say, this is medicine for us, because we have an owie or whatever, and she's perfectly fine with that, and then...
You pass it to her and she knows it's medicine and then if she grabs a bee out of the air and plays with the bee then she knows that that's a bee and so on.
She doesn't get confused and she doesn't...
So it's really interesting to see the degree to which this fantasy play is going on and the degree to which it's perfectly segregated In reality.
And I know that because if she gives me something to hold, like a rock to hold, and then I toss it because I've been holding it for a while, she'll notice that that's gone and complain about it, probably.
But if we have a pretend bee and then we walk on, she never asks about the bee again.
So she really knows the difference between what is imaginary and And what is real.
And that to me is...
And she knows there's certain gestures which signal the beginning of fantasy play, grabbing things out of the air.
And she'll set up the structure or the rules very clearly.
You know, you be so-and-so, I'll be so-and-so, and we're doing such-and-such.
And then she just dives straight in.
So that's a very practical and...
Wonderful and deeply enjoyable aspect of things to play around with.
And it's a lot more intense, and it certainly started at a much younger age than I was anticipating.
But it's truly delightful.
It's truly delightful.
And it can be a challenge...
Keeping up with the uninhibited free-form fantasy fun of a two-and-a-half-year-old.
I mean, she's so uninhibited and so spontaneous in her fantasy play.
Now, I mean, I've had some training in improv and all that kind of stuff, so I can keep up for the most part.
But I would not say that I'm able to pull ahead very much.
It's mostly a matter of see and respond.
It's not a matter of, and now we're doing this.
I mean, I've tried to do a few of those, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't.
Now, another thing that's very interesting that's been going on...
Oh, sorry, yeah, so just before that, I mean, the question that arises, in my mind, of course, well, what is the purpose of this fantasy play?
I mean, because there's lots and lots and lots of it.
What is the purpose of this fantasy play?
And I think that it really is the essence of being human, and it is the differentiator between us and animals, for the most part.
And so I think it's really, really, it's super important, right?
So, if you think about it, I mean, creating things which are rooted in reality but do not exist in reality, that's conceptual thought itself.
That's numbers. That's words.
That's language as a whole. That's ethics.
That's UPB. All of these kinds of things are rooted in reality.
Science, the scientific method, rooted in reality, does not exist in reality.
And so, this constant fantasy play, which is rooted in reality and has very particular rules...
It's rooted in reality, but it's not in reality.
To me, this is just a massive exercise of the most essential aspect of the human brain differentiator, which is the ability to extract and extrapolate concepts from reality while still having them rooted in reality.
I think that's great, it's delightful, it's wonderful to see, and I think that's why it's so deeply rooted in this developmental stage.
She's trying to create concepts that are rooted in reality but not in reality.
And that's why these concepts have very specific rules.
And they generally tend to be empirical.
So that's very interesting.
So she'll make up stuff from stuff that she's seen or stuff that she's experienced or stuff that she's read about or heard about, but she hasn't made up dragons or a bee with 12 tails or something like that.
So she's not assembling yet, but she's recreating and extrapolating and she knows very clearly the difference between what's fantasy and what's real.
So I think it's really fascinating to see.
And I think that's why it's occurring.
It's helping to develop the conceptual muscle in the mind.
So, the last thing that I want to mention here around what's going on in parenting is the emergence of Correctobot.
Now, Correctobot is a very interesting creature.
Correctobot is Isabella's...
And this started a couple of months ago.
that she will correct me on things that I've gotten wrong.
And some of those are, you know, innocuous, right?
So I make up stories for her.
And if I'm telling her a story and I miss a detail or a color or skip a step, then she'll correct me.
No, it's this, not that.
It's yellow, not blue. And it's pretty funny.
We watched a little video clip called Mater and the Ghost Light.
And in it, there's a little Volkswagen bug that comes flying through the air.
And the bug is blue, but its headlights are yellow, like yellow light.
And so I didn't realize that the Volkswagen was blue.
I was just going for the light.
And so I was talking about the little bug, the little yellow bug.
And she's like, no, no, no. It's not yellow.
It's blue. And I was completely convinced it was yellow.
And I was like, okay, fine.
I don't believe you. I think it's...
I think it's yellow, not blue.
And so we discussed this for some time, who was going to be right and who was going to be wrong.
And I've really been, I'm a very tentative thinker, but I've really been more confident of this particular call.
And so we went back home and we immediately put the video on and we went to the spot and she jumped up and down because she was right.
And so I said, yeah, you are right and data is wrong.
I thought it was... Yellow, you thought it was blue, and it is in fact blue.
So you're absolutely right, and data is wrong.
Thank you for sticking by what you knew to be right, and I'm sorry that I was wrong, and good for you.
And that is a delightful thing.
I think that's wonderful.
Of course, I want her to feel comfortable correcting, quote, authority figures.
For as long as there are authority figures in the world!
So I think that's great.
And so this phase is...
I don't do it to sort of play a game with her.
I do it because I'm genuinely forgetting something.
I just sort of insert errors so that she can catch them.
And, you know, to be fair to distracted parents all over the world, when you are telling the same story...
For the 20th time that week, sometimes you get a little distracted and you think about other things and you go a little bit on autopilot, at which point your lovely child will doubtless wrestle you back to the reality of the story, which is very important to her, though it may have become somewhat repetitive to you.
And that has all been very helpful and very wonderful, so I really do appreciate and enjoy That correction phase, and I hope that it continues.
I haven't really been able to teach her much abstract logic as yet.
I think she's still a little bit too young.
So, I mean, there's a few examples, and she certainly does get it in terms of UPB, but there hasn't been much...
And she certainly does get abstract concepts, like yesterday and tomorrow and so on, although her days are still a little scattered.
But hey, so am I. It's the perils of 44.
But overall, it's an amazing thing.
I mean, at least probably half a dozen times a day, I will look at her dancing or singing or trying to figure out what's funny and engage in fantasy play with her and compare this amazing, glowing goddess of enthusiasm, fun, joy, play and creativity to, you know, the tiny little Pac-Man we saw years ago.
On the ultrasound, the doctor's office, and compare her to the yaoli blob that first emerged into our lives, and just see the amazing, amazing amount of development that goes on.
You know, I've sort of got these ideas about the end of war and so on, and I still think that they're valid and true, but I would also say that War would have a lot tougher time getting going and keeping going if more men stayed home with their kids.
Or more political authorities stayed home and truly, truly raised their kids.
I don't mean like a couple of months or six months and then daycare, but for the first couple of years stayed home full-time.
Once you see how much goes into the creation, growth, and development of a human being, it would be pretty tough.
To spend those lives like old coins at an arcade.
And so I think that that aspect of things is really important.
And it's struck me, given that my sort of cultural background is the ruling class of England, or the British ruling class of Ireland, I suppose.
But it has sort of struck me that the ruling classes tend to be separated from their children through boarding school, through wet nursing in the past.
And it's interesting to me that the ruling class, which is so brutal in their control and destruction of human life, has to be separated from the development of children.
Those two aspects are related, and they may even be causal, or at least cyclical, right?
So in order to spend a human life or to control a bully or brutalize human life, you have to be separated from your kids, and if you're separated from your kids, it becomes that much easier to be harsh and harmful towards human life.
So I think those two things are related.
It's just something I'll sort of throw in here at the end.
But thank you everybody so much.
I certainly do appreciate the parents who are sending me suggestions and comments and criticisms.
They're all gratefully appreciated and I really do appreciate everybody's interest in that.
I certainly want to thank all of the Parents who found this series to be helpful and who've made a commitment to non-aggression and peaceful philosophical parenting with their kids have changed their ways or made that commitment ahead of time.
That is a beautiful, wonderful, delightful, and exquisite thing to see.
and I really, really hope that people will take this to heart and realize that the experiment so far, so to speak, is...
Oh, there it is again.
...is much more successful than even I had imagined, and I had imagined quite a bit.
So I hope that you will take that as a plus.
Thank you so much for listening.
Thank you so much for supporting this conversation.
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